SAP AG's then-chief Leo Apotheker told investors in 2009 that the German company's homegrown technology was "significantly better" than that of Oracle Corp., which had "not done a good job with acquisitions."

Apotheker was forced to leave three months later and his successors, co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, have already spent more than $9 billion on two major takeovers. The most recent came on Saturday, when SAP agreed to buy San Mateo, California-based SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4 billion in cash to catch up with Oracle in the cloud-computing market.

McDermott and Snabe have changed tack at the largest maker of business-management software to do a better job meeting demand for new technologies, such as cloud computing, real-time analytics and mobile applications. The SuccessFactors deal shows SAP's previous go-it-alone approach to the cloud was lacking, said Thomas Otter, a vice president at Gartner Inc.