The year 2015 will be a very significant one for SAP, as the business software giant promised its investors $25 billion in revenue in four years. In order to realize these plans the company is branching out, both into new industries such as cloud and mobile, and new markets. The Middle East and North Africa (MEMA) now fall under the latter category.

SAP is hoping for a nine percent growth rate in the region, said CTO Werner Brandt. The process will involve hiring another 500 employees, in addition to setting up a training center that will certify 2,000 consulates for the company.

“From a local perspective it’s more about talent acquisition rather than business acquisition,” he added. “We are very open to partnerships. When you talk about cloud solutions and more innovative areas like mobility you have to partner with telcos and data centre providers, but not to the acquisition stage.”

SAP is one of several cloud players that have decided to expand beyond their core markets recently, now that modern IT trends are becoming mainstream globally. Nimble, a cloud-based CRM provider, recently announced it’s opening new EMEA offices alongside a couple of execute additions to its sales and marketing department.

The headquarters are in the UK, and Europe will be the key target area for the startup.

And at the same time, Appcelerator is pushing in the same direction. Its London headquarters is run by Doug Norton-Bilsby, who joined the company together with a couple of Adobe executives. The latter ones have been appointed to product development positions, a particular area in which the mobile dev platform has been investing heavily.