Cloud computing, Big Data and mobility constitute the core pillars of the aggressive growth strategy being pursued by SAP, which hit major milestones in all three segments this week as part of its ongoing push to diversify beyond the monolithic, on-premise enterprise software it has been selling for the better part of the past 40 years.

On the first front, the German business intelligence (BI) giant announced plans to acquire Fieldglass, a Chicago-based provider of contingent labor procurement and management services. SAP said on Wednesday that the 350-strong firm’s cloud offering complements the capabilities it obtained through the multi-billion dollar acquisitions of HR-as-a-service powerhouse SuccesFactors and collaboration specialist Ariba. It also divulged that it intends to bundle the three brands into an end-to-end platform that will provide a unified environment for handling recruiting, staff retention and retirement. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The acquisition of Fieldglass creates a compelling advantage for SAP customers as they access, attract and manage talent via the networked economy,” said SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe in a statement. “This move reaffirms SAP as the undisputed leader of integrated human resources and procurement in the cloud for businesses of all sizes and industries. Combining Fieldglass with SAP is a significant milestone in our strategy to help businesses simplify everything.”

Over in the Big Data arena, SAP unveiled a new version of its data warehousing software that utilizes the homegrown HANA in-memory database for resource-intensive operations such as data transformations, planning and OLAP functions. That significantly accelerates the processing time of queries and transactions, while making it easier for customers to scale their environments. To validate its pitch, the vendor went ahead and tripled the Guinness World Record for the largest data warehouse with a 12-petabyte deployment.

To top it all off, SAP Business Warehouse 7.4 also takes advantage of “data access technology” built into HANA to let users work with information from multiple sources without having to physically import it into the platform. This feature not only mitigates the high cost of data movement but also allows for interactive analysis, which the company said goes a long way towards speeding time to insight.

“We are completely changing the game for the traditional data warehouse market,” said Steve Lucas, the president of SAP’s Platform Solutions Group. “By dramatically simplifying, extending and reducing the complexity inherent in traditional data warehouse architectures, SAP BW on SAP HANA will help our customers achieve real-time analytics not possible before.”

On the same day it introduced Business Warehouse 7.4, SAP debuted a rapid deployment offering designed to help organizations streamline the implementation of its enterprise mobility management products. The vendor is touting installation times of 2 to 14 weeks, lowered overall risk and “predictable scopes and outcomes”.