SAP said Tuesday that revenues from its cloud computing division had more than doubled to 600 million euros ($682.3 million), lifting the German business software company's preliminary quarterly profits by 19 percent to 1.62 billion euros.

Analysts had expected the figure, which was seasonally adjusted, to come in between 1.45 billion and 1.59 billion euros.

Profitable cloud business

The company attributed the profits jump to a decision to focus more heavily on cloud computing solutions, an area already dominated by SAP. The company's total revenues in Q3 were 4.98 billion euros, just over a forecast by analysts of 4.93 billion.

For the full year, SAP said it was still expecting operating profits to come in somewhere between 5.6 billion and 5.9 billion euros, adjusted for currency fluctuations.

The company said it would release the full details of its quarterly and year-to-date performances on Oct. 20.

cjc/hg (Reuters, dpa)