FRANKFURT: SAP cut its full-year earnings forecast as software customers move to applications delivered through the Internet, a trend that’s brought sweeping changes in the technology industry.

The world’s largest maker of business-management software said Monday its 2014 operating profit excluding some items will be in a range of 5.6 billion euros ($7.1 billion) to 5.8 billion euros.

That compared with an earlier projection for as much as 6 billion euros.

Third-quarter profit on that basis rose 4.6 percent to 1.36 billion euros, trailing the 1.37 billion-euro average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Earnings are taking a hit as CEO Bill McDermott accelerates sales of cloud-computing tools that businesses access online rather than store on their own computers.

That means clients pay SAP more money over time rather than at the start of a contract, reducing near-term profit.

The company’s bet is that it can grab cloud market share from competitors such as Salesforce.com and Workday by offering businesses a more complete software lineup.

“This business is very attractive to us, so we won’t decelerate just to preserve margins,” Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic said.

“For sustainable, long-term investors it makes a very decent story to buy into.”

So far shareholders have been reluctant to ratify the story.

Shares of SAP fell 4 percent to 51.87 euros at 12:46 p.m. in Frankfurt, giving the Walldorf, Germany-based company a market value of 63.7 billion euros.

The shares had lost 13 percent this year through last week, putting it in the bottom third of performers in Germany’s 30-stock DAX Index.

“SAP has a sticky, high-margin customer base that’s very cash generative,” Paul Moran, head of research at Aviate Global in London, said before the announcement. At it moves those clients to the cloud, “the uncertainty now is what’s going to happen to margins in the next few years.”

McDermott is making acquisitions to bolster SAP’s position in cloud computing, reflecting a rapid shift in the way companies acquire technology. SAP supplies software that manages finances, manufacturing and other operations for hundreds of thousands of businesses.

Last month, SAP agreed to buy Concur Technologies Inc. for $7.4 billion in its biggest-ever acquisition to expand in cloud computing.

“We’ve dramatically focused this company on growth,” McDermott said on a conference call with reporters. Although that will put pressure on margins in the short term, SAP can be more profitable over the long run because of the shift, he said.

“When you accelerate the pace of the cloud you recognize less revenue up front.”

Mucic said SAP is taking steps to rein in the costs of delivering online software from data centers, including an Oct. 14 deal with International Business Machines Corp. to manage some of SAP’s cloud software.

IBM will handle customer- management, data-analysis and enterprise-planning software running on SAP’s Hana database technology, he said.

New sales of traditional on-premises software licenses, an indicator of future revenue potential, fell about 3 percent to 952 million euros in the third quarter.

Analysts on average had estimated 967 million euros. Total revenue rose 5 percent to 4.26 billion euros. Analysts predicted sales of 4.23 billion euros.