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SAP embracing Amazon and Microsoft clouds
May 26, 2011 | Author: Michael Stromann
SAP is the most slow IT giant in terms of transition to the cloud technologies. Nevertheless, it's the world's largest software company and any of its steps to the Cloud serves as an indicator for all large corporations: "if even SAP released a SaaS-solution, then SaaS-solutions can indeed be trusted" or "if even SAP offers a version for Amazon Web Services, than this platform is really enterprise-ready". This week at the SAPPhire conference, the company reported on its cloud transition steps. First of all, the SaaS ERP-service SAP Business ByDesign is already used by 500 with a target of having 1000 signed up by the end of the year. Second, SAP has announced that it's "launching" the SaaS CRM-service SAP Sales OnDemand, which will be followed by a travel management cloud service and an on-demand suite for talent management. And third, SAP has started to adapt its existing systems for the Amazon and Microsoft cloud platforms.
SAP has certified two of its applications (SAP Rapid Deployment and SAP Business Objects, account for about half of SAP’s business) to work on top of Amazon cloud and, soon, SAP ERP software will be certified for Amazon cloud.
As for Windows Azure, SAP applications are not ready yet to run on this platform, but SAP will provide the tools for developers using .NET and Windows Azure, that will help them to interact with SAP systems. In addition, SAP will integrate its applications with virtualization system Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V to make it ready for the private clouds.
See also: Top 10 Public Cloud Platforms
