The News: Today SAP is announcing the availability of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition. This new offering will make our private cloud service SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and license subscription available to customers that want to keep their SAP software landscape and data within their own data center environment.
In order to deliver this new offering, SAP has announced the selection of HPE and its GreenLake team as its strategic partner.
Read the full news release from SAP.
Analyst Take: There were really two parts to the announcements for SAP. First, the rollout of an on-prem off-prem on-prem experience–no, that wasn’t a typo. Basically the company is expanding its route to cloud. Second, the partnership with HPE, which I found very interesting and well positioned.
We are watching an interesting competitive dynamic develop across the software space as Salesforce goes hybrid with the addition of Tableau and herein, we see SAP migrating more and more toward the SaaS model as it tries to “Cloudify” its most significant solution in SAP HANA.
Sidebar: The naming nomenclature reminds me a bit of the new Oracle Customer@Cloud for some reason…
Anyhow, as SAP and others are seeing this growing need to make their solutions a bit more elastic and cloud friendly, there is a growing need for the right infrastructure support. Unlike Oracle or Microsoft, SAP doesn’t have the big IaaS business to lean on. This is where HPE can play a big role. Delivering the on-prem infrastructure and fully manage it like cloud while enabling customers that seek to still have workloads fully managed on-prem.
Since the launch of GreenLake, I have been optimistic about the pivot for HPE. In search of a stronger identity, the hybrid IT story is sticky and while the advertisements make it sound easy, it isn’t. Volumes of data, cyber security, AI/ML, edge and IoT are not just buzzwords, but threats and opportunities that require a myriad of hardware and software. Couple this with rigorous compliance and data sovereignty requirements that can challenge even the largest enterprises and you will find this is where software and hardware providers along with SIs really make their money.
Overall Impressions of the SAP Partnership Announcement with SAP
I like what is happening here as these two companies partner up to meet the customers where they are. We know that hybrid cloud is the path forward and SAP has a substantial path ahead to move more and more workloads to the cloud.
Additionally, many workloads for ERP are not going to be moving to cloud in the foreseeable future. This is where the partnership with HPE becomes so important. As HPE is making significant investments in enabling the “Cloud-Like” experience, on-prem, which is also what more and more SAP customers are seeking.
I believe this partnership has real potential to add value for both HPE and SAP, while providing an important service for its customers. The success stories will be important to seeing this scale in the following quarters as it goes GA.
Futurum Research provides industry research and analysis. These columns are for educational purposes only and should not be considered in any way investment advice.
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Image Credit: SAP
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Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
