SAP's Cloud Platform adds multi-cloud support, business semantics
SAP Cloud Platform, the company's platform-as-a-service effort, will run on multiple clouds including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
For SAP, Cloud Platform is a way to court current customers to build custom applications on top of HANA and other business services and perhaps land a few new ones.
At SAP Sapphire in Orlando, SAP will walk through demonstrations of SAP Cloud Platform running on Google Cloud Platform. Amazon Web Services integration is now generally available and Microsoft Azure is in beta.
Dan Lahl, vice president product marketing SAP Cloud Platform, said the company is looking to differentiate its platform-as-a-service (PaaS) with a multi-cloud approach and the ability to connect to SAP apps and business services. "We're looking at higher level business value services," said Lahl.
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Based on Cloud Foundry, SAP Cloud Platform supports multiple languages, connects to cloud applications via API and has its run time. Since SAP Cloud Platform is based on Cloud Foundry, the company is pitching a more open approach. Most PaaS efforts build on one infrastructure.
SAP Cloud Platform is adding 100 new APIs that are context aware for HANA, Ariba and SuccessFactors. These APIs are available through the SAP API Business Hub, which also includes new integration flows, microservices and partner apps. Lahl said that business semantics are built in and can connect to Workday and Salesforce.
"We want to be a software company and one that lets customers decide where they want to run cloud infrastructure," said Lahl.
While SAP Cloud Platform could attract non-SAP customers, but the first effort is to give existing customers the ability to plug into the service for higher-level apps. "We are not in a war for developer services," said Lahl.