SAP bets big on the cloud, unifies under 'HANA Cloud Platform'
SAP this morning announced a unified strategy and moniker for its cloud portfolio, now called its "HANA Cloud Platform," as it makes strides to get ahead of aggressive moves by smaller rival companies.
It made the announcement at its Sapphire Now conference in Orlando, Florida.
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The news rides on SAP's announcement of the HANA Enterprise Cloud last week, and plays up the theme of flexibility: whether in the datacenter, in the public cloud, in a managed cloud or some hybrid.
It also underscores how central HANA is to SAP's future, and its promises of creating "real-time businesses," as the company likes to say. The company plays to move all of its line-of-business cloud applications to the HANA Cloud Platform, and has been aligning them accordingly: SAP Financials OnDemand became SAP Cloud for Financials, SAP Travel OnDemand became SAP Cloud for Travel, et cetera.
"With SAP HANA Cloud Platform as the underpinning, customers will be able to rely on maximum scale for all cloud-based SAP solutions, including line-of-business cloud applications, cloud-enabled business network and social collaboration solutions, and a managed cloud environment for SAP HANA," the company says.
In prepared remarks, SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe said as much: "Our message to customers is simple: You can have your cloud, your way in real time, with a beautiful user experience, from the trusted leader in enterprise business solutions."
Will companies buy SAP's messaging that it's both established and cloud-nimble? We'll find out. But the company is doing its best this week to build its case, touting more than "29 million users in the cloud" as a way to remind smaller companies just how big the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room really is.