SAP puts its heads in multiple clouds

SAP's decided the time is right for its cloud to play nicely with other clouds.

The Earl of ERP has previously signalled that its platform-as-a-service will soon soon be available in clouds other than its own and at its Sapphire Now conference it has delivered.

The SAP Cloud Platform can now run across three different clouds. It's already live on AWS, Azure's doing a public preview and Google has it in a “demo showcase”.

There's also a new “Cloud Platform cockpit” to run the Platform, which uses Cloud Foundry to splash down an environment offering Java, Node.js and SAP HANA extended application services, all in multiple languages.

SAP's also announced it will offer HANA as a managed service that will see it “own and deliver the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud managed service and supporting services on a public cloud infrastructure”.

This arrangement is a lot like the one AWS has with VMware, because SAP will run the service and be the sole throat to choke, but users will get the scalability of AWS. And the comfort of going with the acknowledged cloud leader.

Operating a cloud is tough. So tough that even colossi like HPE, Cisco, VMware and Verizon have bailed from the business. Like Oracle, SAP does have the advantage of a loyal user base ripe for cloudy conversions. But those users are doubtless aware that smaller clouds have struggled and/or may have preferences to run in the cloud of their choosing.

Hooking up with AWS, Azure and Google therefore has very little downside for SAP. That it makes Oracle look a bit rigid probably doesn't hurt either. ®