Published on the 17/06/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
There are already 35 million users of SAP cloud services worldwide – but that is likely to prove just the tip of the iceberg according to a new study of 100 of the world’s biggest enterprises…
Around $A41 billion worth of the SAP landscape could move to the cloud over the next two years as existing on-premise SAP users migrate to the cloud. A survey of 100 of the world’s largest enterprises with revenues over $US1 billion (including 10 from Australasia) were surveyed about their SAP cloud intentions earlier this year by research firm Vanson Bourne.
The survey, conducted on behalf of HCL Technologies, reports that SAP cloud has now reached a tipping point with large enterprise poised to take the plunge.
The overwhelming reason for the move was to achieve greater business agility and speed. That was cited by 59 percent of respondents as a reason for the cloud move compared to just 28 percent which were moving in order to take technology spend off the capital expenses sheet and move it across to opex.
For SAP which has invested heavily in its cloud capability over the last couple of years, the survey is a vindication of its strategy, which saw SAP Bill McDermott describe the company’s HANA cloud as the “crown jewels” at its recent user conference. More than half – 56 percent – of respondents to the Vanson Bourne survey said they planned to use HANA in the future.
Australian enterprises will be able to access a locally domiciled version of the HANA cloud, one of five cloud services that SAP now offers from local data centres.
Globally demand for cloud services in SAP has grown strongly.
In the first quarter of the year international cloud revenues rose 32 percent compared to the similar period a year earlier, to EUR 221 million. While that was still only a fraction of the ERU 623 million that SAP raked in from software sales, that figure was 5 percent lower than the year earlier.
In Australia and New Zealand revenue from cloud grew by 166 percent according to the company, although it declined to put a dollar figure on the cloud business.
