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What is SAP Cloud Strategy?
SAP has both financial and software targets behind their medium and long-term cloud strategy. Their financial target, as initially announced during their Q3 earnings presentation in 2020, involves achieving €22 billion in cloud revenue by 2025. From a software and technology standpoint, SAP is looking for customers to adopt cloud-based solutions for all their SAP applications. This may simply involve using cloud-based infrastructure such as that available through SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud or with the hosting capabilities of RISE with SAP, or could involve using an entirely cloud-based application such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
What is SAP Cloud Strategy?
SAP has both financial and software targets behind their medium and long-term cloud strategy. Their financial target, as initially announced during their Q3 earnings presentation in 2020, involves achieving €22 billion in cloud revenue by 2025. From a software and technology standpoint, SAP is looking for customers to adopt cloud-based solutions for all their SAP applications. This may simply involve using cloud-based infrastructure such as that available through SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud or with the hosting capabilities of RISE with SAP, or could involve using an entirely cloud-based application such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
SAP Cloud Strategy is focused on allowing customers to choose their provider while SAP offers and manages the cloud services. This is particularly true with their RISE with SAP offering where there is a single contract with SAP for the services and their management, but organizations choose who their hosting and implementation partner will be. SAP has close relationships with all of the major public cloud providers, typically referred to as hyperscalers, but there are many other hosting partners and cloud providers who are SAP partners and offer cloud services.
Further Resources for SAPinsdiers
SAP’s 2022 Strategy Focuses on Cloud ERP and RISE with SAP. Although SAP has had cloud targets in place as their 2025 objectives and has been reinventing itself as a cloud company since the late 2010s, their focus has shifted towards moving customers towards cloud ERP—software-as-a-service solutions like SAP S/4HANA Cloud—and RISE with SAP. This article explores what SAP has announced and their 2022 strategy focus.
Enterprise Cloud Deployment 2021 Benchmark Report. More and more organizations are moving SAP workloads to the cloud, with 88% of respondents running at least one workload in the cloud. Many of these workloads are solutions like SAP Success Factors, SAP Concur, or SAP Ariba which are entirely cloud-based, but there is also an acceleration in moving workloads like ERP systems to cloud infrastructure.
Cloud Success Requires a Clear Vision. The primary focus of organizations moving to the cloud is around reducing costs, increasing flexibility and scalability, and deploying applications more quickly. However, taking the time to understand what you are trying to achieve with your move to the cloud is an important step that organizations don’t always complete. This article talks about the steps that you can take to ensure that you’re having the right conversations ahead of your move to the cloud.
Moving to the Cloud is About More Than Infrastructure. Although initial cloud deployments focused on infrastructure, there has been a shift in the business case behind why organizations are moving to the cloud. Effectively utilizing data should be a key consideration when moving to the cloud as this is the most valuable asset your company has. This article discusses how business cases are changing, and how you should be looking at your cloud provider as an innovation partner in addition to the other services they provide.
Vendors offering cloud services for SAP include: Atos, AWS, Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, HPE, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Navisite, NTT Data, Nutanix, Rackspace Technology, Virtustream, and VMware.
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SAP’s Cloud Sovereignty ShiftFeb 26 — Jim Loiacono argues that SAP customers should explore diverse Cloud ERP deployment options beyond hyperscale public cloud to optimize costs, enhance data sovereignty, and align ERP with their business strategies while avoiding hidden migration costs.
5 minute read
SAP Business Data Cloud: Unifying Analytics, Data, and AI for the Next Generation SAP LandscapeFeb 20 — The webinar outlines how SAP Business Data Cloud integrates analytics, data integration, governance, and AI into a cohesive platform, enhancing existing SAP investments to create scalable and future-ready data architectures.
1 minute read
Inside UiPath’s SAP S/4HANA Migration: What ‘Customer Zero’ Reveals About Clean Core, Automation, and Agentic ERPJan 29 — UiPath ran its own SAP S/4HANA migration as a Customer Zero initiative, embedding automation directly into execution rather than layering it on after go-live. The experience reshaped how the company approaches clean core discipline, agentic workflows, and ERP operating models under production conditions.
5 minute read
SAP and T-Systems – Partners for your Digital JourneyMay 15, 2025 — T-Systems, a trusted SAP partner for over 20 years, has achieved certification for SAP Business Technology Platform operations and RISE with SAP Premium Supplier status in Germany, facilitating seamless cloud migration and access to innovations like AI and sustainability solutions.
1 minute read
SAP Announces Strong Q1 and Cloud ERP PrivateApr 23, 2025 — SAP reported strong Q1 2025 results despite economic volatility, with a 28% increase in cloud backlog to €18.2 billion and a 27% rise in cloud revenue to nearly €5 billion, while emphasizing a shift towards predictable revenue streams that now constitute 86% of total revenue, alongside the launch of SAP Cloud ERP Private aimed at assisting customers in their transition to the cloud.
4 minute read
Optimizing the Cloud Supply Chain: Insights on End to End TransformationJan 6, 2025 — The webinar addresses challenges in cloud supply chain optimization such as demand forecasting and cost management, and discusses solutions like AI-driven analytics and multi-cloud strategies to improve efficiency and resilience.
1 minute read
Julia White Appointed CMO at AWSNov 19, 2024 — Less than three months after her exit from SAP, Amazon has appointed Julia White as its new Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Prior to her role as the Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer at SAP, White spent nearly 20 years at Microsoft, with her last role as Corporate Vice President responsible for product marketing for Microsoft Azure, Developer Tools, and Platforms. Combined with her three-year stint at SAP in which she focused on cloud and AI messaging, White brings significant experience and expertise to her new role at AWS, also highlighted by AWS CEO Matt Garman who emphasized White’s “extensive experience with cloud, AI, and product messaging and positioning” in a memo to AWS employees. Garman also indicated that White would be joining his leadership team and will succeed Raejeanne Skillern, CMO since July 2023 and whose departure was announced in the same memo.
Although White secured this new role not long after leaving SAP, NICE had announced that they had appointed White’s colleague and executive board member Scott Russell to replace retiring CEO Barak Eilam even before he left SAP. Russell will take over as the chief executive officer of NICE on January 1st, 2025.
3 minute read
Cloud Revenue and AI Powers SAP to Strong Q2Jul 24, 2024 — SAP continued their strong performance in the first quarter with an equally robust performance in the second quarter of 2024. The current cloud backlog increased by 28% to €14.8 billion at constant currencies. Currently cloud backlog is defined as the contractually committed cloud revenue that SAP expects to recognize over the upcoming 12 months based on existing cloud subscription contracts. Cloud revenue was up 25% to €4.1 billion, and Cloud ERP Suite revenue increased 33% to €3.4 billion, making up the bulk of cloud revenue.
Considering SAP’s efforts to restructure and integrate business AI across its entire suite of solutions, it is no surprise that CEO Christian Klein emphasized this during his opening remarks on the earnings call. A significant point for Klein was that AI strategy played a key role across the company, and that almost 20% of all deals in the second quarter included premium AI use cases. While Klein was unclear on the methodology for measuring premium AI use cases, or the associated product portfolio components that benefited from this impact, he highlighted that SAP’s AI investments are already helping drive revenue.
The earning call did not mention either SAP S/4HANA or RISE with SAP adoption numbers. At Sapphire, SAP’s Chief Revenue Office, Scott Russell, indicated that there were 6,000 customers running RISE with SAP. Neither Klein nor Asam provided an updated figure although Klein highlighted that almost 1,500 customers were now running GROW with SAP, an offering targeted at small or medium-sized enterprises or those not already running an SAP ERP solution. GROW with SAP is tied exclusively to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, but the contracts and bundling are mostly identical to RISE with SAP.
While organizations are increasingly using GROW with SAP, 60% of the customers licensing the solution this quarter were net new. This is understandable considering that GROW with SAP is designed for customers who are not using an SAP ERP or want to use a new implementation in a multi-tenant public cloud environment. In fact, Klein highlighted that GROW with SAP is ideally suited for greenfield deployments, net new customers, or subsidiaries of organizations already using SAP S/4HANA or RISE with SAP.
SAPinsiders must be prepared for a cloud-based future if they want to continue using SAP solutions. While not all organizations have moved their SAP workloads to the cloud, SAP’s ongoing improvements and functionalities are centered here. Failing to prepare for this shift, whether it involves moving to a different ERP provider or a third-party support service, could result in significant cost and complexity.
6 minute read
