With SAP and Google Cloud announcing an expanded strategic partnership, RISE with SAP customers will be able to benefit from a cloud migration roadmap and planned global availability of SAP services on the Google Cloud Platform.
Under the partnership, RISE with SAP customers will be able to execute business transformations, migrate critical business systems to the cloud, and leverage Google Cloud’s services such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
The RISE with SAP offering, initially outlined in January, is aimed at simplifying SAP deployments and transition to a subscription model. Customers who have often customised SAP applications are trying to shift to more standard models with RISE with SAP as a way to transform business processes.
Furthermore, SAP’s 2021 second-quarter financial report reflected the continuous momentum of customers’ adoption of SAP cloud solutions which include the RISE with SAP product. With Google Cloud, customers can take advantage of the planned global availability of multiple SAP services and products on Google Cloud’s cloud infrastructure and high-speed network, including the SAP Data Warehouse Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions within the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
Commenting on the expanded strategic partnership, Rob Enslin, President at Google Cloud, said both companies share a commitment to supporting customer growth and success. He added that Google Cloud is delighted to work with SAP to help businesses accelerate their digital transformations by leveraging next-generation cloud capabilities.
“Through support for RISE with SAP and in-depth integrations, this new partnership will enable customers to seamlessly bring their most critical business systems and applications to a future-proof, secure and low-latency environment and to run them sustainably, on the industry’s cleanest cloud,” Enslin said in a statement.
Expanded Strategic Partnership Between SAP and Google Cloud
Meanwhile, Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and Responsible for SAP Product Engineering, said:
“RISE with SAP has been enthusiastically adopted by customers who want to accelerate their journey toward becoming an intelligent enterprise. We are now expanding our partnership with Google Cloud to further customer success.”
“Offering integration between SAP solutions, SAP BTP and Google Cloud infrastructure and capabilities in artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics gives customers the choice they desire as well as the innovative portfolio they seek to transform their businesses in the cloud,” Saueressig added.
Moreover, this expanded strategic partnership follows SAP’s statement that Microsoft Azure will no longer be its preferred cloud platform for hosting SAP S/4HANA. It can be noted that SAP and Microsoft announced an extensive go-to-market partnership in October 2019 to help customers adopt SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure, which was classified as the “preferred cloud.” The German enterprise software giant now encourages its customers to explore more options when it comes to cloud providers.
In an interview with CRN, Snehanshu Shah, Managing Director, SAP Solution Engineering at Google, said the SAP and Google Cloud partnership has “more legs” because SAP is taking a stance of being neutral and working with all partners.
“At a technical level data, to be honest, SAP’s stance was that they would, of course, work with all partners. But now what this does is it gives customers choice. It does give SAP the ability to have a formal go-to-market with Google. If a customer tells SAP that they’re interested in Google, we’re seeing our sales teams, our account teams work closely together, really kind of bringing together the best of both Google and SAP,” he explained.
Throughout 2021, the tech giants worked together to support customers including AES Corporation, Energizer Holdings Inc., MSC Industrial, and others leveraging RISE with SAP on Google Cloud.
