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Decoding SAP’s ‘multi-cloud first’ strategy – what it means for you

Paul Smitherman |

SAP has been busy evolving its SAP Business Technology Platform from proprietary technology to an open source based multi-cloud infrastructure. Previously running only from SAP data centres, this move means SAP Business Technology Platform is now available on the four major cloud hyperscalers; Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Alibaba Cloud. More cloud providers will be available in the future and the multiple cloud infrastructure-as-a-service solutions are now available in 14 regions worldwide.

This move gives customers:

  • The benefits of harnessing global hyperscaler capability and infrastructure
  • More choice of cloud vendor
  • A wider range of development services and support

How SAP’s services and solutions are changing

The move from SAP’s proprietary Neo technology to the open source multi-cloud environment based on Cloud Foundry is not without its challenges.

As part of SAP’s ‘multi-cloud first’ strategy, customers are being encouraged to move to a multi-cloud environment where possible. However, many of our customers’ services and solutions are currently running in a Neo environment. SAP reassures customers that this will continue for the foreseeable future. An end of maintenance date has not yet been set, but as SAP launches more services, they will only be available on the multi-cloud environment. This includes services such as SAP Business Application Studio, SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite, SAP Cloud Platform Process Visibility, SAP Cloud Platform ABAP environment and SAP Work Zone.

Many of the services are almost functionally equivalent to the Neo offering, but there are some exceptions. See the blog From Neo to Multi-Cloud: How Our Services Are Evolving by Yun-Hsuan Lin to find out how services and solutions are different.

For FAQs on the SAP Cloud Platform multi-cloud strategy, see this blog.

Find out what this means for your SAP business solutions

SAP is clear on its commitment to respect contracts where services are still on Neo. There will be no hard push to move customers onto the new multi-cloud environment. However, as SAP specialists, we do recommend that you embrace multi-cloud at some point in the near future, particularly where you are adopting new SAP services.

Multi-cloud will bring untold benefits to your business. From more choice in programming language (more than 10 in Cloud Foundry) to increased scaling opportunities for building modern applications, there’s no doubt that the multi-cloud infrastructure will give your business the freedom to fit your technology to your growing needs.

Read more detail from SAP.

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