Core competence: Cloud computing

For the end user, cloud computing should be a simple tool. For the provider to make a profit, knowledge, experience and appropriate scaling are necessary. Amazon started very early with the service "cloud computing".

Google, Microsoft, Telekom, etc. have followed suit. Even more cloud core competence is needed if SAP systems are to be operated in the cloud, including the SAP Hana database.

Amazon and Microsoft in close partnership with Suse Linux have this core competence. Google is painstakingly trying to build up the knowledge and user trust, but even after a year of hard work, there is only one SAP reference customer in the Google Cloud and that is the company of a former SAP executive (Sovanta by Professor Claus Heinrich).

And SAP itself? Does SAP have dedicated cloud expertise? Little to none: The forerunners of cloud computing were outsourcing and hosting. Many years ago, SAP recklessly sold its own subsidiary SAP Hosting to Deutsche Telekom.

Later, SAP bought back coveted cloud knowledge and expensive cloud applications: SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, etc. If cloud computing hardly works in the SAP environment, this is not surprising, but simply a lack of core competence.