In addition, SAP reports quarterly sales of 4.1 billion euros, which the "Cloud and Software" division generated. The Gartner augurs find SAP's cloud definition particularly interesting: " Cloud computing is a generic term for flexible, IT-related services available through, or hosted on, the Internet for consumers and business ...", formulate the Walldorf-based company. This very generic description leaves a lot of space to include both cloud and hosting services, comment Smith and Anderson.
Amazon comes closest to the truth
According to the analysts, only Amazon with its AWS division
currently provides a relatively clear picture of its cloud revenue . For the
quarter ended September 30, 2015, the e-commerce company reported net sales of
$ 2.09 billion for Amazon Web Services ( AWS ). That corresponds to an annual
growth of 78 percent and an extrapolated annual turnover (run rate) of 7.5
billion dollars.
Conclusion: recommendations for the
CIO
What conclusions should CIOsand draw other IT leaders out of
these practices? - Under no circumstances should you trust the reported cloud
figures, the analysts advise. You should definitely not make tactical or
strategic cloud decisions dependent on manufacturer information on their cloud
sales. Instead, it is important to question the company with specific
questions. In the end, the decisive factor must be how well the provider's
strategic alignment and its product portfolio match your own requirements.
The situation is anything but transparent in SAP's figures.
The Walldorf-based company particularly emphasizes SAP S / 4 HANA in the cloud
context . Like other traditional IT providers, SAP is emphasizing the
"hybrid character" of its software products in order to strengthen
its position in the SaaS business. In its annual report for the third quarter
of 2015, SAP cites an impressive annual revenue growth rate of 116 percent (90
percent adjusted for currency effects) for the area of "Cloud
Subscriptions and Support". In this way, 600 million euros would flow into
the coffers every quarter. Almost 174 million euros came from the acquisition
of the cloud provider Concur, which specializes in travel expenses.
At the Sapphire customer conference in May, SAP announced a
cooperation with Microsoft. Both manufacturers want to support SAP's in-memory
platform HANA on Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure in the future.
Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella said: "Together with SAP we are creating a
new level of integration within our products."