Europe's largest enterprise software company, SAP, has announced that it will migrate its customers from software that runs on-premises to its cloud computing offerings by 2021.
Zakaria Haltout, CEO of SAP UAE, told LaComparacion Middle East that some of their clients are already in the cloud, that some are now moving to the cloud and that next year we will have very few clients. Customers on site in UAE after 2021 ".
He said that digital transformation in the cloud sector was reaching its tipping point in the United Arab Emirates.
According to a recent study by SAP and YouGov, 88% of UAE customers intend to increase their cloud spending next year and 59% of all respondents will increase their cloud spending by at least 30% . Overall, 83% of IT decision makers said their organizations would use the cloud in part or in full by 2020.
According to research firm International Data Corporation, the UAE's public cloud market is expected to grow 35 percent to € 406 million in 2020, up from € 299 million this year.
"Cloud adoption in the UAE is much more important than in some mature European countries," he said.
Furthermore, he said that SAP was the first multinational enterprise software company to have a public cloud data center in the UAE.
SAP has its own public cloud data center in the UAE and private cloud data centers with local partners such as Microsoft Azure, Injazat, and Dewa's Moro. SAP also has a data center in Saudi Arabia.
ERP remains an essential business application
Haltout said the journey to the cloud had been incredible and that was SAP's strategy.
"We started our cloud offering in 2010 and 2011 by offering a private cloud (on premises) and then we moved to the public cloud. Some critical industries such as oil and gas or financial services prefer a hybrid model, due to residency. of the data, and they want to get a taste of cloud computing and make adaptations. " he stated.
Due to on-premises data centers, Haltout, a former Oracle consultant, said that SAP's cloud customers sometimes grew in the triple digits and that, compared to the previous year, their growth was in the double digits.
Adnoc, Dewa, Fewa, Enoc and Etihad Airways are among SAP's main customers.
Haltout said that when he joined SAP in 2008, ERP contributed more than 80% of the growth, but that it is now in the order of 30% because SAP now offers other solutions.
He admitted that ERP is still the top business application.
"We have S / 4 Hana, the fourth generation of ERP, in private and public clouds. I have been using ERP for more than 10 years, including those of its rivals. S / 4 Hana runs on an in-memory database platform. and no other provider offers a similar offer, "he said.
ERP in a public cloud can be difficult
Although various reports speak of the S / 4 Hana public cloud failing to respond to customer demands and satisfaction, Haltout said the public cloud offering was new about three years ago.
"We continue to add vertical solutions. Customers also expect the same offering they get from the on-premises cloud solution, as well as plug-and-play. People compare it to S / 4 Hana on site because it covers twenty-five vertical solutions. This is the result of the development of SAP for more than 40 years.
"The core of S / 4 Hana is the same, but the public and private products are different. If customers demand a lot of customization in the public cloud, we recommend doing it on site. If customers opt for discrete manufacturing, manufacturing , professional services, retail, etc., we recommend the public cloud, "he said.
ERP in a public cloud can be difficult, he said, adding that this was the case for all other providers because customers didn't take it seriously from the start and because of a lack of management involvement because they only trusted staff. of you.
"When we meet a client, we say that it is a business project and not an IT project. The client must understand what they are looking for and, without benefiting from SAP best practices, it is a challenge. The public cloud limits personalization." , said.
In addition, he stated that the goal of the public cloud is to have "zero customization."
In the UAE, SAP implemented the S / 4 Hana public cloud last year and some customers are already online.
"We are the number one UAE in the ERP field. Adnoc, Dewa and Enoc used Oracle and switched to SAP," he said.
Silos of exterminating products
When asked if SAP faced a major technical challenge of integrating all recent acquisitions by integrating them, he said that more than 90 percent of its acquisitions were now working on Hana and that everything would be on the Hana platform. in 2020
The top acquisitions recently made by SAP are Qualtrics for € 8 billion, Concur for € 8.3 billion, SuccessFactors for € 3.4 billion and Callidus Software for € 2.4 billion.
"Our goal is to exterminate product silos and bring more attention and rigor to SAP's product strategy," he said.
Additionally, he said that SAP solutions can now run on Microsoft Azure and Amazon in the UAE, but that the customer's choice takes precedence.
When asked why Azure, he said that SAP's expertise is creating software and that "we want to continue creating software rather than services and hardware." Microsoft and AWS have chosen to specialize in this area and determine how we can use each other. In the UAE, Microsoft does good business in the public sector and having our applications on Azure is an advantage for us. "