The good news: the majority of SAP customers recognise the potential of Cloud Computing.
The bad news: they’re not too sure how SAP is going to help them realise that potential.
The SAP User Group has just polled members and come up the conclusion that some 80% of those questioned reckon that future SAP implementations will come in a hybrid combo of on premise, on demand and on device delivery models.
While 64% of organisations believes there is too much hype around the Cloud, 56% said they were planning to implement SaaS strategies in the next 12-18 months, and 27% they were already using SaaS for business-critical applications. That’s up from 17% in 2010.
But worryingly perhaps for SAP, some 58% of survey respondents - all SAP customers – said their Cloud adoption was being delayed by what was seen as lack of clarity over SAP's product roadmap.
More than a quarter said they did not actually know what SAP’s Cloud offerings, while 59% said they did not understand how to integrate SAP on-demand modules with their existing SAP implementation.
With the ‘hybrid’ approach being a key plank of SAP’s approach to the Cloud, this clearly suggests there is work to be done here by the vendor. Craig Dale, chief executive of the UK & Ireland SAP User Group, commented:
In terms of getting that message across, the user group will play its part, he added:
