SAP remains tight-lipped on cloud extension policy adoption

Current SAPSAP customers have struggled to justify spending on cloud when they have already invested in similar products on-premise. To address this, SAP announced a cloud extension policy last year. The model, the first of its kind in the software arena, allows customers to reallocate parts of their on-premise services to be hosted in the cloud, replacing the license for the relevant products with a cloud subscription. Alles zu SAP auf CIO.de

Sven Denecken, strategy cloud solutions vice-president at SAP told ComputerworldUK: "It was important to have that offering to lower the barrier for customers to go to cloud. The extension policy allows flexibility."

Denecken argued that putting a number on policy uptake may not be representative of enterprise cloud adoption.

"When we put that it in place we did not have any KPIs in mind. We cannot measure that in the sense, 'many conversions is good', or, 'no conversion is bad', so we just wanted to get that flexibility out there, and see how that turns out," Denecken said.

"We will never disclose a number on that [licensees who have extended to the cloud] because you could argue it both ways and both might be wrong. For example, if many companies convert it might be a good thing because they are in an industry that is completely about cloud computing transformation, but others say 'hey, I want to keep using what I have but extend with cloud."