report: offering overview sap cloud … sap hana, an in-memory database. sap has expanded beyond the...

REPORT: OFFERING OVERVIEW

SAP Cloud Platform: A New Standard for a SaaS Vendor’s PaaS SAP Cloud Platform Enables Enterprises to Build

Next-Generation Applications with a Business

Application’s DNA

Holger Mueller Vice President and Principal AnalystContent Editors: R “Ray” Wang Copy Editor: Maria ShaoLayout Editor: Aubrey Coggins

Produced exclusively for Constellation Research clients

June 13, 2017

© 2017 Constellation Research, Inc. All rights reserved. 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

KE Y DIFFERENTIATORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

ORGANIZ ATIONAL RE VIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

RECOMMENDED SCENARIOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

ENDNOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

ANALYST BIO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

ABOUT CONSTELL ATION RESE ARCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22


E X ECU TIV E SU MM ARY

Founded in 1972, SAP is now in its fifth decade of

operation. No other application vendor has been as

successful since the client-server age. With SAP’s former

product R/3 becoming the de facto gold standard for

enterprise software and the prominence of business

reengineering, SAP became the leader for business

software in the second half of the 1990’s. SAP offered the

most integrated platform for reengineering a company’s

business processes in the internet age.

In the 21st century, SAP remains the leader in business

applications, with a wide product portfolio that goes

beyond the traditional Enterprise Resources Planning

(ERP) space. Its products include cloud-based Human

Capital Management (HCM) solutions, the world’s most-

used procurement solution (Ariba) and travel planning and

support (Concur). SAP has launched S/4HANA, its next-

generation business application that’s designed to support

the new business models, along with new products - most

prominently SAP HANA, an in-memory database. SAP

has expanded beyond the application space and offers

competitive products in the platform market with the SAP

HANA database and the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

product, SAP Cloud Platform (CP).

SAP SE

· Headquarters: Walldorf, Germany

· Founded: 1972

· Type: Publicly traded, NYSE: SAP

SE (ADR)

· 2016 Revenue: E22.1 billion

(IFRS)

· No. Employees: 84,183 (Q4 2016)

· Website: http://sap.com

· Twitter: @SAP

Business Themes

Matrix Commerce

Data to Decisions

Future of Work

Digital Marketing &

Sales Effectiveness

Technology Optimization

Next-Gen Customer

Experience


In 2010, SAP debuted its in-memory

database, SAP HANA, which offers a unique,

differentiated strategy among enterprise

application vendors. SAP is the only vendor

that is fully betting on in-memory technology,

launching its new enterprise application suite,

S/4HANA in early 2015, running exclusively on

SAP HANA. SAP has more recently launched

the next generation of its data warehouse, SAP

BW, as BW/4HANA. And most recently, at the

Barcelona edition of its TechEd conference,

SAP unveiled SAP HANA 2, the next

generation of the SAP HANA platform itself.

On the PaaS side, SAP originally launched SAP

NetWeaver Cloud as part of the SAP HANA

cloud portfolio in the fall of 2012. In spring

2013, at its SapphireNow user conference in

Orlando, SAP renamed the product SAP HANA

Cloud Platform (HCP) when HCP became the

formal foundation of all SAP cloud products.

At Mobile Word Congress 2017, SAP renamed

its HCP product SAP Cloud Platform (CP).

Today, SAP CP has over 7,000 customers and

more than 600 partners using the product.

At SapphireNow 2017, SAP announced SAP

Leonardo, a digital transformation product

suite that uses SAP CP as its platform.

This report focuses on SAP Cloud

Platform, providing a detailed look at its

differentiating traits.

KE Y DIFFERENTIATORS

SAP CP is a platform as a service (PaaS)

product that enables enterprises to extend and

integrate SAP applications as well as build new

standalone, next-generation applications. The

platform (see Figure 1) sets itself apart with

five differentiators:

1. Brings unrivaled business application

DNA. SAP has been a leading vendor, if

not the leader, of the business application

market over the last five decades. The

organizational DNA around business

applications is a key design point for SAP

CP, which includes more than 60 services to

build enterprise-grade applications, and in

effect, is the platform on which SAP builds

new applications (such as SAP Internet

of Things) and new capabilities (such as

SAP SuccessFactors’ new bias elimination


capabilities based on SAP Machine Learning)

and enables extension and integration

capabilities that are required for business

applications. Given that background, it is

not surprising that SAP CP is also

well-positioned to build standalone, new

business applications.

2. Provides multi-cloud and hybrid cloud

deployment options. SAP CP is built on top

of Cloud Foundry, the current leading open

source PaaS platform, based on enterprise

and software vendor adoption. Cloud

Foundry allows SAP and SAP customers to

use popular programming languages but

also to deploy applications both on popular

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms

as well as potentially also on premises. A

number of technology vendors are using

Cloud Foundry, but SAP is the only business

application vendor using Cloud Foundry as a

foundation for its PaaS.

3. Takes on an open source “true north”

strategy. At SapphireNow 2017, SAP Board

Member Bernd Leukert made the point

that being open and using open source

technology have become best practices

for the whole industry and SAP. This marks

a fundamental strategy change for SAP,

which less than five years ago was not

adopting open source at all. This strategy

Figure 1. SAP Cloud Platform: Five Key Differentiators

Source: Constellation Research


change allows SAP and its customers to

gain innovation and community synergies

that characterize an open-source project to

its fullest. SAP CP has been one of the SAP

products at the forefront of the move to

open source.

4. Seeks developer-friendly approach. A

PaaS without developer adoption is a dead

PaaS. SAP CP, with its Cloud Foundry

foundation, its embrace of open source

and its role as the platform underpinning

SAP Leonardo, makes SAP CP an attractive

platform for enterprise developers as well

as citizen developers. With the support

of seven modern languages, container

cross-platform portability, SAP CP allows a

developer to be productive in a brief time,

while avoiding the vendor lock-in often seen

with Rapid Application Development (RAD)

platforms. The multi-cloud, hybrid cloud

and on-premises deployments increase

the commercial viability of SAP CP skills, as

applications built on the SAP CP platform

can be broadly used and also build on CP

services as well as platform-specific services.

5. Serves SAP-centered enterprises as well

as enterprises beyond the SAP ecosystem.

Many of the SAP CP architecture and design

capabilities cater very well to the needs

of enterprises building next-generation

capabilities. Multi-cloud, hybrid cloud

and on-premises deployment choices are

what has propelled Cloud Foundry to be

the leader in PaaS. Using Cloud Foundry

capabilities and tying those together

with the requirements of SAP business

applications make SAP CP a must-know

and must-have tool for SAP-centered

enterprises. Design points and qualities

of SAP CP make the platform a general-

purpose PaaS product to be considered by

all enterprises for their next-generation

application needs.

ORG A NIZ ATIO N A L RE VIE W

Management Team

When Jim Hagemann Snabe stepped down

as SAP Co-CEO in 2014 to join the SAP

Supervisory Board, Bill McDermott became

the first solo CEO of SAP since Henning


Kagermann. On a very small executive

leadership team of only eight members, all

product development responsibility falls

to Bernd Leukert, an SAP veteran of more

than 20 years with a long history of product

development positions on a variety of SAP

products. Leukert has repeatedly stressed

the importance of platforms in SAP products,

so Constellation sees him as a key executive

sponsor for SAP CP. In April 2017, SAP

also appointed a CTO, Bjorn Goerke, who

previously led the SAP CP efforts in SAP’s R&D

organizations, further strengthening the key

role that SAP CP plays for SAP customers as

well as SAP.

Constellation’s Analysis: SAP has an

experienced and talented executive team that

has shown it can steer through challenges.

Thanks to the vision of Chairman Hasso

Plattner to have the vendor embark on in-

memory computing more than 10 years ago,

SAP today has the largest suite of pure and

in-memory-only enterprise applications. As

a matter of fact, the latest SAP enterprise

automation suite, S/4HANA, is only available

in-memory on HANA. And HANA has become

an application platform enabling both native

development as well as SAP Cloud Platform

(CP). While SAP has successfully acquired

many cloud assets and customers, along

with creating new cloud assets, its toughest

challenge will be the successful migration of

the core customer base to S/4HANA. At the

recent user conference, SapphireNOW, SAP

unveiled SAP Leonardo, its digital innovation

offering that also runs on SAP CP.

Partnerships and Alliances

Partnerships are vital in the enterprise

software space since no single company can

build everything enterprises need. SAP has

over 15,000 partners. Constellation will only

cover a few of the most relevant, important

and recent ones with a focus on SAP CP:

• Software partners: SAP partners with a

number of ISVs. The following ones are

key partnerships for the success of SAP

CP, helping the offering’s functionality

and widening its deployment options: (in

alphabetical order) Adobe, Akamai, Apigee

(now Google), Bosch CF management


tools, CloudFoundry, Here, MongoDB

and OpenStack.

• IaaS partners: SAP has signed several key

IaaS partnerships recently, starting with

IBM, then Microsoft, and most recently

AWS. IaaS partnerships are important for

SAP customers as they reduce the overall

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of an SAP

solution, allowing companies to move

capital expenditures (CAPEX) to operating

expenses (OPEX). A secondary benefit for

SAP customers is that SAP itself doesn’t

have to spend CAPEX on, for example,

CP infrastructure but can invest these

resources elsewhere, such as in R&D. Today,

SAP partners with (in alphabetical order)

Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform and

Microsoft Azure.

• Services partners: There is no established

professional services company that is

not an SAP partner. What matters for

CP adoption is that practically all these

partners are getting CP trained and

certified, ensuring that joint SAP and

partner customers receive consistent and

high quality service. Large professional

services companies have already embraced

SAP CP for rapid prototyping and proof of

concept (POC) work. As such, SAP CP gives

these companies also the strategic option

to transform themselves from a services

to a product (ISV) company. Examples are

(in alphabetical order) Accenture, Atos,

Capgemini, Deloitte, EY, HCL, Infosys,

and Wipro.

• ISV partners: Independent software

vendors (ISVs) have made the decision

to make SAP CP their PaaS platform.

Notable examples are (in alphabetical

order) Accenture (HCM Software), Arteria,

Blueboot, Innovapptive, Keytree, NGA HR

and Sodales. The marketplace that these

ISVS can use, SAP App Center, showcases

well over 1,000 apps.

Constellation’s Analysis: Partnerships are

crucial in the enterprise software space and

vendors need to be able to attract, form and

nurture partnerships. SAP has shown that

it can attract partners to form a veritable

ecosystem around SAP CP. With over 7,100


SAP CP customers, SAP has shown enough

customer adoption to attract over 650

partners building solutions on top of SAP CP,

impressive numbers for a relatively

new platform.

Competitive Positioning

Despite the competition from newer “born on

the web” competitors, SAP has not only been

able to keep its lead as the largest enterprise

application vendor but even expanded its

leadership in some markets - both from

functional and geographical perspectives.

SAP has achieved this by “taking the long

march” or developing products internally -

most prominently SAP’s in-memory database,

SAP HANA, SAP’s private cloud offering

HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC), SAP’s PaaS

offering, SAP Cloud Platform (CP) and its new

enterprise suite with S/4HANA.

At SapphireNow 2017, SAP announced its

digital innovation platform, Leonardo, which

supports analytics, big data, blockchain, IoT

and Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence

(ML/AI) capabilities. Remarkably, in a change

from previous direction, the more recent

offerings of CP and Leonardo take more

advantage of, or even fully run on top of, open

source-based products and platforms.

Constellation’s Analysis: Enterprise software

vendors do not remain leaders over multiple

decades when they don’t demonstrate that

they can successfully adopt new trends and

capabilities. In SAP’s case, the embrace of open

source capabilities is a strong departure from

its previous technology and platform strategy

that was strongly predicated on building and

controlling products and technology in house.

SAP NetWeaver and SAP HANA are examples

of that previous era. But the rise of open

source platforms, which has effectively been

embraced by all major enterprise software

vendors, wasn’t left unnoticed at SAP. More

specifically, SAP Hybris adopted Cloud

Foundry as the base of its next-generation

offering, providing both viability and proof

points to the rest of SAP, which adopted

Cloud Foundry formally in spring 2016 as its

underlying PaaS technology. Embracing and

exploiting open source makes SAP a more


viable vendor for its customers and prospects

as well as a more attractive platform to

enterprise developers, which is crucial for any

platform’s adoption.

Market Positioning

SAP has a unique market position with SAP CP.

It is the only enterprise application software

vendor of scale that has fully committed to

Cloud Foundry. All other major competitors to

SAP elected to build their own PaaS offerings,

requiring them to commit attention and R&D

budget to key PaaS capabilities, such as multi-

cloud support. This should allow SAP to adopt

new open source technologies in the area of

ML/AI faster than its competitors, for example.

SAP’s decision to make SAP CP the platform

that powers SAP Leonardo is a key sign for

enterprise CxOs that SAP CP is here to stay.

But for SAP CP to become a full success,

it needs to continue being adopted across

the wide collection of SAP solutions - from

complementing S/4HANA and being the

platform underpinning SAP Leonardo to next-

generation applications built as standalone

projects. SAP CP will have to see uptake

across the Ariba, Fieldglass, Concur, Hybris

and SuccessFactors product portfolios. CP

will have to integrate these newer and older

products and offer a competitive platform

for all of them to show the leverage SAP

customers expect.

Constellation’s Analysis: With the positive

experience of the Hybris team with Cloud

Foundry, it was possible for SAP to embrace

the Cloud Foundry platform beyond the Hybris

scope. The widespread adoption of CP is a

huge challenge ahead but also the prize for

SAP customers. With more uptake, support

and platform abilities in CP, customers will

have to use CP more broadly. And with Cloud

Foundry, SAP has bet on the best and most

popular PaaS platform out there, making it an

easy-to-accept platform choice for customers.

Compared to its key competitors, SAP has

chosen an open source-based platform future,

which helps SAP to disrupt itself. One offering

that is showcasing this already is SAP Internet

of Things, which runs on CP and was the

proof point and eye opener for SAP Leonardo,

showing that an open and open source-


based approach is the best platform and

implementation approach in the age of digital

transformation.

Key SAP Cloud Platform Capabilities

Multi-Cloud Support

The foundation of SAP CP is Cloud Foundry,

which has become the leading PaaS platform

for enterprises building next-generation

applications. At the heart of the Cloud Foundry

product success lies its multi-cloud capabilities

that give customers the option to deploy

applications across a number of different

IaaS environments.

SAP CP takes advantage of these platform

capabilities and gives customer IaaS platform

choice. Multi-cloud capabilities rank high on

enterprises’ PaaS requirements list, as decision

makers want to avoid lock-in with vendors.

Even though it is not always clear if enterprises

will be able to take advantage of multi-cloud

over the lifecycle of their app deployments,

they still don’t want to make an early decision

that limits choices in the future.

With SAP CP, enterprises can deploy solutions

on the following platforms:

• Amazon AWS

• Google Cloud Platform

• Microsoft Azure

• SAP Cloud

As the list shows, not only do enterprises get

options on the public cloud IaaS side, but they

can also choose to deploy in SAP’s cloud with

services that make this more of a managed

cloud offering (see Figure 2).

Constellation’s Analysis: SAP offers the most

flexible deployment options among enterprise

application vendors, giving customers choices

for where they deploy their next-generation

applications built on SAP CP. Beyond the

avoidance of lock-in, multi-cloud capability

is also important for CxOs today because

of data residency and privacy regulations,

patchwork IaaS vendor coverage by country

and performance considerations.

Even though information travels at the speed

of light in networks, it still takes the light

longer when the server is farther away from


the customer. Moreover, being able to deploy

solutions across public clouds will get even

more important as enterprise automation

moves to the public cloud. With that shift,

flexible cloud deployment enables a better

user experience in terms of performance.

Lastly, SAP can focus more if its capital

expenditures toward products, ideally allowing

higher R&D spending on its PaaS and

SaaS products.

SAP Leonardo Supports Emerging Technology

for Innovative Apps

At Sapphire 2017, SAP launched SAP Leonardo,

a group of modern technologies that are key

ingredients for next-generation applications.

Key technologies are big data, blockchain,

insight-to-action powering analytics, Internet

of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning. All of

them are running on SAP CP, making it the

de facto platform underlying Leonardo. SAP

Leonardo implementations will be shaped by

Figure 2. SAP Cloud Platform and Multi-Cloud Options and Benefits

Source: SAP


design thinking, coupled with user experience

(UX) prototyping, allowing enterprises to build

their innovative and differentiating next-

generation applications on top of SAP CP (see

Figure 3). Customers of SAP CP, including

Karma Automotive and C&J Energy, make the

rapid prototyping capability of CP a key reason

for selecting the PaaS product.

Enterprises have already built next-generation

applications with the SAP CP platform,

including IoT use cases such as MAPAL,

Siemens with its MindSphere offering as well

as Bosch. SAP itself has used Machine Learning

in new next-generation applications for brand

impact and invoice matching.

Constellation’s Analysis: With digital

disruption often knocking on the door of

enterprises, digital transformation capabilities

become a survival skill. Fast action is critical

in these situations, and in most cases for

enterprises, the action boils down to building

the right applications more quickly than

Figure 3. How SAP Cloud Platform Fits on the Overall SAP Product Landscape

Source: SAP


competitors. SAP CP not only enables and

runs the design thinking implementations

that are behind SAP Leonardo, but it also

powers the SAP UX Build tools that allow for

rapid prototyping. This makes SAP CP the

key platform product/PaaS product for SAP-

centric enterprises going forward.

It’s equally good to see that SAP’s deep

methodology-centric and high-quality

applications that yield development tools are

now able to support rapid prototyping as well

as agile and design thinking processes on top

of SAP CP. This is a key development for SAP

customers who won’t have to look beyond SAP

for third-party tools and platforms to provide

them the necessary development speed and

productivity. This will make enterprises more

productive building applications, a key benefit

in an age when “software is eating the world.”

Ecosystem Play Attracts Developers

and Partners

SAP realizes that it needs to enlist developers

and partners to use SAP CP for all three of

its usage scenarios – integration, extension

and building of brand new, sometimes even

standalone, applications. To get developers and

partners on board, SAP has taken key steps

around SAP CP:

• SAP API Business Hub: Partners and

developers can use the SAP API Business

Hub for information and specific

development purposes. It supports not only

the download but also lifecycle management

aspects for APIs, integration flows and apps.

SAP has added new APIs to the hub from

SAP S/4HANA, SAP Hybris, SAP Ariba as

well as several additional SAP and third-

party application integration flows.

• SAP App Center: The central digital

marketplace for SAP is SAP App Center,

which offers access to more than 1,000

enterprise-ready applications from at

least 650 SAP CP partners (see Figure 4).

This brings an end to multiple sprawling

marketplaces. SAP has made it easy for

customers to try an application before they

buy it, allowing provision of a potential

new application in the cloud first, with no

additional work required for the production


system. Moreover, trials are supported

with auto-provisioning to SAP CP. Also,

the support of subscription management

makes it easier to consume applications.

Lastly, it would not be an SAP product if SAP

did not offer enterprise-grade purchasing

support, including support for multicurrency

purchase orders and credit cards.

Constellation’s Analysis: While SAP

understands partners well and has had a

track record as a partner ecosystem builder

for more than three decades, its partnerships

were always complementary and well-defined,

often along physically tangible lines such as

hardware partnerships. A software ecosystem

is different, though, because it needs to attract

interest in the benefits of integrating, selling

and/or servicing the software. This can and

Figure 4. Screenshot of SAP App Center

Source: SAP


should lead to co-opetition with some partners.

But as long as SAP welcomes SaaS partners

and treats them as equals in the marketplace,

Constellation foresees no major challenges

in the area of co-opetition. What SAP has

understood well is that opening the SAP user

ecosystem as a potential marketplace for

partners and developers is key for a platform’s

success. The lingua franca of integration

these days are APIs, and SAP is making the

transparency, management, download and

lifecycle management of its software easier

for ecosystem partners – a key move. Having

a single marketplace for partner offerings -

the SAP App Center - is an important step to

ensure a rich and thriving ecosystem.

Partners build for marketplaces when there

are customers using the marketplaces. In

addition, customers are attracted by ease

of use. The ability of the SAP App Center

to support noninvasive “try before buy”

processes is certainly an attraction for

customers as well as the auto provisioning

of trial or purchased apps to SAP CP. Making

apps commerce as frictionless as possible helps

digital marketplaces succeed and SAP has

taken key steps toward that success with its

SAP App Center announcements in May 2017.

Customer References

At its 2017 user conference, SAP shared the

following customer stories for SAP CP:

• IoT as a Next-Gen App: SAP IoT has been

building its offering on top of SAP CP for

more than a year, so not surprisingly, most

customer stories came from the IoT use

case. Siemens MindSphere uses SAP CP

to create the Siemens IoT platform for

applications in manufacturing and for

industry customers. Similarly, MAPAL and

SAP have partnered to create a platform

to complete the lifecycle management for

C-parts. MAPAL also uses the iOS SDK that

is part of SAP CP to run the platform use

cases on Apple devices. And finally, Bosch

uses SAP CP to enable truck drivers to

track work and rest times as well as to

connect drivers with their cargo pickup and

delivery locations.


• Transform the Digital Enterprise: SAP shared internally

built applications for SAP Brand Impact, an application

that analyzes brand exposure in the media by using

vision techniques. Another use case is SAP Ticketing,

a service desk management application that uses SAP

Leonardo Machine Learning to group, assign and route

service tickets appropriately.

• Multi-Cloud Support: SAP CP allows SAP HANA

XS Advanced apps to run both in the cloud and on

premises (or where the HANA system is located). Karma

Automotive uses SAP CP to merge application assets

that operate both on-premises and in the cloud, creating

a true hybrid operation that uses applications in the

locations where they work best.

Constellation’s Analysis: It is still early days for SAP CP,

with analytics and IoT being the earliest adopters. It is good

to see that SAP uses SAP CP to build its next-generation

applications, such as SAP Brand Impact and SAP Ticketing.

And finally, highlighting Karma Automotive as an early

example of multi-cloud deployment is a confidence-building

sign for customers.

Constellation expects SAP CP to become very popular

quickly, and SAP should be able to showcase more

customer stories soon. Early customer showcases will be

Typical Customer Profile

· Revenue: At least $100 million

a year

· Number of employees: More

than 1,000

· Geography: Global

· Industries: Can be used by

most industries

· Roles: Chief Information Officer,

Chief Technology Officer, Chief

Revenue Officer, Chief Customer

Officer, Chief Service Officer, Chief

HR Officer, Chief People Officer


critical. The fact that SAP is building its own

applications on SAP CP and using it as the

integration platform is a validation point for

customers, but by itself is not enough to give

CxOs the confidence to build their enterprises’

next-generation applications on SAP CP. SAP

will have to overcome the adoption confidence

factor with more customer showcases. The

needs of ISVs and enterprises overlap but are

also substantially different, with the former

most prominently having to support multiple

customers and products, the latter mostly

only having to run a single next generation

application.

RECO MMEND ED S CEN ARIOS

Constellation sees several use cases where

enterprises would turn to SAP CP to solve their

automation needs. SAP’s business application

DNA will make customers gravitate toward

specific, defined business application use

cases – not necessarily all-purpose, generic

applications. It’s important to note, though,

that SAP CP is a PaaS platform that does allow

for building all-purpose, generic applications.

Constellation sees a compelling case for SAP

CP in the following use cases (see Figure 5):

1. Revolutionizing Intra-Enterprise Functions.

Enterprises need to reinvent how they

operate internally. This will require

them to transition from being traditional

organizations using stovepipe applications

to agile organizations that can quickly

implement new best practices.

2. Digitizing Value Chains. Enterprises

pursuing digital transformation need to

capitalize on opportunities presented by the

supply and sales value chains. Traditional

applications lack the best practices of the

21st century that disrupt and operate these

value chains.

3. Orchestrating Things. IoT is a fast-growing

application market with expectations of

billions of things to be connected soon.

Managing things efficiently and solving the

thing-to-human interface is key for success

under this scenario.


4. Using Data as a Service (DaaS). Enterprises

possess and create millions of real-world

data points, which they have to process,

possibly monetize, benchmark and exchange

as part of a DaaS strategy.

SAP’s business application DNA, coupled with

its acumen about enterprises, makes SAP CP

a platform that companies should take note

of. For customers using SAP SaaS and other

applications, SAP CP becomes very quickly

the de facto tool of choice for any extension,

integration and stand-alone application work

that they need or want to undertake. The

platform’s synergies with SAP as a product

vendor make this choice compelling, and for

most enterprises, easy to make.

Figure 5. Constellation’s Seven Universal Next-Gen Apps Use Cases

Source: Constellation Research


ENDNOTES

1 “SAP cloud plans get less cloudy”, Holger Mueller blog, Enterprise Software Musings, May 11, 2013, SAP Cloud plans get less cloudy, http://enswmu.blogspot.de/2013/05/saps-cloud-plans-get-less-cloudy.html.

2 “HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS”, Holger Mueller blog, Enterprise Software Musings, September 16, 2014, HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS, https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/hana-cloud-platform-revisited-improvements-ahead-and-turning-real-paas.

3 “News Analysis – SAP Commits to CloudFoundry and OpenStack – Key steps, but what is the direction?”, Holger Mueller blog, Enterprise Software Musings, July 23, 2014, https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/news-analysis-sap-commits-cloudfoundry-and-openstack-key-steps-what-direction.


ANALYST BIO

Holger MuellerVice President and Principal Analyst

Holger Mueller is vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, providing guidance for the

fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS, with forays up the tech stack into big data, analytics and SaaS.

Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including chief information officers (CIO), chief technology

officers (CTO), chief product officers (CPO), investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms and

technology buyers.

Prior to joining Constellation Research, Holger was VP of products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. He

led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new business-process-as-a-service

(BPaaS) capabilities. Previously, he was the chief application architect with SAP and was also VP of products for

FICO. Before that, he worked for Oracle in various management functions - both of the application development

(CRM, Fusion) and business development sides. Holger started his career with Kiefer & Veittinger, which he

helped grow from a startup to Europe’s largest CRM vendor from 1995 onwards. Holger has a Diplom Kaufmann

from University of Mannheim, with a focus on Information Science, Marketing, International Management and

Chemical Technology. As a native European, Mueller speaks six languages.

@holgermu | www.constellationr.com/users/holger-mueller

www.linkedin.com/in/holgermueller


A BOU T CO NS TELL ATIO N RE S E ARCH

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Organizational Highlights

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