Become Agile, Optimized and Digital with SAP Cloud Platform

Yesterday at Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, we announced a new name, SAP Cloud Platform, for our PaaS offering, new innovations, and an expansion of our datacenter footprint and ecosystem.

We believe the new name, SAP Cloud Platform, better represents the breadth of capabilities offered, which continue to include the powerful data services provided by SAP HANA. We now have a comprehensive set of new business services that help our customers expedite the extension and integration of SAP apps, enable innovative Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, accelerate Big Data projects, and power Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence applications. In short – helping our customers become agile, optimized and digital enterprises.

This is an exciting time for our PaaS offering that already counts more than 6,500 customers, over 600 partners actively developing new solutions, 1000+ ready-to-use applications in the marketplace, as well as 40+ SAP business applications running in the cloud.

As I reflect on the tremendous technological improvement we brought to market and the broad adoption SAP Cloud Platform has experienced over the past few years, I cannot avoid thinking about Theodore Levitt’s famous assertion: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” Let me explain.

In my view, SAP Cloud Platform’s success comes from what it enables businesses to achieve. The 6000+ world-class businesses who are now using SAP Cloud Platform services did not want just technology; they desire a fast path approach to agility, optimization and digital transformation; in other words, a way to preserve the strength of their core business operations while enabling rapid innovation. Here’s a few examples for your reading pleasure:

Since I brought up the quarter-inch drill analogy, let’s start with MAPAL, a leading provider of precision tools to the automotive, aerospace and High Tech industries, founded way back in the 1950s. Recently, MAPAL has seen a new opportunity in the C-tool space. C-tools from companies like MAPAL are items such as solid carbide cutters and precision clamping chucks, which are considered essential for many precision tooling businesses and purchased on a regular basis. Because of the high volume of transactions involved, the C-tool business generates massive amounts of data – process data, inventory data, master data – that is manually exchanged between parties across the tool ecosystem. MAPAL saw the opportunity to take collaboration across this ecosystem to a new level and chose SAP Cloud platform to build a digital highway that enables data sharing and improves collaboration between customers and suppliers. testimonial. With increased transparency and collaboration, all parties in the MAPAL ecosystem can achieve unprecedented efficiency. They gain instant access to unmanned inventory monitoring, detailed analysis options, and easier ordering processing while promoting loyalty across the ecosystem. So when MAPAL chose SAP Cloud platform, they got what they wanted: a means to digitally transform their business. With SAP Cloud Platform, they have modernized their value chain, optimized their business process, and gained business agility.

Another good example is Sika. Founded in 1910, Sika is a specialty chemical company headquartered in Switzerland that manufactures and supplies bonding, sealing, damping, reinforcing and surface protecting products for the building sector and the motor vehicle industry. The company is pursuing a rapid business expansion strategy. In 2015 alone, they built nine new factories, acquired five companies, and filed more than 70 patents. To support their expansion objectives, Sika must rapidly expand business processes and empower new employees and ecosystem partners with the right tools to serve a growing marketplace. To achieve these objectives, Sika has become an early adopter of SAP Fiori Cloud and SAP BUILD on the SAP Cloud Platform. Specifically, they have taken advantage of rapid prototyping and the ability to involve the business users in the design process for next generation apps to accelerate innovation and facilitate new technology adoption. Newly created applications and extension can be easily developed on SAP Cloud Platform and then deployed into web apps and onto mobile phones and tablets automatically. In this way, employees and ecosystem partners can become productive faster and better contribute to the company’s business expansion. With SAP Cloud Platform, Sika is achieving what they wanted: the business agility necessary to sustain a rapid business expansion and innovation, without disrupting their core operations.

Everyday I see new transformative innovation coming to life on SAP Cloud Platform. Whether to optimize operations, modernize business processes, or achieve the business agility required to thrive in the digital economy. With SAP Cloud Platform customers not only get access to powerful technology, they are getting a safe and robust path to digital transformation.

To see more customer innovations with SAP Cloud Platform, click here