It’s sometimes forgotten, but one of the objectives of the UK Government’s G-Cloud programme is to give Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) greater access to public sector contracts. Well SAP’s Cloud strategy does just that and I’d like to explain how.
SMEs are seen as a future source of jobs growth in the UK and a great way to kick-start the UK economy. Giving SMEs the edge in winning Cloud related public sector work could make a real difference to the speed at which the UK exits recession.
SAP has been an early member of the G-Cloud Cloudstore – the UK public sector’s online catalogue of downloadable cloud services. SAP had 10 applications listed on CloudStore when it was first released in February 2012 and we’re expecting to increase this to well over 20 applications now that the Phase 2 round is complete. But this isn’t just good news for the public sector it’s good news for SMEs too. And here’s why:
Integration Services – in my blog from 2nd October I spoke about how SAP is providing pre-packaged integration scenarios which allow integration of SAP Cloud solutions to:
- - SAP On-Premise solutions
- - Other SAP Cloud solutions
- - 3rd Party Cloud solutions
- - 3rd Party On-Premise solutions
These can be easily extended by SMEs to address public sector specific integration needs to provide flexible and agile adoption of business processes across hybrid cloud and non-cloud environments.
Open Platform – SAP does not currently offer its Platform as a Service (PaaS) directly via the CloudStore but it will be available to SMEs to provide value added Cloud services which stand alone or complement and extend other Cloud solutions – whether from SAP or non-SAP
Software Developer Kits (SDKs) – SAP provides SDKs in the form of the SAP Cloud Developer Studio. This means that SMEs can provide customised capability to enhance pre-delivered Cloud applications and yet “still remain in standard” thereby not impacting SAP’s ability to offer latest versions of the Cloud software.
Ecosystem – SAP isn’t just offering its open platform to SMEs it’s also expanding the ecosystem of integration platforms it supports thereby enabling SMEs to promote the skills they have in these areas into the UK public sector too.
Analytics, Mobile and Social – SAP will deliver these capabilities within its individual Cloudstore cloud applications and also make them available from standalone environments . This provides a great opportunity for SMEs to offer value added services . E.g. using SAP analytical tools to build specific end user and management insights.
Monetise – SMEs can monetise their solutions, by listing them on the Cloudstore. But this only makes them available to the UK public sector. SAP extends the reach of SMEs beyond domestic boundaries and into other industry markets by allowing SMEs to list their solutions on the SAPStore – an online downloadable apps catalogue accessible worldwide.
You can get more on the SAP Cloud strategy for public sector by coming along to Stand 23 at the Think G-Cloud conference in the Business Design Centre, Islington, London – it’s free to attend for public sector employees !
A couple of day’s ago I blogged about SAP’s Cloud strategy from an integration perspective and how it could help break down the UK public sector’s over dependence on some traditional IT suppliers and, as a result, lead to more flexible and agile solutions. I also gave a link to Sven Denecken’s (VP Strategy and Head of Co-Innovation Cloud Solutions) video. Well Sven’s updated his video and I've provided links throughout this blog - but here it is again in it's latest version.
I hope you enjoyed this blog – I’ll be continuing this series in the run up to the Think G-Cloud conference on 18th October including a look at some of the SAP Cloud applications on Cloudstore. So please stay tuned
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Steve Mawby is a Solution Architect at SAP UK with a focus on Public Sector and Cloud. He writes from the aspect of the UK public sector – but his blogs are relevant for many other industries and geographies too. He has written a whitepaper on SAP's Cloud Strategy for the UK Public Sector and can be contaced at steve.mawby@sap.com
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