Germany’s SAP may speed up shift to the cloud
November 22, 2013
Grazed from WHTC. Author: Paul Sandle.
German business software group SAP may speed up a shift towards providing its products over the internet in order to tap demand for so-called cloud services and take advantage of Germany’s reputation for data privacy, it said on Friday. SAP and rivals such as IBM and Oracle are dashing to meet surging demand for cloud computing, which allows clients to reduce costs by ditching bulky local servers for network-based software and storage in remote data centers.
With the cloud services market forecast to grow 18.5 percent this year to $131 billion worldwide, according to research firm Gartner, competition is fierce and software firms face a challenge to adapt. "We have a situation now where we see the move to the cloud, particularly in certain markets like North America, happening even faster, and this is a great opportunity for us to revisit whether we should accelerate the move to the cloud," SAP co-chief executive Jim Hagemann-Snabe said at a Morgan Stanley investor conference on Friday.
He said accelerating the shift could make it a little harder for SAP to meet its 2015 sales target of 20 billion euros ($26.9 billion), but could be beneficial over the medium term…
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