It’s apparent that migrating SAP environments to the cloud reached a tipping point this year where it is no longer a trend, but has become an absolute business requirement in 2012. WFTCloud, the leader in SAP Private Cloud computing, has first-hand experience with this phenomenon.. In October 2011, the company reached the milestone of migrating and deploying more than a dozen SAP enterprise landscapes on cloud. Today the company unveiled key insights into the cloud and the business challenges that lie ahead for 2012.
As the SAP business landscape continues to evolve, so too does the technology supporting it. IT departments are under constant pressure to create and deliver platforms and solutions that meet business demand. CIOs and business leaders from industry around the globe are challenged to stay competitive and meet business objectives. Aligning the enterprise IT model with the business, controlling costs and keeping pace with the rapid rate of innovation are critical.
SAP Businesses have expressed a growing interest in cloud computing in 2011 and will have renewed focus on it in 2012. As the acceptance of Cloud Computing continues to grow, businesses are looking to augment or replace their traditional in-house data center with lower-cost Cloud based services. Cloud computing is maturing to the point that a business can run their SAP Landscapes in the cloud.
Ganesh Radhakrishnan, CEO WFTCloud, says “All SAP customers businesses should start to evaluate cloud in low risk areas. Software as a service, focused on SAP non-business critical applications and Platform as a Service, for development and test landscapes, are potential cloud architectures to start with. Experimenting in these lower risk areas can provide IT departments with immediate savings, and also enable the business to develop the competencies required to respond to new opportunities as they arise.
“We are already seeing many of our clients reaping the rewards of cloud technology by procuring additional capacity at times of high demand. “There also seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding among many IT managers as to exactly what cloud computing is, let alone how to make best use of it. Many firms are already using some form of cloud technology for CRM or other marketing services but in many cases, the IT department is unaware. Such ignorance is itself posing significant risks to the business.”
WFTCloud is currently working with many organizations around the world to help them understand the potential impact of cloud computing, establish a strategic response to the potential opportunities it presents, and define policies and procedures that manage the risks associated with its use.
Gartner predicts that 80 percent of new commercial enterprise applications will be cloud-based in 2012 – enterprises must have clear visibility into this storm of development. Today, they don’t. In fact, they often know little or nothing about the full extent of cloud deployments, the resource pools they run on, and which employees have access to them, making it nearly impossible to ensure high availability, compliance and security. Greater visibility will provide companies the means to achieve compliance with regulations or internal policies; track and manage costs; and help control user and account sprawl.
The growth in cloud usage stems from the fact that a) it’s available and b) it’s effective. SAP Business and Developers turn to the cloud because it solves their problems. If enterprises try to enable cloud consumption in a way that limits its availability or effectiveness, they will be doomed to fail. The only way forward is to gain visibility and control of cloud usage without limiting ease-of-consumption – and that means offering self-service for users. By implementing standardized but dynamically configurable workloads – such as through the use of WFTCloud SAP templates – enterprise IT staff can give developers and business users the ability to access resources instantly while ensuring best practices for operational excellence says Rajeev Menon, Senior Vice President WFTCloud.
Ganesh Radhakrishnan continues “The key to SAP business success in a cloud adoption is a robust, proven architecture”. WFTCloud mission is to evangelize cloud computing and educate businesses on the overall benefits it can bring them moving their SAP to Cloud.