SAP users slowly warming to the cloud

That's among the key finding of research just released by the UK & Ireland SAP User Group, which reveals that SAP users are now starting to consider cloud computing to deliver business-critical applications. Nearly two thirds (61%) of SAP users now say that they see their organisations using SAP's SaaS – and 73% reckon that SAP was slow bringing them to market. Indeed, 16% of respondents say they haveended up using another vendor's technology in another area of their business, because SAP did not have an appropriate SaaS offering at the time. "It is clear that more users are now starting to consider SaaS as a way to deliver applications to their business," comments Craig Dale, chief executive of the UK and Ireland SAP User Group. "Rightly or wrongly, SAP has been criticised for being slow to bring its SaaS offering to the market, but hopefully the result is a more robust and compelling offering," he adds. "Users potentially stand to benefit from SAP's hybrid approach, whereby organisations have some processes in the cloud, whilst others are kept within the business. This means that users don't have to put their business-critical processes in the cloud if they feel it is too risky, but can still reap the cost and flexibility benefits for other areas of their business." Currently, just 17% of those surveyed say they are using cloud computing to deliver business-critical applications. However, nearly half (49%) reckon that they plan to use such services in the next 12—18 months, indicating a growing acceptance of this delivery mechanism for IT. Interestingly, the research also reveals that more than half of the respondents (55%) think it is more difficult to establish and meet SLAs by keeping all their applications in house – indicating that they see the cloud as a better way of meeting their requirements. Unsurprisingly, reduced costs (35%) and quicker deployment times (32%) are also cited as the biggest benefits for using SaaS/cloud computing by users. However, when it comes to the biggest barriers, opinion is much more evenly split. Compliance and data protection fears (34%) are cited as the biggest barrier, followed by lack of control (26%), lack of customisation (20%) and the risk of network and/or server outages (20%). "Following SAP's recent announcement regarding its new Business ByDesign ERP suite, there will no doubt be a lot of renewed interest in software-as-a-service from SAP users," comments Dale. "With any technology adoption, it is essential that you look before you leap. Therefore, in the coming months, and at this year's annual user conference, we will be aiming to further educate our members on the pros and cons of SaaS as different organisations will have different business needs," he adds.