In this blog post, I’m going to fly over the most important topics about SAP solutions on Alibaba Cloud and try to solve all your questions and doubts about it.
Introduction
SAP opened its first office in China in 1994 but compared to other countries the adoption of SAP solutions was low at the beginning. The adoption of SAP in China increased in the 2000s when important international companies and enterprises started their business in China. The reasons were naturally expanding global enterprises and China had become an important strategic market due to its rapid growth. Starting at that point, SAP increased exponentially and new international SAP projects were starting on a regular basis. From a business point of view, the overseas companies would normally roll out their SAP template to the branches in China as they wanted to have better global control of it and transparency on how the local business unit was performing. Time differences, communication difficulties, streamlining business processes, and so on were key reasons to get their templates rolled into China.
SAP have now more than 6,000 employees that work at 14 locations in 12 Chinese cities, and nearly 16,000 companies in China are SAP customers
Partnership between SAP and Alibaba Cloud
Chinese enterprises or international enterprises can adopt SAP solutions on Alibaba Cloud. SAP announced its strategic partnership with Alibaba Cloud in 2019. The partnership between the two technology leaders provides seamless integration of world-class SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS solutions.
Alibaba Cloud and SAP also announced that they will jointly design local solutions that meet the unique needs of Chinese enterprises to help accelerate their digital transformation and their journey to the cloud, as well as co-innovate in the areas of Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and enterprise-level Big Data applications.
Alibaba Group and SAP entered into the partnership, with a goal of jointly delivering enterprise-class cloud computing services. The alliance aims to accelerate the introduction and adoption of cloud computing across multiple industries to help businesses accelerate their digital transformation. SAP Cloud Platform enables Alibaba Cloud’s customers to extend their current business solutions, build new applications and integrate with third-party technologies efficiently. Chinese businesses can expect to benefit from a versatile, all-inclusive cloud computing environment.
SAP solutions on Alibaba Cloud
In 2017 SAP products started to be sold through Alibaba Cloud’s marketplace. Alibaba Cloud’s first HANA cloud instance passed SAP certification in 2017, shortly followed by Alibaba Cloud NetWeaver ECS in 2018, and in 2019, Alibaba Cloud certified SAP Data Hub. Now, more than 150 companies have deployed SAP systems in Alibaba Cloud and realized a broad range of benefits, including reduced costs, improved efficiencies, and highly simplified operation and maintenance (O&M) across their IT infrastructures. These business solutions suit companies of different sizes and requirements across various use cases, including solutions based on smart manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.
In September 2019, Alibaba Cloud announced that SAP Cloud Solutions are now available on the Alibaba Cloud Platform in China.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform are available on Alibaba Cloud.
Why use SAP on Alibaba Cloud
Using an SAP on Alibaba Cloud Solution, you can deploy native SAP systems while taking full advantage of our reliable and flexible cloud computing infrastructure and platform services. Not only can our SAP on Alibaba Cloud Solution simplify your IT architecture, but you can also realize the following benefits:
– Great scalability: Seamlessly expand your IT infrastructure to meet growing business demands.
– Rapid deployment: Easily prepare your SAP environment and deploy it in Alibaba Cloud within minutes.
– Cost-effectiveness: Reduce your CapEx by paying only for what you use, with no requirements for any additional IT infrastructure.
– High availability: Thanks to the Alibaba Cloud extensive network and comprehensive suite of cloud-based solutions, your IT infrastructure can run with unparalleled stability.
Alibaba Cloud products
Each organization has to define and develop a cloud strategy before any implementation. Every adopted strategy and project implementation differs from each other, as well as every SAP on Alibaba Cloud project is different, and its exact needs can be matched depending on your unique business requirements. However, in general, four core Alibaba Cloud technologies are used in conjunction with SAP:
– Elastic Compute Service (ECS): ECS instances are highly flexible and allow to react in real-time to the needs of business with reliable, scalable infrastructure and on-demand, cloud-based compute capacity.
– Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): This service provides organizations with an isolated cloud network so they can operate resources in a secure environment.
– Resource Access Management (RAM): This identity and access control service allows to centrally manage users and securely control access to resources with tailored permission levels.
– Object Storage Service (OSS): This encrypted and secure cloud storage solution stores and processes massive amounts of data, from anywhere in the world.
Roopu Cloud provides Alibaba Cloud professional services
Roopu Cloud has been providing Alibaba Cloud cloud professional services for the last 2 years and has a deep understanding of the platform. Based on organizations’ needs, we provide different services including infrastructure, networking, security, data protection, identity and access management, and more.
Do not hesitate to contact us to know more about our offering.
