SAP to invest Rs 500 cr to accelerate multi-cloud strategy in India

German enterprise software giant SAP will invest Rs 500 crore in India to localize and offer a multi-cloud choice to its customers. SAP will make available its multiple cloud solutions in India data centers, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

“SAP’s commitment to support India’s growth vision remains a top priority, and we are determined to achieve this with deeper collaboration with our customers, ecosystem and the government. Our investment in India is toward accelerating the nation’s digital agenda and our customers’ transformation in the cloud,” said Scott Russell, president, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

As part of its ‘multi-cloud first’ strategy, SAP encourages customers to move to a multi-cloud environment where possible. The company has been launching more services on SAP Cloud Platform, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that its customers use to build and deploy applications.

“SAP intends to advance the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat [self-reliant India] by leveraging an agile and scalable cloud technology that is co-developed in India and now made available in local data centers to help Indian enterprises recalibrate their businesses to run better,” said Kulmeet Bawa, SAP Indian subcontinent president and managing director.

In May last year, SAP launched the SAP S/4 HANA Cloud and SAP commerce cloud on its India data centre. According to the company, it offers enterprises an easy way to consume the latest solutions in the cloud and enable them to take advantage of next-generation software and services.

In June, it launched a programme to equip micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India with digital technologies to make them globally competitive. Dubbed Global Bharat, the programme provides business owners access to the global marketplace, digital skilling opportunities for the workforce and business transformation processes to drive efficiency in the MSME sector.

The company had revised its business outlook for the full 2020 fiscal year as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect its business. Although the company targets expansion of cloud revenue to  €22 billion in 2025, the year 2020 revenue estimate has been cut down to €8.0 – 8.2 billion non-IFRS (international financial reporting standard) cloud revenue at constant currencies (previously €8.3 – 8.7 billion). Software revenue estimates are down to €23.1 – 23.6 billion cloud and software revenue at constant currencies, which was previously €23.4 – 24.0 billion. Moreover, the total revenue has been cut to €27.2 – 27.8 billion at constant currencies (previously €27.8 – 28.5 billion).