Almost every software company is rushing to make its applications relevant to cloud computing.
The latest is SAP AG, which this week announced simplified pricing for its HANA Cloud Platform to encourage developers to build applications on it.
The platform, which leverages SAP’s HANA in-memory database and includes application, database and infrastructure services, has been live since last fall. However subscribers had few options.
SAP is now unbundling the three services so they can be bought separately, increased their ability to buy capabilities and added pay as you go pricing.
Customers with an on-premise version of HANA can move to the cloud version.
“With these steps, customers and partners can experience the power of SAP HANA and build amazing applications in any way they choose to chart new frontiers in cloud-based software without compromise,” said Vishal Sikka, who heads SAP’s products and innovation unit.
The company’s goal is to put all of its applications in the cloud and running on HANA. Sikka said that by its Saphire user conference in June the SuccessFactors.com staff management suite and Ariba supply chain network will be running on the HANA Cloud Platform.
In some way SAP’s moves are akin to what IBM is doing with SoftLayer, creating a platform for developers, announced at its Pulse conference last month
“I believe SAP’s news echoes much of what we heard last week from IBM,” Julie Craig, research director for application management at Enterprise Management Associates, said in an email. “ISVs (independent software vendors) who have traditionally sold software for on-premise deployment now see that selling 100 per cent on-premise is no longer a viable business model. At the same time, they have to jump through a lot of hoops—in terms of sales and marketing strategy, pricing strategy, and making sure that channel partners are on-board— to ensure that their cloud options fit with their product roadmap and revenue objectives. It is a difficult transition for ISVs to make, and it appears that SAP is taking a step-wise approach—as are many of their competitors.”
For the HANA Cloud Platform subscribers now have a choice of database configuration – base edition or platform edition (which adds the ability to access advance engines such as planning, geo-spatial and text analytics). Both editions include a business function library, but the platform edition includes a predictive analysis library, and Hadoop and R integration.
Each edition now includes virtual server configuration choices – for example, the base edition has a choice of servers ranging from US$4,595 a month (with 128 GB of memory and 1.28 TB of storage) to US$30,495 (1 TB RAM, 10 TB storage).
Similarly, buyers of app services have a choice of base or platform edition for building applications. Within each platform there are choices for application services – standard edition (for one administrator and 1,000 visits a month) and premium edition (for up to 10 administrators and up to 20,000 visits a month) with storage, network and domain options.
Pricing starts at US$5,932 a month and goes up to US$31,832.
Those who already have HANA licences and want infrastructure services have four virtual server choices ranging from US$1,595 a month (128 GB of memory) to $6,495 (1TB).
SAP has also simplified the pricing of HANA’s on-premise version as well. And, to make it less confusing for buyers, there’s also a configuration calculator on the company’s Web site with server configurations for systems certifited to run HANA to give at least a rough idea of what a hardware solution will cost – although the prices aren’t guaranteed.
For example US$10,794 one unnamed vendor will put together a 1U server with two Intel Xeon CPUs (24 cores), 128 GB memory, an SSD and interconnect. A 4U four CPU system (60 cores) system and 1TB of memory would cost $55,506.