Choice is almost always a good thing. But too much choice — what’s often referred to as choice over­load — can be prob­lem­at­ic, espe­cial­ly with a weighty deci­sion loom­ing over your head.

As more cus­tomers begin their cloud plans and des­ig­nate where cloud-based SAP work­loads will make strate­gic sense (and, of course, where they won’t), the choice of hyper­scaler has become very weighty. In North Amer­i­ca, the term ​“hyper­scalers” refers to the big three cloud providers: Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS), Google Cloud Plat­form (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. Those are SAP Project Embrace key part­ners, and they all want your busi­ness, as I wrote at the end of last year.

I was think­ing about this as I was leav­ing the SAP Field Kick-Off Meet­ing (also known as FKOM) in Las Vegas last month. Though the annu­al event is not famil­iar to most SAP cus­tomers, what hap­pens in Vegas actu­al­ly affects cus­tomers through­out the year: It unleash­es the go-for­ward plans for SAP sales­peo­ple and the vast cadre of part­ners — you know, those peo­ple who will appear at your vir­tu­al doorstep and inbox through­out the year. 

Con­flict­ing Mes­sages, Con­fused Customers

What SAP cus­tomers need to know about this troi­ka of hyper­scalers is that each offers mul­ti­ple, pro­pri­etary paths into the cloud. And that can be a prob­lem. It’s not so sim­ple to deter­mine which vendor’s cloud wares and plat­form make sense, espe­cial­ly when you are hear­ing con­flict­ing mes­sag­ing from the hyperscalers.

For bet­ter or worse, this is the new nor­mal for enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy buy­ers eye­ing the cloud: Lots of choic­es, lots of com­pet­ing mar­ket­ing mes­sages, and lots of oppor­tu­ni­ty for choice overload.

ASUG believes that there is not one sin­gle path for how SAP cus­tomers will move their soft­ware and work­loads to a cloud envi­ron­ment. Nor does ASUG believe that there should be only one des­ti­na­tion (a.k.a. plat­form) for customers. 

Who’s on Top…Now

Mar­ket data shows that AWS is main­tain­ing its lead among the pack, fol­lowed by Microsoft Azure and GCP. In late 2019, SAP endorsed Microsoft as its ​“pre­ferred cloud provider,” and recent­ly, Azure appears to be gain­ing ground, accord­ing to a Gold­man Sachs sur­vey of CIOs.

Nev­er­the­less, SAP Co-CEO Jen­nifer Mor­gan says SAP is already real­iz­ing ben­e­fits from the Embrace pro­gram. ​“We’re off to a fast start,” Mor­gan said dur­ing the SAP Q4 earn­ings call. ​“We’re also see­ing our part­ners and oth­er hyper­scalers cre­ate their own move pro­grams to help SAP cus­tomers accel­er­ate their jour­ney into the cloud.” 

ASUG has been and will remain impar­tial in our approach to help­ing our mem­bers on their respec­tive jour­neys to the cloud. We are com­mit­ted to facil­i­tat­ing con­nec­tions and shar­ing infor­ma­tion to answer crit­i­cal ques­tions and min­i­mize the risks of mov­ing SAP soft­ware and work­loads into a cloud environment.

In case you missed it, SAP stat­ed that its goal is to more than triple cloud rev­enue by 2023. And you can bet that the hyper­scalers also have sim­i­lar tar­gets in place. I’d love to know what SAP cus­tomers are hear­ing or if you have any ques­tions. As always, you can email me your thoughts. 

If you missed our IT oper­a­tions ses­sions at ASUG­FOR­WARD, you can catch up by view­ing them on demand. ASUG mem­bers will have unlim­it­ed access to all of the week’s ses­sions on-demand, while non­mem­ber reg­is­trants can view them until Sun­day, June 28 at 11:59 p.m. CT/​Monday, June 29 at 12:59 a.m. ET.