According to the Business Software Alliance, Australia is the second-most “cloud-ready” nation on the planet – ahead of the US, Germany and the UK and behind only Japan. When it comes to criteria such as data privacy, security, ICT readiness and standards, Australia shines.
Why then, poised to capitalise on the ground work for cloud, do so many businesses still hesitate? A recent survey commissioned by SAP with Oxford Economics showed that 33 per cent of SMBs in Australia have invested or are investing in cloud projects. This is fewer than in the US, Germany and the UK, far fewer than in Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa, and below the global average.
And according to Australian SMBs, we don’t look to jump in the rankings anytime soon. Although 44 per cent expect they will have invested in cloud over the next three years, this figure is still below the expectations of businesses in each of the aforementioned countries. According to the Business Software Alliance, Australia is the second-most “cloud-ready” nation on the planet – ahead of the US, Germany and the UK and behind only Japan. When it comes to criteria such as data privacy, security, ICT readiness and standards, Australia shines. Why then, poised to capitalise on the ground work for cloud, do so many businesses still hesitate? A recent survey commissioned by SAP with Oxford Economics showed that 33 per cent of SMBs in Australia have invested or are investing in cloud projects. This is fewer than in the US, Germany and the UK, far fewer than in Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa, and below the global average.
Meanwhile, the Australian channel is equipped like never before to deliver cloud. In the past 12 months, SAP Australia & New Zealand has increased its number of cloud-enabled partners from 10 percent of its active resellers to 80 percent. The partner community in Australia has invested ahead of the curve and has recognised how the shift to the cloud will change their business and how they go to market. SAP’s partnerships with SIs and resellers have evolved to reflect these new realities.
Most partners have recognised that the reign of the six-to-eight month implementation is coming to an end and that with pure software as a service they will need to deliver more projects more frequently to continue to grow. Their skills will be focused less on configuration and customisation and more on integration and business process.
The solutions, the infrastructure and the ecosystem are there. So why do we lag in adoption relative to our mature-market and even emerging-market peers?
Changing the conversation
One argument is that local vendors and resellers are not honing in on the complete value proposition of cloud. Over the past 12 months, the global discussion around cloud has been shifting. Although the traditional concerns of data security, data sovereignty and cap-ex versus op-ex are still top of mind for most organisations, opportunities from rapid time to deployment, improved business agility and faster and more frequent innovation are beginning to dominate the conversation.
Future innovation
Functional innovation within pure SaaS solutions is outpacing that in their on-premise counterparts. This is particularly apparent in the CRM and HR lines of business and is quickly spreading to even specialised and industry-specific lines of business. This trend should lead conversations with customers and prospects.
But this transition to the cloud won’t be quick. Customers want to get the most out of their on-premise platform investments, and innovating with cloud on the edges of these platforms is often the preferred approach.
The hybrid model demands of vendors and channel partners alike an aptitude in both the on-premise and cloud worlds and in seamlessly integrating the two to achieve a customer’s desired business outcome. Helping customers understand that cloud can be an extension and enhancement of their existing investments is an indispensable part of the conversation.
Finally, new ways of partnering and new routes to market are giving Australian businesses additional avenues to the cloud. Managed cloud as a service (MCaaS), is helping vendors and their partners deliver a wider set of cloud solutions than just pure public cloud.
MCaaS enables the delivery of any traditionally on-premise solution in an as-a-service model. HP, for example, now delivers SAP’s in-memory platform SAP HANA completely as service – a global first, while Gen-i in New Zealand offers SAP’s mobile device management solution, mobile platform and mobile apps completely as an as-a-service offering.
Beth Ryan is GM, ecosystems and channels, at SAP Australia
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