SAP teams up with Amazon Web Services to deliver on-demand software

SAP has teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer customers a wide portfolio of its on-demand enterprise software, including the SAP BusinessObjects and Rapid Deployment applications.

The announcement was made on Wednesday at SAP's Sapphire Now event in Orlando. Customers will be able to access a large range of business software from the AWS cloud, including business intelligence, CRM, analytics, risk management and master data management.

Customers will be able to use the AWS pay-per-use model, as well as Amazon's customer support offerings.

SAP said that it has fully tested and benchmarked the underlying AWS resources and certified them with similar standards applied to servers and virtual platforms.

"Today's announcement underscores SAP's continued commitment to innovations in cloud computing, offering a flexible, choice-driven model where customers can select the best option for them when it comes to deploying our business applications and business analytics solutions," said Sanjay Poonen, SAP Global Solutions president.

"As a pioneer in cloud computing, AWS has a proven model that provides the combination of low cost, stability, reliability and security that is now certified and available to our customers."

The announcement comes just weeks after SAP blamed a two-day Amazon outage for the industry's difficulties in selling software-as-a-service.

SAP UK managing director Tim Noble today denied that the outage had affected the take up of SAP's Business ByDesign on-demand software.

SAP launched Business ByDesign in 2007 but spent three years fixing its underlying architecture before readying it for wide-scale deployment.

The company tried at the SAP World event in London on Wednesday to overturn the perception held by many customers that SAP is a very traditional software provider focused mainly on selling on-premise products.