Capgemini to Bring SAP to the Cloud

As one of only two official resellers of SAP software, Capgemini has developed a tremendous amount of ERP expertise.

Now the IT services company, in partnership with its Sogeti subsidiary, is gearing up to take that expertise to the cloud with the launch of a Infostructure Transformation Services division that will help customers transform their internal systems to create private clouds.

As part of this push into cloud computing, Joe Coyle, vice president of information technology and services in North America, says one of the first orders of business for Capgemini when it comes to the cloud is deploying implementations of SAP software that have been optimized for specific vertical industries in the cloud.

Coyle says Capgemini is leveraging its relationship with SAP to create licensing options for cloud computing deployments that SAP has been previously hesitant to fully embrace for fear of what cloud computing might do to the company’s revenue and profits. Rather than buying software licenses, customers effectively rent software in the cloud on a monthly basis. A wholesale shift of the SAP business model to the cloud would have serious implications for SAP shareholders.

Nevertheless, SAP officials recognize how attractive cloud computing is to customers, so the company has signaled its willingness to work with Capgemini on cloud computing projects.

Coyle says that customers are taking an evolutionary approach to cloud computing that initially focuses on utility applications such as backup and recovery and temporary systems usually associated with application-development projects. But once customers become familiar with cloud computing and software vendors work out licensing issues, adoption of enterprise applications in the cloud will increase dramatically.