Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I review SAP’s potential to tap into a “massive expansion” that could continue to propel its growth.
Highlights
00:07 — I wanted to follow up on SAP’s Q3 results because I think the implications for what Christian Klein and SAP want to do in 2025 go beyond what they’ve been doing so far.
00:36 — This represents a new type of SAP. I think Christian Klein is looking for a growth spurt in 2025 from what he calls this “massive expansion” in the mid-market. This will involve a different way of selling, bringing the ecosystem more fully into play.
00:57 — At the same time, SAP is helping to shepherd its upwards of 20,000 on-prem customers into the cloud. They have a massive opportunity in the midmarket and even with some small businesses, as small businesses have been attracted to the SAP GROW Program.
01:43 — Starting in 2025, SAP is going to make a big push to tap into this “massive expansion” through ecosystem partners. Through digital channels and growth programs, the company will be showing how it can greatly simplify the move for small businesses, and even some mid-sized businesses, to the cloud.
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02:13 — When talking about the new SAP, I think it’s broken out into a few areas. One is this faster, simpler time-to-value for mid-market customers.
02:53 — SAP has also been riding this incredible growth wave for a while; Klein says he thinks they can carry that on for the next couple of years. By tapping into this opportunity, it’s a way for SAP to get even bigger. It’s expecting to be able to maintain a 25% growth rate for a couple years,
03:27 — This stands in contrast to what we’re seeing from Salesforce and Workday. Both of their CEOs have recently said they have seen a more measured buying environment for enterprise software; SAP has not seen that. However, SAP has been up 25% in the cloud.
04:18 — How is this happening? Why is this happening? And most importantly, where are the customers, who have so many choices in this market, choosing to put their money?
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