SAP to offer its business apps on Google Cloud

SAP is teaming up with Google to allow customers to run SAP’s big business applications on Google’s cloud while offering Google’s suite of web-based desktop apps to users, the company said on Wednesday.

Appearing on stage at Google’s Cloud Next conference in California, Bernd Leukert, SAP’s executive board member in charge of products and innovation, is set to announce the two companies are also working on joint machine learning initiatives to be unveiled at SAP’s own user conference in May.

The pact will allow customers to run SAP’s powerful database from laptops and other memory-constrained computers using streamlined HANA express edition software, while off-loading more complex tasks to Google’s cloud delivery platform.

SAP also said it was working over the next two months to make its own cloud platform ready to run on the Google cloud, allowing developers to take advantage of its containerization features that allow technicians to automate software updates.

SAP also plans to offer Google’s G Suite of business productivity apps including Gmail and Google Calendar to its own base of customers of more than 345,000 companies, which includes nearly 90 percent of the world’s 2,000 biggest firms.