SAP HANA was introduced to the market a year ago, reason for SAP to celebrate. During the party, SAP – like any proud parent – boasted about HANA’s accomplishments. And like any good party – SAP gave away some presents in the form of credit programs to its partners. SAP HANA has shown impressive adoption and growth since its introduction. SAP HANA now has:
- over 400 customers
- over 190 implemented projects
- over 370 completed and ongoing project implementations
- 1800+ trained consultants of which 730 certified
SAP’s aim is to have 40% of its revenue come through partners by 2015 (currently 33%). And SAP is very clear on the fact that it needs partners to bring its products to market. Since the introduction of SAP HANA, SAP partners have been motivated to get certified and trained on HANA solutions and sell and implement SAP HANA. To further engage partners SAP announced a number of SAP HANA partner portfolio initiatives that will motivate partners even more to promote and sell SAP HANA and associated solutions:
- There will be a migration credit program for Business Warehouse (BW) on HANA. Channel partners will receive deal based migration rebates (short term incentive that will run until end of 2012). Qualified Service Partners can use their customer migration service credit to support the implementation, where 15% of the migration credit will be delivered by SAP Services.
- The complete SAP HANA solution portfolio is available for reselling at the same license conditions as SAP direct sales, limiting potential direct/indirect sales conflicts. The portfolio includes SAP HANA Enterprise Edition, database edition for BW, Limited Runtime Edition and the SAP HANA Edge edition can be extended.
- A new SAP HANA support certification program is launched, open to all existing PartnerEdge VARs (certified as an expertise partner). This program allows VARs to sell HANA support. Partners are offered the chance to get 12 month training on the job.
Note: for a definition of VAR’s, SI’s and ecosystems, please read our post on channel and alliance definitions.
These three initiatives follow a series of related initiatives to build and expand the partner opportunity around SAP HANA. The SAP HANA Distinguished Engineer program, which engages and motivates technical professionals, was also made available for developers on Amazon Web Services (AWS). In addition, SAP Ventures launched the Real-Time 100 Million Euro Fund in April 2012, providing capital specifically for startups using SAP HANA as their application database to address big-data challenges.
With these initiatives all targeted at the expansion of the ecosystem around SAP HANA, SAP is poised to quickly grow it database and related revenues. This is important as the five market categories as defined by SAP (applications, analytics, mobile, database & technology and cloud) lean on SAP HANA. And with the battle for mobility and mobile apps and mobile BI in full swing, SAP also needs to make big steps in database migration and adoption.
Early Q2 results (official results expected 25th July) show that SAP strategy is succeeding , as it has been able to grow its license revenues for the 10th consecutive quarter with double-digits. Partners like Accenture and HP embrace the SAP HANA technology, proven by investments in excellence centers and certified consultants.
In an earlier post we labeled SAP’s cloud strategy as patchy. With the HANA push to partners, and a holistic ecosystem approach, we see SAP getting its grip on the five defined market categories. Though there may be some loose ends that need to be tied up, the vendor remains difficult to challenge in its leadership role.
