Public cloud solutions were originally invented for consumers and employees.
Back then consumerization was mostly about intuitive user interfaces, mobility, easy access, and smart devices that could communicate with each other. The outcome was that companies started to focus on enabling a better Worklife (a solution concept for work-life balance) for their employees by providing them with better tools to do their work and more flexible ways of working. Consumerization was here to stay.
After a couple of years, I turned my focus from Worklife to enterprise cloud and eventually to where I am now, combining SAP, cybersecurity, and public cloud. Consumerization hasn’t really been present in my work on heavy-duty enterprise business, resource management, and hyper-scale public cloud – until recently, we had a panel discussion about SAP on Public Cloud.
Antti Kleemola (an experienced CIO/CDO and innovator), Jukka Antikainen (SAP on Azure lead on Microsoft), Antti Ryysy (Head of SAP Offering at TietoEVRY) and I found ourselves together on a panel talking about why the rest of the world has already moved a long way towards SAP on public cloud while the Nordic countries are just getting started. I had always put it down to our bad experiences as early adopters of outsourcing and cloud technologies. Even now, at a time when the cloud is more mature and an excellent platform for SAP, we are still hesitant to go all in.
Antti Kleemola came up with a different and very interesting point of view. He suggested that most Nordic enterprises, and especially large Finnish ones, are from heavy manufacturing industries, which are not famous for their agility or close connections with end customers. In essence, this would mean enterprises that supply consumer services and products that rely on direct customer opinions, trends, and feedback would need to apply customer requirements more directly to their processes.
What would be the most effective, agile way for SAP, invented in 1972, to apply customer requirements and expectations to enterprise processes? The answer comes from consumers and employees because the public cloud solutions were originally invented for them. To get the most from enterprise, you need to utilize the public cloud services and ecosystem to achieve real business flexibility and financial predictability.
With over 20,000 enterprises utilizing the public cloud as their SAP platform and ecosystem, we can safely say that it is suitable for Nordic enterprises too. The question is not should you do it, but what is the best way to do it and what possibilities you should explore.
Got interested? Read more: SAP on Public Cloud
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Download the whitepaperPete Nieminen works as a Lead Advisor and Head of SAP on Public Cloud at Tietoevry, combining Cloud, Cybersecurity, and SAP together as one future-proof ecosystem for enterprise businesses. He has more than 20 years of experience in digital business development, technology solutions, and operating as a trusted advisor and CIO. During his career, he has been selected 11 times as TOP 100 ICT-influencer and he has published more than 100 magazine articles. Pete describes him as a businessperson with a deep passion for technology.