SAP And IBM Get Intimate–Real Value Or Hook Up Of The Oldies?

Article:  SAP And IBM Get Intimate–Real Value Or Hook Up Of The Oldies?

Link:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/10/14/sap-and-ibm-get-intimate-real-value-or-hook-up-of-the-oldies/

Ginni Rometty, chairman, president, and CEO of IBM, and Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP

Recently, the two major IT companies SAP and IBM have announced their partnership. The German company SAP will use IBM-operated cloud facilities along with its own in order to expand their cloud reach. This would facilitate and decrease expenses of managing software and associated hardware for customers. On the other hand, IBM will now run SAP HANA  on its cloud system. The SAP HANA, according to it’s website is “ an in-memory data platform that is deployable as an on-premise appliance, or in the cloud.” This partnership will give both company big advantage over their competitors, such as Oracle.  CEO of both companies believe that this is a major step forward in bringing innovation quickly to customers in an “easily consumable manner”, as well as improve security and privacy concerns.

Questions:

1. What risk do you see in this partnership between IBM and SAP?
2. Why do you think did SAP chose to partner up with IBM rather than with Amazon or Google for example?
3. How will this partnership benefit current and new customers that uses SAP AG products as their ERP system?