NTT Data and Dimension Data are helping enterprises move their SAP software into the cloud

NTT Data and Dimension Data announced a partnership this week that will see the two firms jointly offer cloud migration services for SAP application users.

As part of the deal Dimension Data will host SAP Cloud and SAP HANA instances in 16 of its cloud datacentres globally, with NTT Data offering up its implementation, migration and application management services.

The companies said the partnership will enable them to offer clients complete SAP lifecycle management for workloads, which they said are increasingly being shifted into the cloud (even bulkier ERP workloads).

“Many of our clients tell us that they’re ready for the next chapter in cloud, which is moving production applications to a consumption based infrastructure. Until recently, clients found that self-service provisioning is complete, while self-service management of applications in the cloud remains challenging,” explained Steve Nola, Dimension Data’s group executive – ITaaS.

“That’s why Dimension Data is providing software and hands-on attention that will provide our enterprises with the confidence to move their SAP licenses to the Dimension Data cloud,” Nola said.

Kaz Nishihata, executive vice president, global business, NTT DATA said: “NTT DATA will manage the implementation of SAP with fully customized configurations, leverage well-established and automated cloud migration processes, and manage the ongoing services using our proprietary tools to improve service quality and manage costs. Combined with Dimension Data’s robust cloud platform, we can offer clients the mission-critical service levels required for today’s SAP environments.”

To its credit SAP has worked to make more recent versions of its software both more modular and more cloud-friendly in terms of architecture, but moving SAP applications into the cloud isn’t a particularly easy job given the bulkiness of their suites – and enterprises seem ready to take cues from service providers on how to get the job done.

Last year Colt and Virtustream struck a very similar partnership, the two companies now working together to migrate enterprises to SAP’s cloud platform and SAP HANA, with the former providing the service management and cloud infrastructure and the latter providing SAP-optimised microvirtualisation and cloud management tools.