SAP ON Cloud Near Term Reality?

Technical advances in server/storage/network combined with increased/improved security enable us to move SAP from customer owned infrastructure to host it on private/public or hybrid cloud.

We have two basic engines, ABAP and SAP-J2EE processing business transactions.

• ABAP still has the R/3 model with Front-end GUI / App Server / Database engine. But we could easily eliminate the front-end footprint and the associated costs by using SAP HTML GUI, either by using integrated ITS and/or standalone ITS engine. We would pass the traffic vis SAP_ROUTER / WEb Servers and use HTTPS to secure the communication. For companies with end-users spread all over the globe, it is lot easier to distribute the load by intercepting the regional calls and sending it via the nearest web gateway server to the regional data center where the database and app server is hosted.
• SAP J2EE engine is like any other web-server. We could use all the advances in the WEB/SOA to leverage
• We probably has to host the SAP-CI-ABAP and J2EE / SAP-APPS-ABAP and J2EE / DATABASE / STORAGE in a single data center based on where the majority of the end-users resides. But recent advances in networking enable us to host all these components in a cheapest possible place and pass the savings to the customers.

I will share/post my thoughts about hosting ABAP in cloud and propose a model for small business to succeed.

-Subbu