SAP SE built its brand as the staid and solid enterprise application software through longstanding support and, typically, longstanding products. So cloud, with its agile, iterative, fail-fast approach could be an awkward fit for SAP. The company, however, is helping its customers marry the best of both worlds, according to Paul Young (pictured), global vice president of customer strategy at SAP.

“Part of why you buy from SAP is that you get a guarantee that, three years from now, we won’t drop support,” Young said. On the other hand, if customers go with a less established startup, they could be in for twists and winds as the company’s offerings may shift, he added.

That said, SAP wants to give its customers access to all that new cloud infrastructure technology can offer. That is why it allows them to run their SAP environments in the Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud.

Young spoke about the balancing act with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), principal at The CTO Advisor, during the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. (* Disclosure below.)

Cloud redraws adoption curve

Historically, trying new things with SAP was a bit of a slog for customers. Change management was tedious because of SAP’s structure, as well as its customers’ own compliance and regulatory responsibilities, according to Young. They might have had to buy a new server, but the cloud now allows them unprecedented freedom to experiment.

“Just unlocking that thought process that says, ‘I can run a test for a week, and if it doesn’t work, I can drop it again’ opens up a huge amount of potential,” Young said.

There have been some surprises in the uptake of cloud among SAP customers. “The adoption curve doesn’t look like the historic adoption curve for industries,” Young stated. Warehouse distribution logistics normally lags in new tech adoption, but is moving quite briskly to cloud, he pointed out.

Pharmaceutical companies are also showing a lot of interest, thanks to AWS cloud’s “impressive” compliance adherence. “Part of the challenge with pharma is, it’s not just running a system; you have to be fully FDA regulated and compliant, and AWS is able to do that,” Young concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE