Google Cloud has been a game-changer for smaller companies and startups, but not so much for the enterprise, as many giants of the tech world already had their own information technology infrastructure in place.

Its cloud services are making progress, though, through strategic alliances and close work with high profile clients. Proving its success with partners instead of products was even the focus of the keynote at Google Cloud Next this morning, as the company touted a fresh team-up with SAP SE to make enterprise cloud offerings more friendly.

“Companies are more willing to go to the cloud,” said Sam Yen (pictured), SAP’s chief design officer and managing director of SAP Silicon Valley.

Yen spoke to Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile studio, at SAP’s office in Palo Alto, California, to discuss Google’s new partnership with SAP, and the happenings at the events in San Francisco. 

In an announcement Wednesday at Google Cloud Next, SAP has declared its flagship products will run on the Google Cloud Platform service. This partnership marries SAP’s enterprise software to Google’s own expertise at scale and infrastructure. The end result may be greater than the sum of its parts, Yen said.

SAP and Google join forces

Yen spoke about bringing HANA, SAP’s database management software, to Google’s Cloud services with a certification for GCP. He also mentioned that the HANA Express edition — a lighter version of HANA for developers that can be downloaded onto a laptop — was coming to the Google Cloud Launcher, which offers ready-to-go development stacks, solutions and services to accelerate development.

“It’s taking Infrastructure as a Service to the next level,” Yen said.

Beyond infrastructure, this partnership was also about ecosystems. SAP is combining the power of its own ecosystem with those people in Google’s own orbit to develop solutions for customers. This will serve to help lesser businesses reach enterprise scale.

“SAP is starting to become an on-ramp to the enterprise for many companies,” Yen said.

In Yen’s opinion, Google’s scale and reach makes for a great partnership to SAP’s own experience in what works and in meeting compliance standards. SAP is also moving to take advantage of Google’s machine learning programs for enterprise systems.

“There are a lot of companies looking to bring their products to the enterprise,” Yen said, adding that SAP, working with Google, could give those companies the boost they need.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Google Cloud Next 2017.

Photo: SiliconANGLE