SAP Combines Acquisitions to Launch New Cloud Application Suite

At its annual SAPPHIRE NOW conference in Orlando, Fla. this week, SAP has launched a new suite of cloud applications that tie together front-office solutions from its recent acquisitions of Hybris, Gigya and CallidusCloud.

Called SAP C/4HANA, the suite of applications cover sales and marketing, commerce, customer service and consumer data protection. The company said that the solutions also feature new machine learning capabilities from SAP Leonardo.

 “SAP was the last to accept the status quo of CRM and is now the first to change it,” SAP CEO Bill McDermott said. “The legacy CRM systems are all about sales; SAP C/4HANA is all about the consumer. We recognize that every part of a business needs to be focused on a single view of the consumer. When you connect all SAP applications together in an intelligent cloud suite, the demand chain directly fuels the behaviors of the supply chain.”

Adding to its acquisition spree, SAP announced that it has acquired Swiss company Coresystems FSM AG to improve customer experience in the manufacturing, energy, high-tech and telecommunications industries. Its platform helps schedule customer-service requests, using AI technology to match the appropriate service technician with each request, taking expertise, location and availability of the technician into consideration.

Oracle Launches Automated Cloud Migration Offering

Oracle customers who are moving applications running on premises to Oracle Cloud Applications have a new service at their disposal that promises to reduce the time and cost of cloud migration by 30 percent.

Oracle Soar encompasses a discovery assessment, process analyzer, automated data and configuration migration utilities, and rapid integration tools, per an announcement on Tuesday. The solution includes a dedicated Oracle concierge service, and customers can track the status of the project via a mobile app, which includes a step-by-step implementation guide of what needs to be done each day.

The launch of the cloud migration service comes as Oracle is struggling to convince customers to move away from traditional software to its cloud applications.

Amazon Brings Container Service into General Availability

After introducing Amazon EKS (Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes) in December, AWS has announced this week that the service is now generally available. The managed Kubernetes service allows customers to run Kubernetes workloads without having to set up a Kubernetes cluster from scratch. Customers including GoDaddy plan to use Amazon EKS to manage Kubernetes workloads on AWS.

In a blog post, AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr said Amazon is currently looking to fill in engineering, product management and solution architect roles with Kubernetes experience, suggesting this service is just the beginning of its Kubernetes investment.

CA Technologies and IBM Partner on Mainframe Software

CA Technologies announced this week a strategic partnership with IBM to develop and sell services for IBM’s Cloud Managed Services on z Systems. The joint services will allow clients that rely on the mainframe to easily access development, testing, application management and regulatory compliance services, per the announcement.

The suite of mainframe software solutions includes CA Brightside, which helps customers integrate the mainframe into enterprise DevOps workflows, essentially giving clients the ability to control and build for the mainframe like any other cloud platform.

“The investment in mainframe innovation that CA and IBM are making together supports our digital transformation and demonstrates a real commitment to giving businesses an edge,” Tim Skeen, chief information officer at Anthem said in a statement. “The services announced today from CA and IBM enable us to run mission-critical workloads in a cloud environment with access to the latest mainframe technology and expertise. This offering demonstrates a real possibility for us to deliver new innovations and features faster and securely through a true cloud experience for the mainframe.”