SAP : Raising Cloud Availability

I've always found it interesting that some of the most routine parts of the customer experience are the most fundamental to its successful outcome.

For example, when you're enjoying a gourmet meal, you may not think about the chef's painstaking selection of each individual ingredient. Or,when you're looking at a car's sleek new design, your thoughts may not be focused on the extensive time spent on each design specification. Or when you're working against a critical business deadline, you likely take for granted the cloud availability of the required application.

For those of us in a customer-facing role, we do think about the role of routine aspects regularly. In fact, we obsess over them because they are so fundamental to fulfilling the commitment that we make to our customers every day. This is why I jumped at the chance to highlight the positive changes coming from SAP's engineering teams relative to our cloud availability commitments to customers.

As of August 1, 2021, increased availability of several critical services of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) are now at 99.95%*. This is an important update as we continue to see strong SAP BTP adoption, in and outside of the RISE with SAP context. The SAP BTP availability uplift is effective at the same time as SAP increases its availability service level agreement (SLA) for public cloud applications from 99.5% to 99.7%. With this increase, we are harmonizing SLA levels at 99.7%** - across the entire public cloud portfolio - and applicable to all existing and new customers and productive systems, from the date of going live.

One year ago, SAP launched its REINVENT strategy to support our customers' increasing desire to accelerate their move to the cloud. The strength of that strategy hinges on many components, including the leading role SAP plays in providing world-class end-to-end business applications; the deep relationships we share with customers and partners to extend our capabilities and scale our services; and the trust our customers place in us by choosing SAP to help chart their journey to the Intelligent Enterprise.

This updated availability commitment, on the heels of a strong quarterly announcement, is one of the many milestones that proves our strategy is working. I believe that recognizing the individual parts that contribute to a complete experience allows us to better appreciate the collective package. So I hope you'll continue to indulge me when I pause to highlight the fundamental pieces that make our customers' journey to the Intelligent Enterprises that much better.

Brian Duffy is president of SAP Cloud.

*Details regarding SLA availabilities of SAP BTP services will be updated in the SAP Business Technology Platform Service Description Guide and Agreement by August 16.
** For clear definitions on parameters such as credits, downtimes, and exclusions, take a look at our Service Level Agreement. Existing product-specific SLAs above 99.7% or existing customer order forms granting non-standard SLAs higher than 99.7% - are not affected and remain unchanged.

Tags: RISE with SAP, SAP BTP