SAP and NEC collaborate on cloud services

SAP is working with NEC to make portions of SAP's enterprise resource planning applications available via NEC's cloud infrastructure, the two companies announced on Wednesday.

The deal makes NEC the first SAP-certified provider of cloud services in Japan. Planned features include financials, sales and distribution and materials management, which will be offered via a subscription and NEC's global cloud. The offering is available to Japan-originated customers, and NEC and SAP will discuss taking NEC's cloud and SAP's applications to other parts of the world, as well, according to a statement.

Like other proponents of cloud-based services, SAP and NEC say that the advantages of moving applications into the cloud includes faster deployments and the ability to adopt an ERP platform without the need for additional IT resources and large up-front investments.

SAP is working on several fronts to adapt its products for cloud-based infrastructures. Last month, the company also announced it was working on tools for deploying its software on private clouds.

Clouds can be rolled out in a number of different ways: using a cloud service provider as in this case, building a private cloud, or using a mixture of the two. The latter is usually called a hybrid cloud.