SAP, Alibaba team up on cloud services

Reuters
The logo of Alibaba Group is seen at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China July 20, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

HUANGZHOU, China/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - SAP SE, the German business software company, said on Wednesday it was teaming up with Alibaba to offer its flagship products on the Chinese company's cloud infrastructure.

SAP Chief Executive Bill McDermott said the group would offer its S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform products via Alibaba, enabling companies in China run their business processes using an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model.

SAP, Europe's most valuable technology company, also cooperates with U.S. cloud providers as it encourages clients to make a transition away from running its software on on-site servers to remote data centres.

It recently launched a new marketing suite, called C/4HANA, which competes directly with cloud-based U.S. rival Salesforce.

(Reporting by Cate Cadell and Douglas Busvine; Editing by Maria Sheahan)