SAP's 2022-end deadline to shift to cloud 'ambitious': Infy COO Rao

Infosys said enterprise software maker SAP’s 2022 deadline for a majority of its clients to shift operations to the cloud was “ambitious”.

The second largest Indian IT services provider gets a significant chunk of revenue by implementing SAP’s enterprise resource planning and other software for the German company’s clients.

SAP a few years ago had set a deadline of end of 2022 for moving ERP solutions from on-premise servers to the cloud. “This move from SAP or any ERP provider to cloud is very strategic, but it is also complex and typically these journeys are multi-year. As SAP is stating that it will end by 2022 — probably it is very ambitious and in fact I think by this time most enterprises would have started the migration and are in the middle of their journey,” Infosys chief operating officer Pravin Rao said on an analyst call last week.


SAP chief financial officer Luka Mucic said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call in October that it was planning to “accelerate” and complete most of the cloud movement by end-2022.

“We have already completed most of the required steps of our cloud delivery modernisation. The final remaining step now is to lift the part of our cloud customer base that is still running on our legacy cloud delivery platforms onto either our internal converge cloud or the hyperscalers... And we are now planning to accelerate this move and complete most of that lift already by (the) end of 2022,” said Mucic.

Rao of Infosys said system integrators (SIs) had an important role to play for such cloud migration activities. “In fact, SAP for their core on-premise platform has extended support till 2027. So, I think there is a long time and SIs have a huge role to play in this migration as well — not only in terms of product selection, helping in roadmap, but they have a role to play in migration, they have a role to play in integration as well as we understand the landscape,” he said.

Infosys, however, does not anticipate any impact on business due to this migration, the Indian company said.

Analysts believe most enterprises could find it difficult to meet this deadline.

There is no feasible way most enterprises can come close to this deadline, HfS Research founder Phil Fersht said. “They simply have too many other pressing IT priorities. Providers like Infosys, Cognizant, etc., will have to move aggressively to prepare customers well in advance that long delays are highly likely,” said Fersht.