Similarly, administration responsibilities, such as security, can be reduced for a cloud customer as the provider handles security. For starters, some companies don’t have the IT support infrastructure to handle the technical backend of a system, and leasing a cloud solution relieves them of system maintenance.

There are numerous reasons why a company may want to take advantage of a cloud solution. SAP has since encouraged customers to move from their on-premise landscapes to the cloud to take advantage of a handful of improvements. In 2021, this brand was officially retired to make way for the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). In 2016, SAP S/4HANA Cloud was released, and the existing SAP HANA Cloud Platform was rebranded to SAP Cloud Platform in 2017. SAP transitioned its ERP software strategy in the early 2010s with the advent of the SAP HANA database and SAP S/4HANA, and began a march towards the cloud with the acquisitions of Ariba, SuccessFactors, and Concur in the first half of the 2010s. Rather than rolling out one major release of a software application on a yearly basis (making exceptions for important patches for bugs and security issues), companies could now send innovations and release updates more frequently, resulting in greater value to the customer. Because cloud applications could be wirelessly delivered, enhancements could be pushed to customers on a quicker schedule.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, this concept of “cloud computing” led to a paradigm shift in how software businesses provided their solutions to customers.

Once devices were interconnected and began transmitting large amounts of data, however, applications could be delivered wirelessly over the internet.

Until the advent of the internet, software applications were delivered in physical form, via floppy disk or CD.

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