Why Aussie Businesses Should Be Considering GCP for SAP S/4HANA

When people talk about running SAP in the cloud, Google Cloud is not always the first name that comes up. You usually hear about Azure and AWS, and fair enough, they are strong platforms. But I reckon more Australian businesses should be giving GCP a proper look, especially if they are about to make the move to sweat SAP ECC, S/4HANA self-hosted or take on RISE with SAP.

We have worked across a range of cloud platforms, and what stands out with GCP is how it handles SAP workloads, particularly around data, artificial intelligence, and innovation readiness.

Performance Built for SAP S/4HANA

GCP is also well built for running SAP workloads at scale. It offers certified VM types designed for SAP applications, including high memory options and bare metal instances for intensive HANA workloads. The platform delivers strong, consistent performance, with flexibility to right size your infrastructure as needs change.

Whether you are running a self hosted S/4HANA environment or managing complex ECC systems, GCP provides the certified foundation and high performance that SAP landscapes demand.

Organisations like Orica and global organisations like The Home Depot have already adopted Google Cloud, showing that GCP is not just viable for SAP, it is proven. You can read more about it here https://cloud.google.com/solutions/sap

Let us talk about Cortex

One of the best things Google has done for SAP customers is the Cortex Framework. It often flies under the radar, but it is a big deal. Cortex was modelled off SAP’s data structures, which means your SAP data, usually complex and messy, becomes much easier to work with in tools like BigQuery. You do not need to spend months untangling it just to get a basic report out.

If you have ever had a data team burn cycles just trying to wrangle SAP tables into something usable, you will know why this matters. Cortex gives you a clean, analytics ready layer that fits naturally with what Google does best, big data and artificial intelligence.

Why GCP is worth a look

GCP has always been strong on performance and scale, but it is really the data tooling and openness that sets it apart. It is a developer friendly platform. It integrates well. It does not try to lock you into a single way of doing things.

And for Australian organisations, there is solid local infrastructure. GCP has data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, and it ticks the boxes for compliance, latency and support. It is not just global scale, it is grounded here too.

RISE or private cloud, both work

If you are going down the RISE with SAP path, GCP is one of the certified hyperscalers. You get a clean, managed experience with all the benefits of running on Google’s infrastructure, and SAP and Google have a strong partnership in place to back that up.

But GCP also works really well if you are not ready for RISE, or if you have specific requirements and want to run SAP in a private cloud model. The platform does not force you into a one size fits all approach, and that is something a lot of our customers appreciate.

Artificial Intelligence with Vertex AI

Another reason GCP deserves serious consideration is its leadership in artificial intelligence. With Vertex AI, Google makes it easy to build, deploy and scale machine learning models, without needing a huge team of data scientists.

When you combine Cortex for SAP data with Vertex AI, it opens the door to smarter insights, predictive analytics, and even generative AI use cases. It is a natural fit for Australian businesses that want to do more than just move SAP to the cloud and are looking to actually unlock new value from their data.

TL/DR

If you are looking at SAP cloud options in Australia, do not overlook Google Cloud. Between the performance, the artificial intelligence tooling, and the way it plays so nicely with SAP data thanks to Cortex, it is a seriously capable platform, especially if you are thinking beyond just infrastructure and actually want to do more with your data.

It may not have the same SAP market share as Azure or AWS yet, but in my view, GCP is not just a viable option. It is one of the smartest ones out there.