Six Vendors Team Up, Enable More Cloud Computing Capabilities

It’s “cloud vendors team up” day. Six big-name companies on Thursday announced partnerships intended to bolster cloud computing capabilities for customers. In each case, channel partners get to take advantage of the beefed-up resources.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of these simultaneous announcements lies in their roots: cloud computing. Gartner predicts global spending on public cloud services to reach $332.3 billion by 2022, up from $270 billion last year.

The impetus, of course, is not surprising. The COVID-19 pandemic sent organizations scrambling to support remote workers. What is perhaps somewhat surprising is the lasting impact of that crush. Many firms intend to keep enabling remote work, at an accelerated rate. At the same time, they realize they must update their technologies and processes, and are doing so faster than industry observers previously expected. The buzz around digital transformation is real.

On that note, Google Cloud, SAP, Fortanix, ServiceNow, Red Hat and Nutanix all have revealed new partnerships. Managed service providers, VARs, system integrators, consultants and other channel partners benefit. Learn more in our latest cloud computing news roundup.

Google Cloud, SAP Target ‘Rise with SAP’

Let’s start with Google Cloud and Germany’s SAP. They’ve been working together for a while already. (Microsoft no longer is SAP’s exclusive, preferred cloud partner.) Now, the two companies are expanding their partnership — Google Cloud is acting as the cloud computing partner for the Rise with SAP initiative.

Rise with SAP helps end users achieve digital transformation. Under the new deal, organizations using Rise with SAP may run their SAP services and products on Google Cloud.

Google Cloud’s Rob Enslin

“[T]his new partnership will enable customers to seamlessly bring their most critical business systems and applications to a future-proof, secure, and low-latency environment and to run them sustainably, on the industry’s cleanest cloud,” said Rob Enslin, president of Google Cloud, in a prepared statement.

SAP’s Thomas Saueressig

, an SAP executive board member and product engineering head, agreed.

“Offering integration … and capabilities in artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics gives customers both the choice they desire as well as the innovative portfolio they seek to transform their businesses in the cloud,” he said.

Channel partners for both Google Cloud and SAP may take part in the new efforts.

Fortanix Brings Data Security Manager to ServiceNow

Speaking of integrations, Fortanix now works with ServiceNow.

That means organizations gain more security and control over their ServiceNow data, Fortanix said. The ability comes via Fortanix’s new Data Security Manager SaaS product, an independent integration with ServiceNow Database Encryption. Fortanix launched Data Security Manager on Thursday.

Fortanix’s Ambuj Kumar

“It’s a dangerous world for data, and many organizations just don’t have the time or skilled staff required to deploy new data security solutions,” said Ambuj Kumar, CEO and co-founder of Fortanix. “With DSM SaaS, customer can now get complete access to the exact data security that they need literally within minutes, and then stay secure as their needs grow and change.”

Specifically, ServiceNow customers can use DSM SaaS to oversee the security of data from outside of ServiceNow. They may create policies that comply with GDPR, the recent Schrems II ruling and other privacy requirements.

DSM SaaS with ServiceNow integration represents the first key management solution validated by the ServiceNow Platform Security team. ServiceNow also has endorsed the new Fortanix platform as the first to support ServiceNow Customer Controlled Switch.

“Customers have been looking for simpler ways to protect private data and be in compliance but have struggled with the complexity of doing this,” Kumar said. “This offering gives customers the ability to keep control of their private data anywhere it is needed, delivered with no overhead, and can be up and running in just minutes.”

Fortanix resellers may offer and provision this capability today.

Red Hat, Nutanix Take Aim at Cloud-Native Apps

Finally, Red Hat and Nutanix are working together, and again, channel partners benefit. The vendors are targeting the ability to build, scale and manage cloud-native applications on-premises and in hybrid clouds.

Primary elements of the cloud computing partnership include:

Along the way, Nutanix’s AHV platform now is a Red Hat-certified hypervisor. As such, Nutanix enables full support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift on Nutanix Cloud Platform.

“Organizations around the world are deploying an increasingly diverse mix of modern and cloud-native workloads,” said Eric Sheppard, research vice president at IDC. “This Red Hat and Nutanix partnership, and in particular the collaborative support agreement between the two companies, helps to bring virtualized applications and Red Hat OpenShift-based containerized workloads running on Nutanix’s Cloud Platform together in a way that will benefit exactly these types of organizations and help to drive increased simplicity, agility, scalability within today’s complex hybrid-cloud world.”