Does this sound familiar? You’ve talked to a customer, listened to its business problems, identified the technology it needs to solve its issues and designed and presented the solution. Then wham, you hit a brick wall due to budget and price.

Thankfully, with cloud-based solutions, these lost deals could be a thing of the past. Deployment via the cloud eliminates a lot of the infrastructure and the associated need for an upfront investment, both of which can hit small and midsize companies right in the wallet.

More Value, More Power

At the same time, those same customers who don’t want to spend a ton on hardware also want faster access to their data. For small companies to Fortune 500 firms alike, the time it takes to close their books or retrieve customer information has become business-critical. Often, speed is the way to stay ahead of competitors—for little guys, especially.

One solution to faster data access is in-memory database technology. It eliminates the need for disk storage in the system because data is stored in dynamic random access memory. But sometimes it’s more expensive than traditional disk-based computing. So how do you get faster access to data while making it more affordable? The answer, yet again, is the cloud.

New solutions that use in-memory technology in the cloud are about to revolutionize the way businesses of all sizes operate. Cloud access to in-memory power means customers don’t need to worry so much about capital expense anymore. This opens up a whole world of opportunity for solution providers. In-memory in the cloud gives you the ability to save your customers money while improving their productivity, all while shortening the sales cycle and cranking up your return on investment to new levels.

Opportunity Is Now

SAP is focused on leveraging the cloud for in-memory database solutions. You can bet others will follow suit. Our co-CEO Bill McDermott recently noted that companies with $1 billion in revenue are likely to have 50-plus applications running at a time, with no integration among them. Why not use power of the cloud to help these customers manage those applications by offering them a simplified solution such as SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud? Deploy it using your own cloud, or let SAP manage it. Either way, offering in-memory database through the cloud amplifies speed and response time, giving you and your customers a distinct advantage in the market.

It’s time to get your customers thinking about in-memory database in the cloud. Remind them of its many benefits:

Ask your customers if they’d like to avoid spending their hard-earned capital for hardware up front and if they’d like to use the solution in a couple of weeks as opposed to several months. The answers should be easy.

Are your customers discovering the cost-effectiveness and increased productivity of in-memory database in the cloud? We’d love to hear your experiences below.

About SAP

SAP offers partners a complete portfolio of solutions across five market categories, including: cloud, analytics, mobile, applications such as ERP and database and technology. All powered by SAP HANA, the powerful real-time computing platform. SAP solutions are made to address the challenges of these customers across 25 industries.

Learn more about partnership opportunities at: http://www.sappartneredge.com/portfolio

Ira Simon is vice president, Partner Marketing at SAP. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship.