The mysterious disappearance of Cloud for Financials: Solved

[richard_hirsch]

A few days ago, I was researching a blog on HANA extensions and I saw  potential synergy between Cloud for Financials (C4F) and the continuing migration of the Business Suite to HANA.  I hadn’t seen any news concerning C4F in a while and I wanted to catch up on the product.

As I looked, I was surprised to find that there was very little recent information about it. I started digging and was surprised to find that the offer was missing from the locations where I assumed it must be present.

The last sign of any activity was on September 2013 at a SAP Finance conference in St. Leon-Rot. After that the trail went cold.

Something had changed but I no idea what had happened.

The evidence

Not included on Main Cloud Financials page

The main cloud page for SAP in English is missing any reference to the C4F offer. There are mentions of Cloud for Travel and Expense, SAP Business ByDesign, SAP Financial Services Network and SAP E-Invoicing for Compliance Cloud.

C4F is mentioned on German version of this page.

There is no Android App for C4F

There are mobile applications for Cloud4Customer and Cloud4Travel but there is no mobile app for C4F on the Play Store.

There is no recent “What’s New” Video or documentation

C4F is usually associated with Cloud for Travel and Expense (C4TE) and Business ByDesign (ByD).

There are “What’s  New” entries for February 2014 for C4TE and ByD. There is also a similar video for Cloud for Customer (C4C). The last “What’s New” video from C4F is from May, 2013.

There is no help documentation for C4F

If you look at the help selections for SAP cloud offers, C4F is missing.

The C4F section on SCN is dead

There is a section on SCN specifically for C4J but it basically inactive with just a few off-topic forum posts.

What happened?

Finally, Tammy Powlas had the good idea of asking Chris Horak from SAP Marketing directly.

The answer surprised me a bit.

In later tweets, Chris clarified his statement.

In an upcoming blog, I’ll be taking a look at the impact of this move