Announcing its foray into the cloud platform-as-a-service arena, German enterprise software firm SAP launched the first of its planned cloud-based application services and database services, running on its Hana in-memory database.

The announcement, made by SAP at its TechEd 2012 conference, implies that the cloud platform built on Hana - the Hana One platform - will facilitate the companies in the deployment of business- or consumer-facing applications already developed on Hana database for using the service's in-memory transactional and analytical data processing advantage.

Revealing that its Hana One platform has got due certification for production use on the AWS Cloud, SAP said at the conference - which will run through October 19 - that subscriptions for the new platform are now available at a `99-cent per hour' charge from the AWS Marketplace.

Meanwhile, for AWS EC2 compute capacity, the cost of the Hana One platform - which boastst he capability of handling up to 32 gigabytes of end-user data - will be $2.50 per hour, for a total hourly cost of $3.49.

Noting that the Hana in memory-database is the key factor that unites the newly-launched cloud-based application services and database services, Vishal Sikka - SAP's chief technology officer - said that both the service together create a "RAM-optimized platform" which will give the SAP cloud a leading edge against its rivals.