After its strategic move in the direction of offering an increasing number of its applications as a service, SAP is now bringing on a few key platform services, and has recently announced the new SAP HANA Cloud.

It was during the course of SAP's this-week TechEd conference in Las Vegas that the company announced the HANA Cloud, which is essentially aimed the developers who wish to make use of the native HANA, Java and other development environments for developing present-day applications.

With the HANA in-memory database to be used for developing apps which perform real-time analytics that incorporate huge chunks of data, the SAP HANA Cloud has chiefly been designed to facilitate integration with portals, as well as to support application integration.

In addition, HANA Cloud - which also includes a database as a service offering dubbed HANA DBServices - also enables mobile development, and gives developers the requisite platform for building apps that pave the way for business intelligence and collaboration.

Among the first application services which is being offered by SAP with the new HANA Cloud is the NetWeaver Cloud, which has been designed to all business developers and ISVs develop Java-based apps - featuring modern user interfaces - for mobile devices, along with consumer-centric apps that amalgamate premise-based and cloud apps.

Meanwhile, other than the launch of the NetWeaver Cloud, SAP has also released a free unlimited developer license, which does away with an earlier 90-day restriction.