SAP is selling an on-demand version of its in-memory database HANA on IBM's SoftLayer cloud.

The two companies have been selling SAP HANA to joint customers for years on IBM infrastructure, but this deal is different because IBM is acting as a service provider only, provding a PaaS service to SAP.

The announcement was significant enough to rate a rave from IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: “This announcement is a significant milestone in the deployment of enterprise cloud. It builds on our two companies’ long history of bringing innovation to business, and extends IBM’s position as the premier global cloud platform.

IBM global expansion
At the beginning of the year IBM invested US$1.2bn to expand its cloud storage business with plans to build a further 15 data centers worldwide throughout 2014.

The investment was designed to expand on its purchase of SoftLayer - which it acquired for $2bn last year - to gain access to its own cloud portfolio and 2,400 new cloud clients.

So far the company has opened four facilities under the investment - Hong Kong, London, Toronto and most recently Melbourne – the first SoftLayer data center in Australia.