NEWTOWN SQUARE, Penn. —  German software maker SAP is taking an industry-tailored approach to reach dozens of sectors with its intelligent enterprise strategy.

To get there, the company must partner with hyperscale cloud providers as interest in cloud continues to rise, SAP leaders told a roomful of analysts at its annual SAP Industries Analyst Base Camp. 

"All elements of industry need to talk to each other," said Peter Maier, global copresident of SAP Industries, speaking at the event. "You can't be on your own anymore. Companies need to interact. In that hybrid environment, our integration strategy has to evolve past what we did in the past."

Maier described an integration strategy where SAP's software did connect with other products, but the result was "a big elephant" that became too much for clients to handle. 

"At that point, it wasn't digestible anymore," Maier said.

As a response to customer interest, SAP said it is working with large hyperscalers — like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud — to ensure S/4HANA, its ERP platform, has the reference architecture users need in order to leverage those services.

But don't take that strategy to mean SAP has given up on its own cloud platform. 

At the beginning of the year, SAP began a restructuring process to shift its focus away from major IT implementations and expand on its cloud and SaaS business.

By 2023, SAP is hoping to triple its market share in the cloud space, said CEO Bill McDermott in the company's Q4 2018 earnings call.

The cloud push fits a broader strategy from SAP. The company looks to deliver industry-specific insights by analyzing what it calls the intersection of experience and operational data.

"This approach is what will allow us to reshape our competition in each of the industries across several years," said Mala Anand, president at SAP's Intelligent Enterprise Solutions and Industries, speaking at the event.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Peter Meier's last name. That has been updated.