Cloud

SAP and Microsoft have expanded on their partnership, with SAP accelerating the adoption of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure, and integrating Microsoft Teams with its suite of solutions.

The partnership expands on the two companies’ long-running joint commitment to both simplify and streamline their customers’ moves to the cloud, especially in light of remote work during the pandemic, which has resulted in significant uptake of Teams for meetings and collaboration.

“New ways of working, collaborating and interacting completely transform how we operate,” said Christian Klein, SAP CEO and member of the executive board. “By integrating Microsoft Teams across our solution portfolio, we will bring collaboration to the next level, jointly determining the future of work and enabling the frictionless enterprise. Our trusted partnership with Microsoft is focused on continuously advancing customer success. That’s why we are also expanding interoperability with Azure.”

Along with SAP S/4HANA, SAP and Microsoft will build new integrations between Microsoft Teams SAP SuccessFactors offerings, and SAP Customer Experience. Both are planned for delivery by mid-2021.

“The case for digital transformation has never been more urgent,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said. “By bringing together the power of Azure and Teams with SAP’s solutions, we will help more organisations harness the power of the cloud so they can more quickly adapt and innovate going forward.”

The SAP and Azure cloud partnership, announced in 2019, will be expanded to help simplify the moving of on-premise editions of SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud, and will result in new joint engagements with both customers and partners, the companies said.

“As part of our overall transformation, we transitioned to SAP S/4HANA,” said John Hill, CIO and SVP of apparel company Carhartt. “Running it on Microsoft Azure provides the velocity, availability, scalability and elasticity we need for more visibility and better efficiency across our business. The pandemic struck as we were in the middle of our SAP implementation, so by using Teams, we were able to continue to work on the project, stay on schedule and keep everyone informed. The combination of SAP and Microsoft was especially helpful during a challenging time.”

Francesco Tinto, Walgreens Boots Alliance’s SVP and CIO, added: “SAP S/4HANA has given us real-time visibility into our inventory, which is crucial for us as a pharmacy and healthcare retail company during the pandemic. We chose to run SAP S/4HANA on Azure because of its agility and flexibility to scale up and out quickly to meet our business needs. Now we have access to our data in one place so we can offer the best possible customer experience online and in our stores.

“Microsoft Teams coupled with SAP solutions helped us overcome business continuity challenges and enabled our employees to collaborate very effectively despite the shift from office to remote work.”