SAP and Microsoft recently announced they had signed a three-year partnership to help simplify the process for SAP customers to bring their data to the cloud. The industry is abuzz about it, but what does it really mean for you?
“What does this new partnership between SAP and Microsoft mean for me? Why should I care?”
The Struggle of Migrating to the Cloud
In this day and age, where cloud computing is the gold standard for many businesses, an all-too-common complaint from SAP customers has been that it can be challenging to move from SAP’s on-premise model to remotely hosted services. This partnership aims to change that.
Embrace: Making Migration to the Cloud Easier
The new partnership between SAP and Microsoft will bundle SAP cloud services with what they’re calling the Embrace. This will help clients run operations hosted at remote servers, supported by SAP’s flagship S/4HANA database. The goal is to allow SAP customers to more easily migrate from their existing on-premises models into the cloud by simplifying the migration to SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure.
So, what this means for SAP customers is that moving to the cloud is about to get a lot easier, faster, and less expensive. It will also provide new and exciting opportunities to both SAP service providers and partners, Microsoft partners, and cloud service providers.
As part of the agreement, Microsoft will resell components of SAP Cloud Platform alongside Azure. It will reduce the complexity and minimize costs for customers as they move to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud. While the partnership strengthens SAP’s relationship with Microsoft and its Azure cloud division and positions Microsoft as SAP’s preferred partner for cloud solutions, Embrace will also work with Google and Amazon Web Services to provide customers with flexibility for their business solutions.
The Benefits of the Partnership Between SAP and Microsoft
Here are a few key takeaways about the new partnership between SAP and Microsoft and the benefits that Embrace offers:
- Embrace will reduce the complexity of your move to the cloud by bundling SAP cloud services to simplify your migration to SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure.
- Reducing the complexity of the migration to the cloud means lowering your costs by simplifying the process, reducing the amount of time needed to migrate, and streamlining support.
- A new collaborative support model for Azure and SAP Cloud Platform will help ease your migration, improve communication, and simplify resolution.
- Bringing these two massive cloud platforms is likely to increase the availability of services and competencies that CSP’s can offer, so partners can expect new business opportunities.
- SAP service providers will have access to the Microsoft partner network of technology companies to assist in building business solutions with Microsoft technologies.
- Increased revenue for both companies means there may be increased availability of business development funds (BDF) and marketing development funds (MDF) for partners on both sides.
- Working with industry leaders ensures that you can transition into SAP intelligent enterprises and bring your mission-critical services into the cloud with confidence.
The Cloud is the Future
This partnership between SAP and Microsoft is a powerful indicator that the entire cloud business is maturing and reaching new levels of power and sophistication. With cloud computing becoming more important than ever before, this new partnership provides a unique opportunity for you to take advantage of the power of these solutions and move your data and services to the cloud to poise your business to improve your existing offerings and poise yourself to take advantage of future opportunities.
