SAP Cloud Platform on Azure - Migrate SAP to Microsoft Azure

The success of the collaboration between Microsoft and SAP that began more than 25 years ago, has led to the expansion of the alliance that had been established in 2016 (Embrace) last October.

With the new “preferred cloud partnership” alliance, one of the main objectives is to simplify and facilitate the path of customers to the cloud and accelerate the adoption of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform on Azure, enabling innovation currently needed.

This next step in the collaboration between SAP and Microsoft, together with the global network of partners of both companies, will offer customers a set of unified reference architectures, approved “customer journeys” for each different industry and a range of specialized services to enable companies to have a clear path towards their migration to the cloud (joint engineering, support and sales teams have been established). Microsoft will resell components of the SAP Cloud Platform together with Azure to its customers, a unique offering aimed at making it easier to migrate SAP solutions from on-premises deployments to the public cloud.

Since the signing of the first agreement until now, the evolution of the alliance has been a success and what began as a project to train companies to facilitate their digital transformations, has progressed to offer a complete set of solutions and tools focused on this area. With this, the business innovation in the cloud of the clients of both companies is being promoted in a safe and reliable way.

Proof of this unprecedented symbiosis is that both multinationals have internally deployed each other's cloud solutions. If the developer companies themselves use it internally, the success of betting on these solutions in other companies is guaranteed. And it is that, for example, Microsoft has transformed its internal systems, which include SAP legacy applications, and implemented SAP S/4HANA Central Finance in Azure. In addition, Microsoft also plans to connect SAP S/4HANA to Azure AI and analytics services for more efficient financial reporting, enabling better decision-making.

For its part, SAP is migrating more than a dozen critical business systems to Azure to take advantage of the efficiency, flexibility and innovation offered by Microsoft's cloud platform. This includes the SAP S/4HANA system. To validate proper operation, both companies document internal projects to provide customers with guidance and enterprise architecture for deploying SAP applications on Azure.

Migrate SAP to Azure – In practice

Companies such as Coca-Cola, Columbia Sportswear, Coats or Costco have deployed SAP in AZURE, obtaining multiple benefits both at the IT and Business levels. In Spain, the case of the CELSA Group stands out, the leading steel group in our country and the second European manufacturer of long steel products. With more than 33,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs and close to 120 work centers throughout the world, the Group has an extensive sales network and is currently immersed in a major modernization and digitization process in line with its commitment to people and talent as fundamental pillars within the corporate strategy.

CELSA Group has introduced Office 365 within the Microsoft 365 platform in its work environments, and has migrated SAP HANA to the Microsoft Azure cloud, which has allowed it to renew itself, improve the management of the company's global information and achieve a reduction in your investments in hardware and software licenses while having greater flexibility and cost control.

SAP solutions in Azure have allowed CELSA Group to have a solution that combines SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) cloud solutions with the innovation, agility and reliability of Azure, which It has made it possible to achieve the objectives that it established at the time of launching this commitment. And it is that, moving the set of SAP tools from the steel company to the Microsoft Azure cloud has also provided them with practically unlimited scalability, high availability and integration of all services. On the other hand, when using SAP solutions on Azure, the company's employees have access to unified best practices and a reference architecture, and are supported by a global Microsoft team of more than 3,500 cybersecurity experts who work to protect your business data and resources.