Connecting Microsoft’s mobile and cloud solutions to the universe of data in SAP software

  • Article

The following post is from Takeshi Numoto, Corporate Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Marketing, Microsoft.

For more than 20 years, Microsoft and SAP have worked together to help customers who run their business on SAP’s mission critical software do so with Microsoft’s industry leading platforms and productivity solutions. Today, I’m excited to announce an extension of our partnership that’s focused on giving enterprise customers increased flexibility and better insights – in the cloud and on mobile devices.

Windows Server is a great platform for SAP business applications, and now we’re taking that to the cloud. By the end of June, SAP will certify a number of their business applications to run on Microsoft Azure, including SAP Business Suite software, SAP Business All-In-One solution, SAP Mobile Platform, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP ASE) and the developer edition of the SAP HANA® platform. This means customers will be able to get the mission-critical benefits of SAP software – used by 86 percent of the global Fortune 500 – on our enterprise-grade public cloud. They will be able to move existing applications and services, or deploy new ones in minutes using the SAP Cloud Appliance Library tool, to Azure and benefit from nearly unlimited computing capacity.

Customers are already using Power BI and the interoperability built into the SAP Gateway for Microsoft to access SAP applications and data through Microsoft Office. We’re taking that to the next level with the general availability of Power BI connectivity to SAP BusinessObjects and an improved SAP Gateway for Microsoft. With Power BI connectivity, customers get best-in-class tools to visualize and find insights in the data that drives their business. And, the new Gateway for Microsoft, which is expected to be available by the end of 2014, will allow customers to access SAP data and processes through Office 365 and Microsoft Azure. Developers can also use this new Gateway to build applications quickly and easily by leveraging key Office 365 and Azure services like document collaboration, workflow, enterprise social and identity.

We know people want to be productive on the devices they love, wherever they are, which is why many of our customers’ favorite SAP applications already run on Windows and Windows Phone. Today, that gets even better. New, industry-specific apps for retail and banking, as well as updated versions of the SAP Mobile Platform with SDK’s for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 are on their way. Previews will be out before the end of 2014 with general availability anticipated in 2015. Of course, customers will be able to manage and better secure all of these applications with Windows Intune and SAP Mobile Secure, giving enterprises the flexibility and control they need.

Microsoft is committed to helping customers thrive in this mobile-first, cloud-first world, with industry-leading platforms that support the applications and services they use to run their business. Our partnership with SAP is another exciting step on that journey, and we look forward to connecting the universe of SAP data to Microsoft’s mobile and cloud solutions so our customers can do more.