At Sapphire Now, SAP and Microsoft Usher in New Partnership

ORLANDO — SAP and Microsoft today announced a broad partnership that will enable the SAP HANA platform to be deployed on Microsoft Azure, integrate SAP's cloud-based enterprise applications with Microsoft Office 365, and provide enhanced management and security for custom SAP Fiori apps. The announcement was made at SAP's Sapphire Now user conference.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined SAP CEO Bill McDermott onstage during the opening day keynote to announce the expanded partnership. Before a crowd of 15,000 at the conference, Nadella called the partnership "breathtaking," noting that it brings together the best of Microsoft and SAP.

"To have Microsoft come together with SAP is very powerful," McDermott said.

Together the two companies already enable millions of business users to create documents, read email, file expense reports, invoice vendors, and more.

The new integrations between the two software companies will combine Microsoft Office 365 communications, collaboration, calendar, documents, and other data with cloud solutions from SAP, including Concur, SAP Fieldglass, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP Ariba solutions.

The partnership also joins SAP's HANA in-memory data analysis platform with Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, enabling companies to deliver applications and data analytics on a global scale with enterprise-grade security and compliance. SAP HANA and SAP S/4 HANA have also been certified to run development, test, and production workloads on Microsoft Azure.

SAP will also enable its customers to build and deploy custom mobile hybrid SAP Fiori apps on SAP HANA Cloud Platform and manage, deploy, and protect them with Microsoft Intune. App publishers using the SAP Fiori development platform will be able to embed Microsoft Intune management capabilities into their apps, leveraging the same capabilities used by Office 365 mobile apps.

And, both McDermott and Nadella stressed that though their two companies have been working together for years, this partnership is still in its early stages.

"We're just getting started," McDermott said. "We're beginning a long journey toward excellence between SAP and Microsoft."

"SAP and Microsoft are working together to create an end-user experience built on unprecedented insight, convenience, and agility," he added.

"It's so exciting to have this come together quickly as it did," Nadella added. "And this is only the beginning."

“At Microsoft, we are focused on empowering organizations to advance their digital transformations," Nadella said. "Together with SAP, we are bringing new levels of integrations between our products that provide businesses with enhanced collaboration tools, new insights from data, and a hyper-scale cloud to grow and seize new opportunities ahead."

Microsoft announced a similar partnership with Salesforce.com at last year's Dreamforce user conference in the fall. 

McDermott also highlighted previous partnerships that SAP has forged with IBM, Apple, Google, and Intel.

At the same time, Amazon Web Service (AWS) announced that more AWS customers, across virtually every industry and geography, are running SAP applications on the AWS Cloud. SAP has certified many of its business applications, including S/4HANA, SAP Business Suite on HANA, Business Warehouse on HANA, SAP HANA, SAP Business All-in-One, SAP Business One, SAP BusinessObjects, and SAP Database and Mobile Solutions, for production and deployment on AWS.

"Enterprise usage of SAP on AWS is growing incredibly fast across all verticals and geographies as enterprises get more comfortable running their most important applications on AWS and the cloud," said Terry Wise, vice president of the worldwide partner ecosystem at AWS, in a statement. 

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