SAP HANA Will Run On Microsoft Azure Public Cloud

Fresh from agreeing a tie up with Apple, SAP is expanding its partnership with Microsoft, allowing customers to deploy SAP HANA on the Azure public cloud and benefit from closer integration between each company’s services.

An existing relationship between the two parties has already allowed SAP software such as ERP, Business Suite, Business All-in-One, Mobile Platform, Adaptive Server Enterprise database and the developer version of HANA to run on Azure.

But now Azure will be certified to run all types of development, test and production HANA workloads, including the S/4HANA enterprise software suite which was made available last year.

SAP HANA on Azure

Microsoft says companies can be confident of moving even the most demanding and mission critical workloads to its cloud infrastructure, arguing that Azure has proven to be a reliable, secure, scalable and business ready platform.

“At Microsoft, we are focused on empowering organizations to advance their digital transformations,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO. “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.”

The new deal will also see SAP software integrated with Office 365 before the end of the year. It is claimed this will make employees more productive when carrying out everyday tasks, such as reading emails, sending and creating documents and filing expense reports and invoices.

SAP partnerships

Companies will also be able to deploy and create custom SAP Fiori user experience (UX) applications using an open plug-in framework that will manage and protect company assets with the Microsoft Intune enterprise mobility management (EMM) platform.

“We believe the IT industry will be shaped by breakthrough partnerships that unlock new productivity for customers beyond the boundaries of traditional platforms and applications,” added Bill McDermott, SAP CEO.

“SAP and Microsoft are working together to create an end-user experience built on unprecedented insight, convenience and agility. The certification of Microsoft Azure infrastructure services for SAP HANA along with the new integration between Microsoft Office 365 and cloud solutions from SAP are emblematic of this major paradigm shift for the enterprise.”

In addition to its new agreements with Apple and Microsoft, SAP also works with Lenovo to combine the former’s software with the latter’s data centre products, and with IBM on on-premise HANA deployments and machine learning capabilities using cognitive APIs.

Quiz: The Cloud in 2016