New Partnership Brings SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud to Azure

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud services will now be offered on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform under an expanded partnership deal unveiled by the two companies today.

The availability of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud on Azure, which will also be used internally by both companies, aims to make it easier for customers to deepen and manage their own cloud deployments. The latest partnership includes Microsoft and SAP working to co-engineer and market the new offerings.   

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is SAP's private managed cloud service. Customers will be able to run SAP S/4HANA, the company's latest generation of its SAP Business Suite, in a secure, managed Azure cloud with support and services from both partners.

"As technology transforms every business and every industry, organizations are looking for the right platforms and trusted partners to help accelerate their digital transformation," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. "Building on our longtime partnership, Microsoft and SAP are harnessing each other's products to not only power our own organizations, but to empower our enterprise customers to run their most mission-critical applications and workloads with SAP S/4HANA on Azure."

Under the expanded partnership, Microsoft will deploy SAP S/4HANA on Azure to help run its own internal finance processes, while SAP will move internal business-critical systems to Azure, according to the announcement. At the same time, SAP and Microsoft both will run SAP S/4HANA on Azure for their internal operations. To accomplish this, Microsoft is moving its internal systems, which include legacy SAP finance applications, to an SAP S/4HANA Finance application running on Azure. Microsoft also plans to connect SAP S/4HANA to Azure AI and analytics services for more efficient financial reporting and deeper data insights, while SAP is migrating more than a dozen business-critical systems to Azure for improved operations and system efficiencies.

Both companies will document their individual internal projects so they can provide their customers with real-world guidance for similar deployments.

"We are taking our partnership to the next level with this new capability to run SAP S/4HANA in the Microsoft Azure environment," SAP CEO Bill McDermott said in a statement. "The world's significant businesses trust Microsoft and SAP. Together, we will help companies win the customer-driven growth revolution."

A wide range of enterprise customers today, including Coca-Cola, Columbia Sportswear, Coats and Costco, already use SAP and Azure for their operations.

"The strategic partnership announced between Microsoft and SAP is an extremely important development for the Coca-Cola System," Barry Simpson, senior vice president and chief information officer at Coca-Cola, said in a statement. "The value of aligned engineering, sales and delivery between these two strategic partners will allow our system to accelerate our digital agenda. This is a very positive and exciting development for us."

Hizmy Hassen, the chief digital and technology officer at Coats, agreed.

"With SAP HANA on Azure, we have the data intelligence to operate more efficiently across all aspects of our business and accelerate the delivery of finished goods to our customers," Hassen said in a statement. "The Microsoft and SAP alliance provides us with the assurance we need for our innovation in the cloud."