By the end of June, customers will be able to access SAP Business Suite, SAP Business All-in-One solutions, SAP Mobile Platform, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise and the developer edition of the SAP HANA platform on Microsoft’s Azure platform.
That’s just one of the developments to come out of an expanded global partnership between the two vendors.
Microsft and SAP also expect that customers and developers will be able to deploy and provision a number of preconfigured SAP solutions within minutes directly to Azure using the SAP Cloud Appliance Library tool.
SAP customers will be able to take advantage of the ‘pay per use’ model in Azure to reduce infrastructure costs and total cost of ownership, using the compute resources in Azure to support SAP solutions and upgrade capacity as needs require.
Microsoft and SAP have also moved to improve connectivity between their applications and platforms, announcing plans for a new version of SAP Gateway for Microsoft, which is expected to be available in the second half of 2014. The two companies have this week made Excel connectivity to SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions through Microsoft’s Power BI offering generally available.
Also on the agenda is the development and co-marketing of SAP mobile apps for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1, which will be managed and secured by the SAP Mobile Secure portfolio or Windows Intune.
Steve Lucas, president, platform solutions, SAP, said 2014 has been an exciting year for its strategic partnership with Microsoft.
“For our customers, SAP and Microsoft are among the top strategic vendors relied upon to drive their business’ success. We are proud of how we listened to our customers and together developed – and will continue to develop – innovative new programs focused on the cloud, mobility, analytics and interoperability that we expect will provide unparalleled value for our customers.”