This week, Microsoft and SAP announced an expanded partnership that aims to shape the future of digital supply chains and the manufacturing industry. The new partnership will enable customers to successfully run intelligent digital supply chain and Industry 4.0 solutions in the cloud and at the edge.
According to the two business solutions providers, their partnership will benefit customers by:
- accelerating time to value of supply chain applications
- enabling faster processing and support for data residency requirements
- providing customers guidance on deploying SAP Digital Supply Chain on Azure and the integration of SAP and Microsoft products and services
- driving compatibility and interoperability across industrial machines, software, and services
The Future of Supply Chain with Microsoft and SAP
Bringing SAP solutions to Microsoft Azure
Under the newly expanded partnership, SAP will leverage Microsoft Azure to run the following solutions in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model:
- SAP Digital Supply Chain
- SAP solutions for digital manufacturing
- SAP Intelligent Asset Management
- SAP Integrated Business Planning
- SAP Logistics Business Network
Microsoft Azure offers enterprise-grade compute, storage, and network services to support mission-critical performance and business continuity to run SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions. Through this, the two partners expect to help customers accelerate the time to value of their supply chain applications, and ultimately help them accelerate their global expansion.
Moreover, to help support manufacturing companies in processing data locally across machines and control systems to address latency or connectivity restraints, Microsoft and SAP are also planning to make SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud available on Microsoft Azure Stack Edge.
Ulrich Homann, Corporate Vice president of Cloud + AI at Microsoft explains:
“The expansion of the partnership between SAP and Microsoft provides our mutual customers with the ability to leverage SAP Digital Supply Chain and manufacturing solutions in the cloud to gain better business insights and accelerate the time-to-value as they roll out their applications on a global scale. By extending SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions and the Azure cloud capabilities to the edge with Azure Stack Edge, businesses will also be able to manage SAP solutions locally across their factories and warehouses to drive immediate decision-making and actions where they are needed.”
According to SAP, other SAP solutions are also intended to be made available on Microsoft Azure Stack Edge in the future to help address distributed supply chain and manufacturing challenges.
Guiding Customers for Success
Through the new partnership, customers will be provided reference architecture that will serve as guidance on deploying SAP Digital Supply Chain on Microsoft Azure and the integration of the two companies’ products and services. According to the partners, customers will have a choice to use either Microsoft Azure IoT or SAP IoT to bring their time-series data to the cloud.
Finally, as members of consortia—such as the ‘Open Manufacturing Platform’ and the ‘Open Industry 4.0 Alliance’—the business software providers will collaborate to aid in the accelerated path to value of supply chain and Industry 4.0-related solutions based on open standards.
About Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services.
The company’s mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.
About SAP
SAP SE is a German multinational software corporation based in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, that develops enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations.
SAP is considered a market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best.
