The reason for the expansion of cooperation is the challenges of digitalization: new technologies must be economically viable. The simplification of processes and new legal requirements (e.g. GDPR) also require a change in human behavior.
Change needs clarity: what is the goal and why should we move towards it? You are now helping to create clarity for a successful digital transformation. Existing customers benefit:
The improved integration protects investments (e.g. in Office 365) and enables the implementation of innovative Industry 4.0 solutions relating to AI and IoT. Microsoft is migrating to S/4 and SAP is relying on Microsoft Azure for its systems.
This mutual customer relationship has great advantages for the end customer: Potential problems are discovered and rectified in-house, and not just once the software has reached the end customer.
Both companies will use the internal projects to pass on their experiences to customers and partners. DSAG board member Jean-Claude Flury quite rightly describes in his commentary that customers should ask themselves typical questions for cloud deployment: Which scenarios are suitable for deployment, for example?
Some would like to set up their own data center with the cloud, others want quick access to corresponding environments for the evaluation of S/4 Hana. And still others want to expand their SAP in hybrid scenarios with cloud services for big data and machine learning.
Then there is the question of the storage location of the data: this is not only important in terms of data protection. It also means the question of disaster recovery and backup concepts, latency and performance.
Where can the cloud also help to improve? And you can ask yourself whether all data needs to be in Hana: Our partner Datavard, for example, has solutions for offloading data to Azure and thus significantly reducing costs.
The question of responsibility for error handling is also correct and particularly relevant for Hana: The Linux distributor always comes on board here. To simplify error handling in the future, Microsoft has established joint support processes with SAP and Suse.
Our customers' requirements have therefore changed, and Microsoft and SAP want to make it clear that they are listening, learning and supporting. So that our joint customers and partners can achieve more with digitalization.
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