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Embrace: Innovation and Transformation

Many companies are facing major challenges. Digital transformation and innovation are essential. How can Embrace help companies meet these challenges?
Rüdiger Meyer, Microsoft
August 6, 2020
Embrace
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This text has been automatically translated from German to English.

With the announcement of the exclusive Embrace initiative between SAP and Microsoft on October 21, 2019, a new chapter was opened in the collaboration between SAP and Microsoft, but also with SAP and Microsoft partners. Now is a good time to take a brief look back and share experiences.

What is so special about Embrace? Some people initially thought that it was a joint marketing program between SAP and Microsoft. But that is far from the case.

The mission for both companies was and is to enable and drive innovation and digital transformation together with the SAP and Microsoft partners of our customers, with the product and technology portfolios of SAP and Microsoft playing an important role and acting as a kind of innovation platform.

But what is special about this innovation platform is that the integration of the Intelligent Enterprise Suite and Microsoft Azure, including Modern Workplace solutions such as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft products, is provided and simplified via the SAP Cloud Platform on Azure. This results in completely new and diverse innovative and integrated business scenarios for customers.

In discussions, we repeatedly find that customers express desired scenarios but cannot imagine how easily and quickly these can now be realized, for example the almost seamless bidirectional integration of processes via Microsoft Outlook in S/4 Hana. Or the integration of data from the Microsoft environment into the Fiori applications.

These are examples that are relevant for many companies in every industry. However, what makes the big difference and makes the motto "Driving Innovation together" tangible for every customer are customer- and industry-specific integrated processes that incorporate solutions and technologies from both companies and from partners and customers.

An easy-to-understand example is an order process in warehousing and ordering that uses Microsoft Azure AI (Cognitive Services) to recognize an item in a warehouse, identify the article number and trigger an order process via S/4, or in recruitment, where Microsoft Hololens, Microsoft Teams and SuccessFactors are used for virtual job interviews and recruitment.

From time to time, the question arises as to how we deal with competing products from both companies. My answer as Alliance Manager - and therefore responsible for the partnership between SAP and Microsoft - is that the first thing we did was to remove the word competition.

Instead, we offer our customers alternatives. And it is then the task of the solution architects at SAP, Microsoft, partners and customers to coordinate the best and most suitable architecture for the business scenarios and to use the best and most suitable from both product and technology worlds. And our SAP and Microsoft partners have a special role to play here.

It's no secret that many SAP partners are also Microsoft partners and therefore have expertise in both technology worlds. But with Embrace, many partners have realized that it is not enough to know both. No, the employees and the expertise have to be brought together. This is why many SAP and Microsoft partners have built up real or virtual Embrace practices and, in addition to technology expertise, have complemented these with industry know-how and consulting expertise for digital transformation.

The basis and starting point of the "Digital Transformation Journey" is the migration from ECC to S/4 Hana on Azure with SCP on Azure. This is the base plate, so to speak, of the innovation house, which is designed jointly for and with customers and implemented in phases. And the joint industry-specific Market Approved Journeys from SAP and Microsoft describe what such a phased implementation can look like.

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Rüdiger Meyer, Microsoft

Rüdiger Meyer is Senior Alliance Manager SAP and Embrace Lead Germany.


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Working on the SAP basis is crucial for successful S/4 conversion. 

This gives the Competence Center strategic importance for existing SAP customers. Regardless of the S/4 Hana operating model, topics such as Automation, Monitoring, Security, Application Lifecycle Management and Data Management the basis for S/4 operations.

For the second time, E3 magazine is organizing a summit for the SAP community in Salzburg to provide comprehensive information on all aspects of S/4 Hana groundwork.

Venue

More information will follow shortly.

Event date

Wednesday, May 21, and
Thursday, May 22, 2025

Early Bird Ticket

Available until Friday, January 24, 2025
EUR 390 excl. VAT

Regular ticket

EUR 590 excl. VAT

Venue

Hotel Hilton Heidelberg
Kurfürstenanlage 1
D-69115 Heidelberg

Event date

Wednesday, March 5, and
Thursday, March 6, 2025

Tickets

Regular ticket
EUR 590 excl. VAT
Early Bird Ticket

Available until December 20, 2024

EUR 390 excl. VAT
The event is organized by the E3 magazine of the publishing house B4Bmedia.net AG. The presentations will be accompanied by an exhibition of selected SAP partners. The ticket price includes attendance at all presentations of the Steampunk and BTP Summit 2025, a visit to the exhibition area, participation in the evening event and catering during the official program. The lecture program and the list of exhibitors and sponsors (SAP partners) will be published on this website in due course.