Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft and SAP have joined forces to drive cloud adoption at enterprise level in Thailand, underpinned by SAP S/4HANA and Microsoft Azure offerings.
Aligned to a global alliance, the local collaboration will centre around migration to SAP S/4HANA - an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system - and SAP Cloud Platform via Microsoft Azure, under the banner of project ‘Embrace’.
The initiative is designed to span all stages of the cloud migration process, from conceptualisation to sales, to supercharge enterprise adoption across the country.
Under this preferred cloud partnership, Microsoft and SAP - backed by a global network of system integrators - are combining to offer customer bundles housing unified reference architectures, road maps and market-approved journeys in the context of cloud.
Microsoft will also re-sell components of SAP Cloud Platform alongside Azure in a bid to “easily migrate” Thai customers from on-premises to public cloud. In addition, businesses seeking to explore an SAP implementation on Azure can enter a pilot deployment phase free of charge under the SAP on Azure Kickstarter Program.
“Our work with Microsoft makes the migration journey to S/4HANA much easier with a more agile deployment process that fully leverage the capabilities of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure,” said Verena Siow, managing director of Indochina at SAP.
“We are very excited to deliver an even better experience for customers in Thailand through strategic and partnership network alignments with Microsoft, ultimately giving customers simpler and more convenient ways to order, deploy, maintain, and learn to master SAP solutions on Azure.”
SAP will lead with Microsoft Azure to move on-premises S/4HANA and ERP customers to the cloud through industry-specific best practices, reference architectures and cloud-delivered services. This includes future deployment and migration of existing direct HANA Enterprise Cloud customers leveraging hyper-scaler infrastructure.
However, Siow was quick to stress that the vendor will continue with its "longstanding policy" of supporting choice for customers who request alternative platforms.
“SAP and Microsoft’s partnership has brought together our capabilities at all levels - from the senior leadership to engineering experts and support teams - to take the SAP experience to the next level on Azure,” added Dhanawat Suthumpun, managing director of Thailand at Microsoft.
“Through the Kickstarter Program, we are offering businesses a chance to experience the class-leading performance and capabilities of SAP solutions together with powerful, dynamic infrastructure on Azure in a trial phase with no initial investment, allowing them to discover new ways to operate at optimal efficiency with the flexibility to handle everything from major downtimes to peak demand.”
Specifically, project 'Embrace' on Microsoft Azure will provide customers with a "simplified" move from on-premises editions of ERP to S/4HANA for customers with integrated product and industry solutions. This is backed by a combined support model for Azure and SAP Cloud Platform to help ease migration and improve communication for customers.
"With joint support and dedicated engineering capabilities from SAP and Microsoft, we are able to offer the best SAP experience on Azure with simpler ways to try and acquire new solutions, faster and more convenient deployment, and less turnaround time for support requests," said Mike Chan, general manager of Cloud and Enterprise across Asia Pacific at Microsoft.
"We are also able to provide blueprints that make it easier to achieve an optimal deployment of SAP apps on Azure with reference architecture specifically for each industry - such as finance, oil and gas, retail, or healthcare - and full compliance with industrial and regulatory standards in these fields."
