SAP Integration to Azure Getting Best of Both Platforms
According to sources, over 87% of global commerce is generated by SAP customers and more SAP systems are operating in the cloud every year.source: www.sap.com
SAP serves as a foundational platform for many enterprise applications and can handle various workloads natively. Its extensibility and flexibility made it the preferred choice for many.
Enterprises are intelligently connecting the applications, processes, people and systems for a better business advantage. One such amazing integration is with Azure.
So here we are decoding the benefits of SAP integration to Azure and accelerating your business outcomes. Here you will also learn how to run your SAP critical workloads on a compliant, flexible, scalable, and enterprise platform with SAP on Microsoft Azure.
What's in it for enterprises?
Unify business processes, surface real-time insights, and accelerate the migration of the SAP S/4HANA cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform through RISE with SAP on the Microsoft Cloud.
Drive innovation, automation, and industry leading security by advancing integration of SAP Business Technology Platform and Microsoft Cloud capabilities
Enrich productivity, collaboration, and communications company-wide through seamless connectivity among Microsoft Teams, Office 365, and SAP business applications
SAP on Microsoft Azure offers
Effective cost management
Global compliance and security of SAP data and applications
Real time insights for data driven decision-making
Seamless integration with Microsoft services
Simplifying SAP environment with RISE with SAP on Azure services
Why Integrate SAP And Azure
SAP integration to Azure cloud can provide various benefits including
Hybrid Infrastructure
Azure offers hybrid operations that go beyond great infrastructure and excellent connectivity. Regardless of its platform, it enables businesses to perform operations, including application development, third-party integrations, identity management, and security.
Gain Immediate Insights
Businesses integrating SAP with Azure can gain predictive and real-time insights, allowing businesses to make innovative practices. Azure can tap into more than 100 cloud services, including intelligent analytics SAP Cloud Platform, while integrating seamlessly with various Microsoft applications. It combines both SAP and non-SAP data and creates real-time dashboards for better decision-making. Using Microsoft Power BI and Power Automate, businesses can generate reports and develop workflows without coding, improving productivity and user experience as they keep adapting to changing business conditions.
Out of the box integration
SAP and Microsoft announced the collaboration of their two powerful AI copilots at the Sapphire event, along with the integration of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud with Microsoft Copilot. This collaboration will help businesses to use most of both platforms effectively and provide the strengths of both platforms for business efficiency. Functional Copilots such as Copilot for Finance, Copilot for Sales, and Copilot for Services provide a similar out-of-the-box experience focusing on M365 applications.
For example, Copilot for Finance shortens the time it takes to impact finance professionals by surfacing insights that support decision-making while reducing time spent on manual, repetitive tasks. It includes an out-of-the-box integration in Outlook and Excel, and customers and partners can expand the integration to additional systems by creating a custom connector.
Since SAP and Microsoft's out-of-the-box solutions will not address all customer needs, Copilot Studio provides powerful AI and low-code development tools that are easily connected to SAP systems, allowing businesses to create their own intelligent copilots and bots to improve their business processes and workflow.
Get scaled
Businesses across various industries run their largest SAP production landscapes on Azure due to its proven cloud platform and run mission-critical operations on SAP. Azure provides scalable and performant infrastructure, offering SAP HANA-certified virtual machines ranging from 192 GB to 12 TB and supporting Windows OS and Linux. Its on-demand scalability allows customers to adjust resources and reduce time to market quickly.
To demonstrate how smooth and easy it is to use AI with Microsoft AI products, we will look at a scenario in which SAP data, Microsoft Teams, Azure OpenAI, Copilot Studio, and the Microsoft Power Platform can be used to streamline a business process.
Example scenarios
Customer Inquiry and complaint
A customer contacts the salesperson with a complaint about a delayed order.
Investigating Order
The salesperson investigates the customer order via deployed chatbot in teams analyzing through AI summarized insights based on context from Teams messages, Outlook emails, and data directly from SAP.
Report Generation
The salesperson resolves the issue and has AI summarizing a report detailing the interaction and the cause of the delay. The report is then emailed to the customer via chat with the bot on Teams.
Save Extra
According to a Forrester study, by migrating their SAP systems to Azure cloud, customers had a 50% reduction in data center costs, achieved more than 100 percent ROI, and had a 100% reduction in SAP release delays. This shows that moving to Azure eliminates the cost of underutilized hardware and expenditure capital and offers cost management tools, including on-demand scaling during peak usage periods, optimizing disaster recovery environments, and using cheaper storage systems.
Organizations can automate and streamline their processes by running SAP solutions on Azure cloud. Doing this not only reduces manual work but also overcomes expensive costs with flexible solutions.
How can Saxon help?
SAP integration to Azure is a cost-effective solution that streamlines several processes. At Saxon, we have a dedicated team of IT service providers who can analyze and provide the service to extend your SAP ecosystem to Microsoft Azure. We have 20 years of partnership with Microsoft, ensuring that we provide the best approaches to integration.
As a certified Microsoft solutions partner, we at Saxon assist you in managing SAP HANA workloads integrating with the largest certified public cloud for SAP.