SAP and Microsoft expand partnership

SAP and Microsoft have been working together for nearly 30 years, offering assistance to organizations with key business processes. In January 2021, the companies announced their decision to expand the previously established partnership, which is focused on supporting the digital customer journey and accelerating the migration of existing IT environments to the cloud. The enterprise software leaders have developed a joint roadmap, providing organizations with a unified transformation roadmap using smart, agile, and innovative cloud solutions.

The new strategy features: integrating Microsoft Teams with SAP systems and facilitating migration to SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure. As part of the expanded collaboration, the companies have committed to simplifying the process of moving on-premise editions of SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud and making improvements to SAP S/4HANA on the Azure platform. Christian Klein, CEO of SAP SE, emphasizes that “new ways of working, collaborating and interacting completely transform how we operate”.

Microsoft Teams is a communication platform almost essential for any size of the enterprise, allowing all employees and teams to maintain continuity of information exchange while working remotely. Apollogic, having competencies and long-term experience with both SAP and Microsoft Teams systems, can build for its customers an efficient integration of these two solutions.

Jan Kałuski
Head of IT Team

Microsoft Teams is a communication platform almost essential for any size of the enterprise, allowing all employees and teams to maintain continuity of information exchange while working remotely. Apollogic, having competencies and long-term experience with both SAP and Microsoft Teams systems, can build for its customers an efficient integration of these two solutions.

Jan Kałuski
Head of IT Team

By integrating Microsoft Teams communicator with SAP product portfolio, the global software giants want to make it easier for businesses to operate smoothly in times of accelerated digitalization. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella points out that the need for digital transformation has never been more urgent. By combining the Azure platform and Microsoft Teams with SAP solutions, it’s possible to help more organizations harness the potential of the cloud increase innovation.

The further strengthening of cooperation between Microsoft and SAP coincides well with the needs of our customers, many of whom are already in the phase of assessing the feasibility and pricing of moving their ERP process-related environments to the cloud. The decision of which hyperscale cloud provider to choose is no longer based solely on the cost estimation of individual IaaS layer resources. The question of what added value the company will receive after integration with the platform is becoming more and more crucial. Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, and Azure are building a flexible platform that, when integrated with SAP business applications such as S/4HANA or Sales Cloud, will allow us to offer customers new, more modern forms of interaction between their staff and critical processes that can be distributed across a hybrid IT environment.

A perfect example is the integration of MS Teams with the SAP Sales Cloud tool. For companies already using MS Teams and Sales Cloud, their integration will be a natural extension and simplification of everyday work with customers. For new users, it’s certainly a step that will bring a completely new quality. Data about products or previous interactions will be presented in real-time, directly in the communicator, facilitating establishing contact with the respondent. However, all activities during the conversation can be automatically and continuously updated in the CRM system. In the short term, this will result in greater efficiency through simplification and modernization, leading to fewer errors, shorter customer service response times, and in the long term, it will allow the entire solution to be enhanced with artificial intelligence services such as chatbots and predictive algorithms. These are just basic usage scenarios, which in my opinion, show that the union of Microsoft and SAP is a solid offer with significant business value.

Andrzej Brodniewicz
Chief Technology Officer

The further strengthening of cooperation between Microsoft and SAP coincides well with the needs of our customers, many of whom are already in the phase of assessing the feasibility and pricing of moving their ERP process-related environments to the cloud. The decision of which hyperscale cloud provider to choose is no longer based solely on the cost estimation of individual IaaS layer resources. The question of what added value the company will receive after integration with the platform is becoming more and more crucial. Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, and Azure are building a flexible platform that, when integrated with SAP business applications such as S/4HANA or Sales Cloud, will allow us to offer customers new, more modern forms of interaction between their staff and critical processes that can be distributed across a hybrid IT environment.

A perfect example is the integration of MS Teams with the SAP Sales Cloud tool. For companies already using MS Teams and Sales Cloud, their integration will be a natural extension and simplification of everyday work with customers. For new users, it’s certainly a step that will bring a completely new quality. Data about products or previous interactions will be presented in real-time, directly in the communicator, facilitating establishing contact with the respondent. However, all activities during the conversation can be automatically and continuously updated in the CRM system. In the short term, this will result in greater efficiency through simplification and modernization, leading to fewer errors, shorter customer service response times, and in the long term, it will allow the entire solution to be enhanced with artificial intelligence services such as chatbots and predictive algorithms. These are just basic usage scenarios, which in my opinion, show that the union of Microsoft and SAP is a solid offer with significant business value.

Andrzej Brodniewicz
Chief Technology Officer