SAP SE and Microsoft on Monday announced an extensive go-to-market partnership — from conceptualization to sales — to accelerate customer adoption of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure.

As part of the partneship, Microsoft will resell components of SAP Cloud Platform alongside Azure. This offering is aimed at more easily migrating SAP ERP application and SAP S/4HANA customers from on premise to public cloud.

“This partnership is all about reducing complexity and minimizing costs for customers as they move to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud,” said Jennifer Morgan, co-chief executive officer of SAP SE. “Bringing together the power of SAP and Microsoft provides customers with the assurance of working with two industry leaders so they can confidently and efficiently transition into intelligent enterprises.”

SAP will lead with Microsoft Azure to move on-premise SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA customers to the cloud through reference architectures and cloud-delivered services. This includes future deployment and migration of existing direct SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud customers leveraging hyperscaler infrastructure. However, SAP says its continues with its policy of supporting choice for those customers who request alternatives based on business requirements.

Specifically, project “Embrace” on Microsoft Azure will provide customers with:

• A simplified move from on-premise editions of SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA for customers with integrated product and industry solutions. Industry market bundles will create a road map to the cloud for customers in focused industries, with a singular reference architecture and path to streamline implementation.
• Collaborative support model for simplified resolution. In response to customer feedback, a combined support model for Azure and SAP Cloud Platform will help ease migration and improve communication.
• Jointly developed market journeys to support customer needs. Designed in collaboration with SAP, Microsoft and system integrator partners will provide roadmaps to the digital enterprise with recommended solutions and reference architectures for customers. These offer a harmonized approach by industry for products, services and practices across Microsoft, SAP and system integrators.

In the third quarter, SAP reported a 10% increase in revenue and a 15% rise in operating profit, after adjusting one-off items and currencies, helping it to achieve an expansion of 1.7% in its operating margins.