SAP INSIDER SPECIAL REPORT | ELEVATE YOUR BUSINESS IN THE CLOUD
Flexibility in the Cloud
Access Key SAP Data at Nearly Limitless Capacity
Jason Zander
A
s more and more companies move enterprise
operations to the cloud, they are confronted
with countless choices. In some cases, they only want
A New Cloud Deployment Option for
SAP Solutions
With Azure, Microsoft has developed a reliable, secure
to run certain point solutions in the cloud; in others,
solution that offers a unified operating system and vir-
they push their entire suite of applications into the
tualization technology that drives private, public, and
cloud. Then there is the host of options available to
hybrid clouds.
customize the cloud experience to an organization’s
Azure offers hybrid cloud and virtual machine por-
needs, whether in terms of user experience, security,
tability with virtual hard disk virtual machines that
or functionality.
can be moved back and forth between Azure and on-
One constant that we hear is that customers want
premise servers, affording the ability to run SAP appli-
a trusted partner with a proven cloud approach. For
cation development and testing on Azure while produc-
more than 20 years, Microsoft and SAP have partnered
tion runs on premise (see Figure 1 on the next page).
to extend the range of offerings available to our joint
Azure offers access to scale, enabling companies to
customers.1 In 2014, this partnership expanded with the
reach their customers around the globe, and is avail-
announcement of the SAP certification of Microsoft
able in 19 regions.
Azure, Microsoft’s hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud
Additionally, Azure provides reliable and durable
platform, for several key SAP business applications.
storage for data disks right out of the box — eliminat-
Since this announcement, that certification has grown
ing time-consuming steps to manually achieve geo-
to include SAP Business Suite, SAP Business All-in-One,
redundancy. For more than 37,000 customers running
SAP NetWeaver Application Server for ABAP, and SAP
SAP systems on SQL Server, Azure uses common engi-
HANA, developer edition.
neering criteria that enable SQL Server disaster recov-
With the announcement, customers are able to enjoy
ery and backup to the platform to work seamlessly after
the benefits of SAP software on Microsoft’s enterprise-
installation. Microsoft has established deep enterprise
grade public cloud. As a result, joint enterprise custom-
account and support relationships to serve customers
ers are able to move existing applications and services
around the world affordably.
or deploy new applications to Microsoft Azure using
the SAP Cloud Appliance Library tool to benefit from
nearly unlimited computing capacity.
See http://news.microsoft.com/2014/05/19/microsoft-and-sapannounce-new-cloud-data-and-mobile-experiences.
1
A Cost-Effective Solution for
Enhanced Efficiency
By moving qualified SAP workloads to Azure, customers can reduce costs by 40%-75% and eliminate
“With Microsoft Azure, we just add capacity when we need it. Such flexibility
and easy scalability are great for us, especially because we have a very short
window of time for upgrading our SAP systems.”
— Gavin Martin, Application Development Manager, Kordia
Reproduced from the Apr n May n Jun 2015 issue of SAPinsider with permission from its publisher, WIS Publishing | SAPinsiderOnline.com
CVP, Microsoft Azure
Cloud Engineering
Microsoft
ELEVATE YOUR BUSINESS IN THE CLOUD | SAP INSIDER SPECIAL REPORT
FIGURE 1  Enterprise IT environments today require solutions that can be delivered faster, more
cost effectively, and with greater flexibility at global scale; with Azure, you can use the cloud
alongside your existing infrastructure and apps, leveraging common tools, technologies, and skills
the need to refresh hardware for those workloads.
factor of over 200. With Azure, customers can instantly
Furthermore, moving SAP developmental and test
provision any amount of storage or computing
qualified production applications, archival data,
capacity to meet growing or shrinking application
and training systems to Azure can help free up on-
needs, eliminating the challenges of capacity planning
premise data center capacity and allow business
and scaling quickly to meet demand.
users to instantly self-provision development and test
system capacity on Azure, reducing cycle times by a
Learn More
With Azure, joint customers benefit from a reliable and
secure cloud infrastructure platform that enables them
“Microsoft Azure possesses the power and flexibility to
accommodate our needs for SAP performance. We are
confident that our SAP landscapes will run efficiently
to quickly deploy SAP solutions in the cloud. Customers
have realized simplified infrastructure management,
improved time to market, lower costs, and the opportunity to have the best of both worlds by integrating
on-premise assets with Azure.
on the Azure platform, perform appropriately, and
With the support of license mobility for SAP soft-
continue to deliver value to our business.”
ware on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft provides a fully
— Andrew Goodin, Global Manager Information Systems,
ronment in which to deploy SAP workloads. For addi-
Zespri International
supported and properly licensed public cloud envitional information, visit http://azure.microsoft.com or
http://microsoft.com/sap, or contact your Microsoft
account specialist.
Reproduced from the Apr n May n Jun 2015 issue of SAPinsider with permission from its publisher, WIS Publishing | SAPinsiderOnline.com