Over the past few years, it has become more impor­tant for orga­ni­za­tions to make deci­sions about and build strate­gies to deter­mine which of their SAP sys­tems to run on the cloud or on-premise. A 2019 study con­duct­ed by ASUG and Syn­tax indi­cat­ed that cloud invest­ments are on the rise for SAP cus­tomers, as many plan to migrate more sys­tems, includ­ing their ERP sys­tems, to the cloud.

There are quite a few cloud options — and hyper­scaler ser­vices—avail­able to SAP cus­tomers set on migrat­ing to the cloud. A recent ASUG Express event focused on one of the largest hyper­scalers in the mar­ket: Microsoft. The vir­tu­al event gave atten­dees a look at how SAP and Microsoft are col­lab­o­rat­ing to ensure effi­cient imple­men­ta­tions of SAP solu­tions on Microsoft Azure.

Damien John­son, chief archi­tect at SAP; Jason Au, exec­u­tive direc­tor of ser­vices and sup­port for the Embrace pro­gram at SAP; and Sachin Ghor­pade, prin­ci­pal cloud solu­tion archi­tect for SAP on Azure at Microsoft, walked atten­dees through what Embrace is and how it can help them in their jour­neys to imple­ment­ing SAP S/4HANA on Mir­cosoft Azure. 

“I think this ASUG Express ses­sion was par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful to atten­dees,” said Paul Kurchi­na, the webcast’s host and ASUG evan­ge­list. ​“As we see more and more SAP cus­tomers lever­ag­ing the cloud, it’s great to know that there is a col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­gram between SAP and Microsoft to help cus­tomers dur­ing the com­pli­cat­ed tran­si­tion process.”

Under­stand­ing the Basics of the Embrace Program

The part­ner­ship between SAP and Microsoft dates back about 30 years. One of the key devel­op­ments in this rela­tion­ship was the intro­duc­tion of the Embrace pro­gram in 2019. The pro­gram sees SAP and Microsoft part­ner­ing to offer sup­port to cus­tomers migrat­ing to SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure. ​“It’s all about help­ing our cus­tomers to take advan­tage of this part­ner­ship,” John­son said.

John­son walked through the four key pil­lars of the Embrace pro­gram. First, cus­tomers who lever­age Embrace will gain access to joint-mar­ket-approved jour­neys that help when adopt­ing SAP solu­tions across the indus­try. Embrace then pro­vides cus­tomers with engage­ment and ser­vices, help­ing bridge Microsoft, SAP, and third-par­ty part­ners to increase the col­lab­o­ra­tive nature of the engagement.

“We bring togeth­er an imple­men­ta­tion plan, so it is very clear to cus­tomers how we imple­ment SAP S/4HANA in the con­text of Microsoft Azure,” John­son added.

The third pil­lar is cre­at­ing an opti­mized plat­form that con­nects solu­tions and allows data to eas­i­ly flow to match busi­ness process­es. Ghor­pade dis­cussed some of the opti­mized plat­forms, includ­ing enter­prise exten­sion opti­miza­tion, which is used to con­nect to Azure plat­form ser­vices and makes use of the SAP Cloud Plat­form open con­nec­tors and aug­ments the stan­dard capa­bil­i­ties in the busi­ness layer. 

The final pil­lar of the Embrace pro­gram includes ref­er­ence archi­tec­tures, which pro­vide users with a tem­plate for the deploy­ment and adop­tion of the required tech­nol­o­gy capa­bil­i­ties to sup­port the busi­ness use cases.

The Ben­e­fits of the Embrace Pro­gram Between SAP and Microsoft Azure 

The speak­ers walked atten­dees through the key ben­e­fits of using the Embrace pro­gram dur­ing a tran­si­tion to the cloud. They dis­cussed the program’s main goal, which is to help cus­tomers ​“sim­pli­fy, accel­er­ate, and innovate.” 

The col­lab­o­ra­tion between SAP and Microsoft means the two can cre­ate joint ecosys­tems and road maps, which are extreme­ly help­ful to cus­tomers imple­ment­ing SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure. Ghor­pade laid out the val­ue dri­ver for cus­tomers to use Embrace. Not only did he promise a fast ROI (under a year), but also sig­nif­i­cant cost sav­ings and a low­er time to imple­ment and deploy SAP work­loads when lever­ag­ing com­bined tool­ing from SAP and Microsoft.

Oth­er ben­e­fits of the Embrace pro­gram include height­ened secu­ri­ty func­tion­al­i­ties, com­pli­ance mea­sures, scal­able com­put­ing options for all SAP work­loads and sizes, and access to vital insights and innovations.

Imple­men­ta­tion Made Easy With Orga­nized Ser­vice and Sup­port Options 

In the final ses­sion of this ASUG Express event, Au focused on the sup­port options avail­able to SAP cus­tomers. Like much of the rest of the pro­gram, these were devel­oped through a joint approach between SAP, Microsoft, and third-par­ty part­ners. Part of this process hap­pens well before work on the actu­al imple­men­ta­tion even starts, with the Embrace pro­gram assist­ing cus­tomers to iden­ti­fy every­thing from busi­ness dri­vers to archi­tec­ture and infra­struc­ture best practices.

Au dis­cussed two spe­cif­ic types of sup­port offered dur­ing this peri­od. First was inte­grat­ed sup­port, where cus­tomers file ser­vice request tick­ets, which are then addressed by SAP or Microsoft lever­ag­ing the inte­grat­ed frame­work. The two com­pa­nies work togeth­er to resolve cer­tain issues. Microsoft and SAP fix some of these inde­pen­dent­ly, depend­ing on the nature of the issue. Sec­ond is inte­grat­ed cus­tomer suc­cess, which is a shared cus­tomer life cycle and suc­cess mod­el. These include activ­i­ties and sup­port requests that spring up after the imple­men­ta­tion of the solu­tion to help SAP cus­tomers real­ize val­ue over time. 

These options will help cus­tomers as they expe­ri­ence any tech­ni­cal issues aris­ing from migrat­ing to the cloud, no mat­ter what sort of imple­men­ta­tion strat­e­gy they use. This also will help cus­tomers as they begin lever­ag­ing the solu­tion and encoun­ter­ing any blips through­out the entire imple­men­ta­tion process. 

Reg­is­ter for future ASUG Express ses­sions on focused top­ics like this one. To view this entire event, you can reg­is­ter and watch it on demand.