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What are the benefits and advantages of SAP on Azure?

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Benefits of SAP on Azure

Migrating SAP landscapes to Microsoft Azure is the hottest trend for SAP customers in the UK. Absoft is closing in on twenty completed SAP on Azure migration projects for our customers in the manufacturing, energy and public sectors. 
 
With competition from private hosting vendors, on-premises servers and other hyperscale clouds, why are so many customers choosing Azure to run their SAP landscapes?
 
Most importantly, what are the advantages and benefits of SAP on Azure? 
Read on for a comprehensive list we’ve put together: 
 

Taking the first steps to SAP on Azure

Many SAP customers look at Microsoft Azure for their SAP due to necessity. This could mean either reaching the limits of scale, age, or cost of an existing on-premises landscape. The desire to access the latest innovations in Azure , however, is becoming more and more common reason to support the former need. 
 
We’ve migrated customers that had no presence in Microsoft Azure at all. This has included helping their team develop the required skills and knowledge of the platform. We’ve also worked with customers who were already proficient in Azure but looking for our help with SAP. And we work with customers who want us to take care of running SAP on Azure for them in its entirety.
 
 
In conclusion, there are many routes to SAP on Azure. But, all need knowledge and experience of SAP software and of Azure to create a risk-free, deliverable migration. A low-cost Azure design can only be created with detailed knowledge of what’s possible in Azure. Moreover, the project will fail if SAP functionality is not taken into account. 
 
Now that you have that in mind, let’s dive into the benefits of SAP on Azure through facts, research and figures. 

 

Microsoft offers the enterprise choice

Microsoft and SAP have phenomenal overlap in their customer base. Just try to find an SAP customer who aren’t running Microsoft products too. Azure became a logical choice for running the SAP landscape of the enterprise customers, those who are right in Microsoft’s sweet spot.  

Microsoft want to capitalise on their ideal position, so they have made a pledge that Azure will always be the best hyperscale cloud partner for running SAP. The work they’ve done to cement their status as the first choice is remarkable, and really paying off for customers. 

 

IaaS (Infrastructure as a service)

SAP ERP and S/4HANA are fully supported in Microsoft Azure. This also includes all Business Suite and Intelligent Suite components. Azure virtual machines provide the perfect platform to run any SAP landscape in the cloud. There is no re-implementation or conversion. Flexibility to upgrade in the future is provided, as the benefits become clear.
 

Microsoft Azure offers the biggest range of cloud virtual machines certified for SAP NetWeaver and the biggest range for SAP HANA. Using exactly the right size of Virtual Machine keeps costs down, and they can scale over time as requirements change. 

The flexibility of using virtual machines with a pay-as-you-go cost model means the SAP landscape can always be the right size for the business. Our customers regularly start up temporary sandbox SAP environments in Azure to facilitate innovation, which was impossible on-premises without paying for unused capacity. 

Microsoft Azure is the only public cloud option to run Microsoft SQL Server with an SAP runtime license. Oracle, SAP (Sybase) ASE and SAP MaxDB are also fully supported database options in Azure alongside SAP HANA, so the move to SAP HANA can happen when you are ready.

Microsoft’s pledge to be the best hyperscale cloud provider for SAP customers means that all of the above is true forever. Competitors will always release new products in different cycles and play leapfrog, but you can trust that Microsoft will always keep Azure at the front of the pack for running SAP because of their pledge and their dependence on the enterprise market. Migrate today, and you will have the platform you need in the future. 

 

A safe and easy migration with skilled consultants

Microsoft have created fully tested and supported reference architectures for running SAP in Azure, and they provide free support to customers to ensure the success of their projects.  Microsoft started building their own expertise for SAP to Azure migration early as their own SAP landscape was among the first.

Of course, any SAP migration has the potential to be problematic without the right skills. Here at Absoft we have a single team that combines skills in SAP and Microsoft Azure. This enables us to design architectures that make optimal use of Azure for the SAP landscape, which is impossible to do with separate teams working in silos. Our projects have a functional focus too, as any cloud migration will fail if you aren’t considering all the interfaces and how the organisation uses SAP.

Absoft’s team in the UK have completed seventeen Microsoft Azure SAP migration projects at the time of writing this article. No project has failed or even faced significant problems, and all have seen customer’s surprise at the ease that you can move SAP to the cloud so easily.

The expertise for SAP on the market follows the market share. Azure is the most popular cloud to run SAP products in the UK and Europe. Therefore, most expertise exists in organisations like Absoft. We understand an SAP landscape whilst having the skills to build it out effectively in Azure. Microsoft have even released a specific certification for consultants in SAP on Azure. It is the only cloud platform to do so.
SAP on Azure Webinar Replay

The tools you need for security are built-in

Little is of more importance than the security of an organisation’s SAP landscape. Microsoft famously spend over $1bn per year on security for their platform. They also have the most compliance offerings of any public cloud. That means all your industry-specific needs will be met. 
 

Azure Sentinel is Microsoft’s cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) product, and it includes specific SAP threat monitoring with multi-layered coverage across on-premises and cloud SAP software. 

 

Solutions for backup, disaster recovery, and high availability

Microsoft Azure provides the most integrated complete platform for running SAP software. None of our customers need to use any third-party backup or disaster recovery software beyond those offered by the Microsoft Azure platform and reference architectures, keeping their license costs down. 
 
Azure Backup can natively back up SAP HANA and Microsoft SQL databases with recovery point objectives of 15 minutes or less. Azure Site Recovery allows for replication of SAP solutions across geographical regions.
 

Azure is unique in offering a 99.9% availability SLA for a single virtual machine in the cloud. You can run SAP with an incredibly simple, agile, and reliable architecture on a single virtual machine and still deliver a 99.9% availability SLA. At Absoft, we have many customers who have never had downtime in over five years of running with single virtual machines.

For customers that require higher availability, 99.95% and 99.99% are available with Availability Sets and Availability Zones, both of which are fully available to use in the UK and Europe.

Functionality is the real differentiator

Microsoft Azure doesn’t only offer the virtual machine to run the software. It offers an entire ecosystem of cloud-native services that each provide business value. These services are part of the platform. They are incomparable to anything on-premises and provide the most exciting business benefit of SAP on Azure.
 
Azure’s cloud-native services allow safe innovation around the core of a stable SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA landscape.  Since Microsoft’s customers overlap so extensively with SAP’s in the enterprise, their services are specifically made for enterprise customers more than in any other hyperscale cloud. 
 
Microsoft’s commitment for Azure to be the best hyperscale cloud to run SAP has extended right across their product offering. They have created SAP connectors in many of their services, released reference architectures, demos, partner solutions and case studies to help their customers get value from cloud-native solutions integrated with SAP.
 


So what functionality is available for SAP in Microsoft Azure?

Over 100 cloud services are available for SAP systems in Azure. This is across low-code development, integration, automation, RPA, IoT, data and analytics and all of Microsoft’s productivity tools. It’s not just Microsoft’s products: SAP Business Technology Platform runs on Microsoft Azure.
 
Microsoft’s Power Platform is an unstoppable force. Power BI is the analytics visualisation tool of choice in almost every organisation now. It has standard connectors for SAP software and we’ve had great success in setting up reports for our customers that use the live SAP data with no warehousing.
 
For low-code software development, automation and RPA, Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate are a formidable team. Power Automate can connect to SAP systems via oData services and RFC. Anything you can run in your SAP system with ABAP, can be run from Microsoft’s Power Platform. Power Apps provides a low-code front-end for the users, a complementary technology to Fiori.
 

Digital transformation is happening for our customers thanks to their ability to use the best SAP software and Microsoft Power Platform together.

 
Integration of SAP systems with Microsoft services Webinar Replay

Broad integration

Azure Logic Apps is a low-code platform that can connect to almost anything you can think of. Like Power Automate, it offers connectors for SAP software for RFC, oData and the HANA database. You can visually draw out a process or integration to exchange data between SAP and non-SAP systems, all without code. No other product offers as much ready-made connectivity.
 

Data-driven businesses

Azure Data Factory is another product that has connectors for SAP. Data Factory enables the transfer of data between source systems and databases to data warehouses and data lakes. Our customers use Azure Data Factory pipelines to load data from SAP oData services into Azure Data Lake. They then report on it from Power BI.
 
Azure Data Lake or Synapse Analytics are appropriate solutions to warehouse data using it for analytics, which is required for more complex or high-performance scenarios that are not possible with Power BI connected to SAP.
 

Fruits of partnership

Microsoft haven’t built out all of their SAP capabilities alone. SAP and Microsoft have a partnership stretching back decades. Those who were around will remember the first SAP GUI for Windows, the first integrations with Microsoft Office (where would SAP be without ‘Export to Excel?’) and the first support for SAP on Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server.
 
In 2021 SAP and Microsoft kicked their partnership up another notch with integration to Microsoft Teams across SAP solutions. 
 
SAP have an untouchable position in the core of ERP application software. However, they have partnered with technology vendors since their inception to provide the complete package to their customers. Microsoft Azure is the latest platform to complete SAP’s offering in technology components. It covers the basic IaaS services of Virtual Machines to data analytics in Power BI and low-code user interface of Power Apps.
 

SAP’s Cloud products on Microsoft Azure

SAP’s own Business Technology Platform provides the best SAP-centric analytics in SAP Analytics Cloud. It’s an enterprise-grade integration suite and side-by-side extensibility for SAP’s cloud solutions. SAP are delivering cloud ERP in S/4HANA Cloud and Business Technology Platform where the differentiating customisations happen.
 
Business Technology Platform does not compete with Azure but runs right on top of it. Customers can choose to deploy their BTP applications on Microsoft Azure for proximity to their existing applications in Azure. SAP support the use of Azure services from applications in Business Technology Platform. Additionally, you can consume SAP’s cloud services from your applications in Azure.
 
Microsoft was a launch partner in the RISE with SAP initiative. It offers customers the opportunity to move their existing SAP landscape into an SAP subscription model. With RISE, SAP controls the hosting. This includes subscription to a cloud vendor, but the customer has the choice to opt for Azure.
 
The technology and solution choices are fully open with SAP on Azure. You can run all SAP’s on-premises and cloud products together, and you have connectivity to Azure services ready to go.
 

Your one-stop-shop for SAP on Azure

Whether you are just beginning your research on migrating SAP to the cloud, building a business case for a cloud migration, have chosen a provider or have already initiated the cloud migration – we are here to help and advise.

Having completed multiple cloud migrations, our experts have all the skills, knowledge and experience to move your SAP to the Azure Cloud in an efficient and effective manner, with no business disruption. Get in touch with our SAP on Azure team to discuss your specific needs. 

Get some insights from some of our SAP migrations to Azure – Watch the video: 

SAP on Azure real-life migrations replay

Article by: Robert MacDonald, Innovation and Technology Manager

Bob is responsible for bringing the latest SAP technology to Absoft and its customers across industry sectors. From a technical background, he specialises in identifying efficiencies in running SAP through automation, monitoring and optimisation. He has worked on supporting, implementing and upgrading SAP for over 10 years, and is now launching the newest innovations in automation.

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