Microsoft and SAP Deepen Ties With New Initiative

Back in May of this year, Microsoft and SAP announced a new partnership that brought the two giant software companies a little bit closer together. At that time, the two companies announced that SAP HANA would be coming to Azure and today, the two companies are expanding the partnership.

In what will be considered another win for Azure in the enterprise space, SuccessFactors is coming to the cloud platform. The project, which is what Microsoft is announcing today, will take some time to materialize as the announcement post, which you can read here, says it will take up to five years to complete.

What’s notable about this announcement, besides Microsoft landing another enterprise partner for Azure, is that this is the first time Success Factors will be hosted on a third-party public cloud. The partnership gives SAP new capabilities and access to additional hardware and for Microsoft, they get a new enterprise client.

Building out and maintaining sever infrastructure is expensive and with SAP working with Microsoft, it will become easier to expand their compute-footprint with SuccessFactros without the need to buy more metal. For Microsoft, they will be, for now, the only third-party hardware that can run the HR software which gives them a competitive advantage over other cloud platforms when attracting new clients to the service.

Because Microsoft has transitioned into a cloud company that runs applications on a wide variety of hardware, they no longer need to shun competitors. By building a cloud platform that is capable of running any operating system and software, Microsoft is forging new relationships with companies it used to compete with that benefits both parties.

The cloud has done many things for Microsoft including securing their long term success but it has also opened up many doors of opportunity as well, such as partnering with SAP.