Microsoft, SAP Partner Together and Embrace Cloud Computing

By Casey Houser
Contributing Writer

SAP (News - Alert) recently completed its annual international customer conference that took place in Florida. While many big names involved themselves and their companies in the action, there was none bigger than the showing from Satya Nadella (News - Alert), the CEO of Microsoft.

Why did the Microsoft leader take the stage with SAP CEO Bill McDermott in front of the SAP dedicated? He laid the foundation for those two companies that will be working together to help integrate their cloud services. In particular, Microsoft (News - Alert) will open its Azure cloud computing platform to SAP HANA cloud applications. CIO Journal noted that an integration could take the form of an employee opening Microsoft Outlook to access an expense report on SAP Concur.

Nadella further said that this type of interlacing will serve the “customer’s reality,” which means it will help serve their need for multiple cloud-based applications to work with one another in a seamless fashion.

This need has arrived alongside a fundamental shift in the way that businesses run their applications. Although many still rely on their own servers for various tasks, they have embraced the cloud by allowing third parties to maintain the hardware necessary to run the software they desire. Businesses can now rent server space as part of an infrastructure-as-a-service model, rent applications as part of a software-as-a-service model, or both.

Jason Zander, who also spoke to CIO, laid down the idea that these sorts of relationships – like the ones between Microsoft and SAP that Nadella called “absolutely necessary,” – have brought service providers into an era where they do not try to smash fists against every market competitor in sight. Instead, customers “now have an opportunity to pick what they want and know that their vendors are going to really try to help them.”

Whether or not companies decide that they want to immerse themselves in the public cloud or hold some of the reins with a hybrid cloud, the market is growing at a pace that will meet the needs of any type of workplace.