Microsoft & SAP: Cloud HCM for Enterprises Gets Better

By Stefania Viscusi
Assignment Desk, Content Management

Enterprises focused on improving their Human Resource departments are realizing just how much success can be achieved when they invest in those who work for them.  Better tools for people management leads to happier employees, and happier employees work better and harder.  That’s the drive behind SAP SuccessFactors and its HCM Suite.

Now, the company is partnering with Microsoft (News - Alert) in a long term deal that will deliver even better outcomes for global clients.

Per the agreement, SAP will make its cloud-based human capital management solutions available on Microsoft Azure over the next five years. This will give enterprises new capacity so they may run operational workloads on Azure – and with it, have enterprise-grade security and an open developer platform.

This isn’t the first time the companies are working together, as this deal is an expansion of their already longstanding partnership for integrations of Office 365 and SAP (News - Alert) SuccessFactors HCM Suite, as well as SAP Fieldglass Vendor Management System, SAP Ariba and Concur solutions.

What is unique about this deal, however, is that it’s the first time SAP is going to supplement its own infrastructure and allow its HCM solutions to operate in a third-party public cloud.

This comes at a perfect time since Microsoft just announced the general availability of Azure Large Instances, which means hardware configurations specifically designed for large and demanding SAP workloads can be handled.

As part of the companies working together, they can also offer support for the SAP HANA platform on Azure. And customers can even now build custom hybrid apps managed using Microsoft Intune.

Commenting on the latest news, Mike Ettling, president of SAP SuccessFactors said, “We’ve seen exponential growth in the past two years, with 42 million users now benefiting from our market-leading solutions. In selecting Azure, we will be able to expand our reach even further, with the reliability that is required of these mission-critical applications, and continue to innovate and enhance services to meet client needs across additional environments.”