SAP announcement helps confirm Microsoft Azure as the Platform of the Future for ERP
SAP announced this week that it will also make its core enterprise business offerings, including SAP Business Suite, HANA Developer Edition, and SAP Business All-In-One, available on Microsoft Azure. The announcement wasn’t a surprise— with more than half of the Fortune 500 already using Microsoft Azure many of SAP’s customers have likely been requesting the support for Microsoft Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for some time. The announcement does however add to a growing list questions around the future of SAP's platform strategy that to a large part has been attributed to Vishal Sikka who recently left SAP.
At Microsoft customers have been able to benefit from faster time to value, increased agility and reduced costs of running their solution on Azure for some time. If you are thinking about running your ERP in the cloud, it is however worth noting that Microsoft Dynamics AX offers a more complete ERP solution for Azure. Unlike SAP, who are not making their BI solution (Business Objects) available on Azure, we have released the full BI suite — including Management Reporter for real-time financial reporting and analysis.
However, as you may expect, our use of Azure expands significantly beyond deploying the solution in the cloud. At Microsoft Dynamics we are leveraging Azure for a number of scenarios, and it’s worth noting that these are available regardless of whether the solution is deployed on premise, in the cloud or using a hybrid approach. Key cloud powered scenarios including:
- Application Lifecycle Management – utilizing Lifecycle Services (LCS) to help customers benefit from cloud powered implementation planning, deployment, management and upgrade support.
- Disaster recovery – helping customers protect their data from disasters with a real-time, always-on solution in the Microsoft cloud.
- Infrastructure extension – connecting customers with modern apps and devices easily and securely with Microsoft Dynamics AX via Azure Service Bus & Active Directory Federated Services.
- Powering mobile apps – increasing customers’ efficiencies utilizing purpose-built apps including Microsoft Dynamics AX Mobile Time and Expense Management as well as enabling them to easily build, securely connect and manage their own mobile apps.
Microsoft Dynamics remains fully committed to Microsoft Azure. Our unique ability to focus on the Microsoft Azure platform has allowed us to optimize Microsoft Dynamics AX to improve performance, reliability, security and help our customers move to the cloud with confidence, on their terms and timeline.
So why not future-proof your business by adopting the platform of the future?
