SAP and Microsoft Join Efforts on Cloud Computing

I wanted to share news of an announcement this morning at SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP’s business and technology conference being held in Orlando, Florida this week. The announcement states that SAP and Microsoft will work together on making application development and cloud management easier for developers and IT staff, helping customers harness the power of cloud computing. Additionally Microsoft was named the SAP Global Technology Partner of the Year.

The details of the announcement are covered in the news release on the SAP site, as well as in a blog post from Microsoft’s Ted Kummert, SVP, Business Platform Division, which I’ve also included the text of below. Thanks for your time - Larry

SAP and Microsoft Make App Development and Cloud Management Easier

Microsoft’s broad partner ecosystem is what powers increased value and solutions for customers and their evolving business needs.

One example of this is today’s announcement of SAP and Microsoft’s plans to focus on two key areas: first, to help .NET Framework developers more easily build applications connecting to SAP, and second, to help customers harness the power of the cloud.  

As a result of this announcement, developers can expect much more support and integration between the development worlds of SAP and Microsoft. Business processes from SAP software can now be easily consumed and extended by .NET developers, simplifying the overall application development process. This level of access will immediately reduce the number of steps developers must take in order to ensure application integration, and also lead to shorter development cycles and lower costs.

Microsoft and SAP also plan to provide integration between SAP’s landscape management software, Microsoft System Center and Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V technology, bringing greater agility to cloud management and deployments.

This integration will instill enhanced flexibility, scalability and management in the cloud, all while reducing cost and risk. Through these connected offerings, SAP and Microsoft customers will be able to easily scale their deployments in their own data centers or through private clouds, for example, if they have a workload that needs on-demand scale periodically, such as a paycheck or employee performance review application.  

Together, Microsoft and SAP are committed to driving greater levels of innovation and flexibility for application development and cloud deployment – from your datacenter to the public cloud, eventually enabling hybrid computing scenarios via Windows Azure for companies to embrace cloud computing on their terms.

This announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 15-18, 2011 where Microsoft was also named SAP Global Technology Partner of the Year.

Posted by Ted Kummert

Senior Vice President, Business Platform Division, Microsoft