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Microsoft session highlights from SAP Sapphire 2022

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It has been three years since SAP Sapphire last occurred in person, and I was thrilled to meet with our customers and partners again this week. As SAP Sapphire comes to a close, I am taking a moment to reflect on how the world has changed since the pandemic. Many organizations were not prepared for the impact such a change would have on their business, and they were forced to adjust in real-time—realizing that the digital transformation conversations of the past now needed to be put into action and accelerated.

Fast forward to SAP Sapphire 2022 and a new world, where in-person and hybrid experiences came together in Orlando, Florida and virtually across the globe. Microsoft and SAP are celebrating the one-year anniversary of RISE with SAP on the Microsoft Cloud, which helps organizations of all sizes modernize their SAP solutions in the cloud. We have made great progress on the various aspects of our product innovation, delivering new service offerings, frameworks, and tools, that have helped our customers and partners simplify and further accelerate their SAP modernization journey. We have summarized the most recent product announcements here: SAP on Azure Product Announcements Summary—SAP Sapphire 2022.

SAP Sapphire 2022 gave us an opportunity to reconnect with customers and partners—celebrating our joint success, discussing new business priorities, and identifying areas where Microsoft can further help accelerate their growth. We were honored to see many customers and colleagues at Microsoft on stage to share their experiences and best practices. It is most rewarding and humbling to see the level of trust that SAP, our customers, and partners place on our technology platform and to see its impact across various industries and customer scenarios. Below are several session highlights in case you missed them.

SAP Sapphire 2022 session highlights

Spur innovation like the NBA with RISE with SAP on Azure (session ERP159)

The National Basketball Association (NBA) wanted to eliminate limitations of its on-premises data centers and moved its SAP applications and other IT resources to the cloud. The NBA’s Puneet Toteja, AVP, Business Systems Lead, discussed how using RISE with SAP with the AI, data warehouse, and personalization capabilities of Microsoft Azure has enabled the NBA to merge business, game, and fan data to deliver enhanced fan experiences. Learn more about the NBA’s journey with Microsoft and SAP.

Get insights into how Walgreens set up a best practice-based platform (session SE111)

David Durdan, Senior Director, Global Enterprise Architecture for Walgreens Company shares how the pharmacy chain embarked on a retail and finance transformation to deliver benefits to both customers and employees, using the SAP S/4HANA Retail solution and other SAP solutions hosted on Microsoft Azure. Learn more about Walgreens’ journey with Microsoft and SAP.

Jump-start your journey to becoming a demand-driven enterprise (session SCM157)

Microsoft’s Dhaval Desai, Principal Lead, SAP Supply Chain Engineering shared how Microsoft embraced RISE with SAP on Microsoft Cloud to transform its supply chain to a collaborative, digitally connected network that helps it sense and respond to demand changes quickly. Results from this joint Microsoft and SAP initiative include reduced latency in information sharing, improved forecast accuracy, and increased supply chain visibility, including visibility of supplier commitments.

Explore PEPCO’s “Smart” approach to converting to SAP S/4HANA (session ERP137)

Exelon-owned Electric Power Company, PEPCO, provides electricity and gas to two million customers. In this session featuring Exelon’s Manager of Customer Projects and System Support Walter Stefy and Accenture Managing Director Muthu Maran, discover how they designed and executed a journey to cloud transformation and upgraded to SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure in just eighteen months using Accenture’s Smart field approach.

Find out how your peers are optimizing their supply chains (session SCM125)

Microsoft’s Dhaval Desai, Principal Lead, SAP Supply Chain Engineering joined a panel of industry leaders from Blue Diamond Growers, Varidesk and SAP to share how their organizations have addressed diverse supply chain resiliency issues with SAP solutions, including the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution.

Automate sales ordering to improve compliance and the customer experience (session CX156)

Merck and Co.’s Ann Wallach, Director of SAP Delivery will share how this global pharmaceutical company modernized and automated its vaccine ordering process, which was previously handled through fax and phone and required manual entry of sales orders. Merck was able to modernize by leveraging the scalability of SAP Commerce Cloud on Microsoft Azure to improve the customer experience and payment-card industry compliance.

Learn more

I hope you’ve enjoyed SAP Sapphire in-person or virtually as much as we did. To learn more, check out the SAP on Azure Product Announcements Summary. My team and I look forward to continuing our discussion and meeting many of you around the world as we hit the road with SAP visiting eight cities in the remaining 2022!

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Microsoft partners with SAP as the first global cloud provider to launch Project Embrace

When Microsoft and SAP joined forces in 2017, it was aligned with a common goal: to provide enterprise customers with a clear roadmap to drive more business innovation in the cloud. It’s the same principle we called upon last year, when Microsoft teamed up with SAP and Adobe to launch the Open Data Initiative, which empowers companies to unlock more value from their most valuable asset, which is data.

Today, Microsoft and SAP are announcing a new effort that was built with the customer in mind. Microsoft will be the first global cloud provider to join SAP’s new Embrace program.

Project Embrace provides customers with an aligned pathway to the Intelligent Enterprise

Project Embrace is SAP’s collaboration with public cloud providers and Global Strategic Service Partners to simplify and accelerate a customer’s journey to the cloud. Through a combination of market-approved journeys, reference architectures, select service partners, and the power of the Microsoft Azure cloud, customers will be able to accelerate their digital transformation.

Embrace will help customers better manage refactoring and ongoing support costs, access the latest innovations, and improve the performance of SAP applications by leveraging Microsoft and SAP’s unified blueprint running S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft joins forces with SAP to accelerate customers’ journey to S/4HANA on Azure

Microsoft has been working with SAP on Project Embrace for more than a year to deliver a joint roadmap with specific integrated reference architecture to run SAP S4/HANA on Microsoft Azure. The collaboration will provide customers with prescriptive guidance that facilitates a move from their current on-premise production landscapes to a digital enterprise in the cloud.

Working hand-in-hand with SAP to make Project Embrace a success, Microsoft is developing an integrated, end-to-end process across product engineering, sales, marketing and support teams. As part of this effort, Microsoft and SAP are also aligning their joint Partner Ecosystem, as well as collaborating closely with the SAP Max Attention team to provide a more seamless customer support experience.

Microsoft and SAP work together to drive success for their joint customers

Microsoft’s unique position as the first global cloud provider to support Project Embrace speaks to its long history of partnership and co-innovation with SAP, a focus on joint customer success, and Microsoft’s strength in the enterprise market.

Microsoft and SAP’s mutual customers have been asking for an offering like Embrace. Cemex, a global leader in the building materials industry, sees the enormous opportunity Embrace delivers, as Carlos Mantilla, the company’s Senior Director of Worldwide IT Enterprise Architecture told us:

“We at CEMEX are excited to further explore Project Embrace with SAP and Microsoft! We believe it will assist us in accelerating our, already in-progress, Digital Transformation and Journey to S4/HANA in the Azure Hyperscale cloud.”

This is a true example of partnership—the power of Microsoft, the power of SAP and a trusted relationship coming together to provide the best cloud experience for customers.

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Microsoft at May 7-9 SAP Sapphire NOW event: A trusted path to cloud innovation

In a few weeks, over 22,000 people from around the globe will converge in Orlando, Florida from May 7-9, 2019 for the SAP Sapphire NOW and ASUG Annual Conference. Each year, the event brings together thought leaders across industries to find innovative ways to solve common challenges, unlock new opportunities, and take advantage of emerging technologies that are changing the business landscape as we know it. This year, Microsoft has elevated its presence to the next level with engaging in-booth experiences and informative sessions that will educate, intrigue, and inspire attendees as they take the next step in their digital transformation journey.

Modernize your SAP landscapes

While running SAP on-premises was once business as usual, it is quickly becoming obsolete for businesses looking to compete and win. With the power of the cloud, enterprises have real-time data with intelligent insights from machine learning and artificial intelligence at their fingertips, can spin up a dev-test environment or an application server in minutes instead of hours, and back-up a virtual machine in a few mouse clicks.

At SAP SAPPHIRE NOW, you’ll have the opportunity to get a better understanding on the business value of moving your SAP applications to Azure:

  • On Tuesday, May 7, 2019 from 12:00 PM – 12:40 PM, we will host a session on “Innovating with SAP HANA on Microsoft Azure.” The session will cover how SAP customers are accelerating innovation velocity and saving costs for high-performance SAP HANA applications by moving to Azure.
  • On Tuesday, May 7, 2019 from 3:00 PM – 3:20 PM, we will host a session on “Microsoft’s journey to SAP S/4 HANA on Azure.” In this session you’ll learn how Microsoft migrated to Azure and is now leveraging it to transform its existing SAP landscape and starts migrating to S/4HANA.
  • On Wednesday, May 8, 2019 from 11:30 AM – 11: 50 AM, we will host a session on “Lessons learned from migrating SAP applications to the cloud with Microsoft Azure.” The session will share the lessons Microsoft learned during migration and share best practices that will help you learn how you can transform your existing SAP landscape and start migrating to Azure. To learn more about Microsoft’s journey to running SAP on Azure, check out our IT showcase story: SAP on Azure—your trusted path to innovation in the cloud.
  • Visit the Microsoft booth, #729, for one of our in-booth theatre sessions on topics like “Optimizing your SAP landscapes in Azure” and “SAP on Azure deployment journey and lessons learned,” or get hands-on with Azure at one of our in-booth demo pods.

Explore IoT, AI, and machine learning

Every organization is challenged with doing things faster, cheaper, and smarter to keep up with the ever-evolving pace of innovation. To stay agile in a competitive landscape, businesses need to start thinking about how to leverage emerging technology advancements like IoT solutions and artificial intelligence to better serve customers, build more innovative solutions, and obtain a 360-degree view of the business.

At SAP SAPPHIRE NOW, you’ll have the chance to talk with solution experts from Microsoft around creative ways to leverage technology to solve your most challenging business problems:

  • On Tuesday, May 7, 2019 from 2:00 PM – 2:20 PM, we will host a session, “Harness the power of IoT Data across Intelligent Edge and Intelligent Cloud.” In this session, you’ll learn how you can take advantage of innovations in IoT technology at the edge and in the cloud with SAP business processes with the power of Microsoft Azure IoT to achieve transformative innovation for your business.
  • Stop by booth #729 to experience our Azure Data Services and Analytics demo to learn how you can connect data from multiple inputs and applications to provide a unified view of your business. You can also learn more about how IoT solutions can help you take a step closer to digital transformation by experiencing our Azure IoT demo.

Learn about cloud migration from our trusted partners

There are different paths to migrate to SAP HANA and Azure, depending on your business needs. Microsoft’s SAP on Azure partners can work with you to determine the best way to migrate your SAP applications to the cloud.

At SAP SAPPHIRE NOW, you’ll find multiple opportunities to connect with partners:

  • Join a partner-led session at our in-booth theatre. We’ll have partners from organizations like SAP and Accenture to learn how running your SAP landscapes in the cloud can provide your business with more agility, security, and reduced costs.
  • After the show-floor dies down, we encourage you to engage with Microsoft and our partners at various co-sponsored, partner-led events throughout the week.
  • Also, stop by our booth (#729) to speak with many of our leading partner organizations to learn about the services they provide to help you on your journey to the running SAP on Azure.

Discover business transformation

Look for Microsoft at SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2019 and see for yourself why the leading enterprises across industries bet their businesses on the technology that Microsoft and SAP provide for a first-and-best pathway to running SAP applications in the cloud.

Sign up for live updates at our dedicated SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2019 event page.

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Adobe, Microsoft and SAP announce new Open Data Initiative details

Global industry partners join effort to connect data and gather powerful insights fueled by AI and intelligent services

LAS VEGAS — March 27, 2019 — Wednesday at Adobe Summit, the industry’s leading customer experience conference, Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) CEO Shantanu Narayen and Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) CEO Satya Nadella revealed additional details about the Open Data Initiative (ODI). As originally announced last September, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP (NYSE: SAP) have embarked on a new approach to business data that will help companies transform their customer experiences through real-time insights delivered from the cloud.

The three partners outlined a common approach and set of resources for customers in an initial announcement last September, with the ambition of helping customers create new connections across previously siloed data, more seamlessly garner intelligence, and ultimately better serve brands with an improved view of their customer interactions.

From the beginning, the ODI has been focused on enhancing interoperability between the applications and platforms of the three partners through a common data model with data stored in a customer-chosen data lake. This unified data lake is intended to allow customers their choice of development tools and applications to build and deploy services.

To improve that process, the three companies plan to deliver in the coming months a new approach for publishing, enriching and ingesting initial data feeds from Adobe Experience Platform, activated through Adobe Experience Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Office 365 and SAP C/4HANA, into a customer’s data lake. This will enable a new level of AI and machine learning enrichment to garner new insights and better serve customers.

Unilever, a mutual customer and one of the early global brands to express support and excitement about the ODI, today announced its intention to simplify a previously complex business outcome based on these data connections. At Adobe Summit, Unilever is demonstrating how it plans to bring together disparate customer, product and resource data and use AI-driven insights to help reduce its plastic packaging and encourage consumer recycling. By eliminating the silos of data, Unilever will be able to tie inventory and plastics data into Adobe data to enhance customer experiences and encourage participation.

To accelerate development of the initiative, Adobe, Microsoft and SAP also announced today plans to convene a Partner Advisory Council consisting of over a dozen companies including Accenture, Amadeus, Capgemini, Change Healthcare, Cognizant, EY, Finastra, Genesys, Hootsuite, Inmobi, Sprinklr, and WPP. These organizations span myriad industries and customer segments and believe there is significant opportunity in the ODI for them to drive net- new value to their customers.

“Our customers are all trying to integrate behavioral, CRM, ERP and other internal data sets to have a comprehensive understanding of each consumer, and they’re struggling with the challenges of integrating this data,” said Stephan Pretorius, CTO of WPP. “We’re excited about the initiative Adobe, Microsoft and SAP have taken in this area, and we see a lot of opportunity to contribute to the development of ODI.”

About Adobe
Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 404,000 business and public sector customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]

Stefan Offermann, Adobe, (408) 536-4023, [email protected]

Stacey Hoskin, SAP, (816) 337-7476, [email protected]

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.