Microsoft and SAP have announced an extension of their existing partnership, one that will see Microsoft Teams integrated into SAP’s suite of products.
The two companies have sought deeper synergies in recent years, combining their respective strengths in the enterprise software sphere. Back in 2017, the duo announced plans to use and sell more of each other’s cloud services, with Microsoft committing to S/4 HANA, SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and SAP running more of its financial systems on Azure. Two years later, the companies teamed up again to “accelerate customer adoption” of S/4HANA and the SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure.
This latest partnership builds on that earlier work, with plans to integrate Teams, Microsoft’s communication and collaboration suite, with S/4HANA, as well as SAP SuccessFactors (HR) and SAP Customer Experience (CRM).
“The frictionless enterprise”
The announcement comes as businesses across the spectrum have been forced to embrace remote work, positioning cloud-based team collaboration software as “must haves” for just about everyone. Last month, Salesforce confirmed plans to snap up Microsoft Teams rival Slack in a $27.7 billion deal, with plans to integrate Slack deeply into its product suite.
SAP CEO Christian Klein said integrating Teams would “bring collaboration to the next level” and enable “the frictionless enterprise.” The companies confirmed that the integrations would be implemented around the middle of 2021.
Additionally, the two companies announced plans to extend their existing cloud relationship to make it easier for companies to transition from the on-premises edition of SAP’s ERP to S/4HANA on Azure, as well as making further joint investments across platforms and infrastructure covering “automated migrations, improved operations, monitoring, and security.”
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