Microsoft and SAP expand partnership for mobile, cloud and analytics

Microsoft Corp. and SAP AG are expanding their mutual offerings for the mobile workforce and deepening the overall interoperability in their product portfolios.
The two companies have a long-standing partnership, but are expanding it in three areas: cloud, mobility, and analytics.
Microsoft and SAP said they would offer more support for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1; enterprise cloud computing (SAP applications certification for the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform); and improved interoperability for Microsoft Office and data from SAP applications, including business intelligence (BI) offerings from both companies.
“We have been saying for a long time that mobile in the enterprise has to be an ecosystem game,” said Chris Marsh, Yankee Group principal analyst, in a research note. “No one can yet or will ever likely be able to offer that infamous ‘end-to-end,” one-size-fits-all platform that vendors and service providers so like to claim.”
In terms of increased collaboration for mobile, the two companies said that they “plan to help customers conduct business anywhere and anytime by developing and co-marketing SAP mobile apps for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1.”  Possible prospective offerings are going to be on display at SAP’s upcoming Sapphire Now event in early June in Orlando, Fl.
Microsoft and SAP said that they expect that by the end of the current quarter, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform will support SAP products including its Business Suite software, mobile platform, adaptive service enterprise (SAP ASE) and the developer edition of HANA for real-time analytics and real-time application development. SAP said its customers will be able to use a pay-per-use feature in Azure as well.
The two companies took steps toward more extensive interoperability in their analytics offerings this week by making Excel connectivity generally available to SAP BusinessObjects BI through Microsoft’s Power BI solution. They also are developing a new version of SAP’s gateway for Microsoft that is expected to be released in the second half of the year, to support more business process automation, as well as access to SAP apps and data through both Azure and Microsoft’s Office 365.
Marsh added that the partnership “should benefit both parties as SAP looks to Microsoft to scale its applications and Microsoft looks to SAP to scale adoption of its cloud infrastructure.
“It’s also a testament to how SAP has struggled with its cloud credentials, as well as how both have struggled with driving adoption of their respective mobile products and services,” Marsh wrote. “It’s a classic big boy shuffle to try and crowd out smaller vendors around the margins that may be able to take them on product by product and feature and feature, but that look more vulnerable as the game scales up and down the stack.”