For almost 15 years I have focused on bringing together the Modern Workplace with enterprise applications. Integrating SharePoint with OpenText, Documentum, Salesforce, Dynamics and SAP to name a few. The modern workplace has been changing for several years, and it now includes not only SharePoint/Office 365 but also Azure and the very wide range of services offered by Azure.
I cannot help but think about how much better together SAP is with Azure. Next, to the cost savings and scalability and control that Azure provides companies. The real business value comes from integrating your SAP premier business applications within the Microsoft ecosystem. For this post, I thought I would discuss the value of having a unified ecosystem and then back that up with a few use cases that demonstrate the value the Microsoft cloud brings.
The often-unsung story of Apple is how they maximized on past innovation. Part of the Apple story is the ecosystem of services from vendors and partners. By consuming these services, Apple leveraged their expertise in a just-in-time fashion that allowed them to focus on the innovation of their products. Other companies provided the manufacturing know-how, capacity, expertise, and skills associated with topics such as supply chain management.
Now think about the innovation potential of the ecosystem of Microsoft services and tools offers to SAP. Office 365, Azure IoT, Azure Machine learning, Azure AD for single sign-on, Azure Data Analytics, Power BI, Skype, Delve API. Tying all of this together and then you are creating an ecosystem that extends the value beyond its discrete components. Consider a few examples;