SAP IT lifts its business-critical landscapes to the Azure cloud platform for scalable flexibility

It’s the company that provides the business-critical systems that other companies rely on.

No matter what its customers do, from reinventing commercial enterprises to caring for the planet, SAP creates enterprise application software that supports key business functions for companies of all sizes and in all industries. Its mission—to help the world run better and improve life for people around the globe—hinges on innovation.

Since its beginning in 1972, SAP has grown to a multinational enterprise software company with more than 440,000 customers in more than 180 countries across the world. Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, the company continues to invent. Seeking a hyperscaler to migrate its own critical on-premises business systems to the cloud, it prioritized an enterprise-ready platform, heightened agility, and the potential to reduce operating and capital costs. It crossed off every item with Microsoft Azure.

Forming a partnership based on the value of innovation

While SAP maintains strong relationships with the four major hyperscalers (the companies now dominating cloud services), it maintains special ties with Microsoft. The relationship between SAP and Microsoft dates to the bond cemented by SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner and then Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Bill Gates. That partnership formed the basis for the mutual support of both companies’ products; they’re each other’s customers.

For Joerg Bruch, Global Vice President for IT Operations at SAP, pivotal decisions like the choice of a hyperscaler for the company’s most crucial systems must come down to merit. There was a technical basis for considering Azure: SAP already uses many products from Microsoft, such as Microsoft 365, SharePoint, OneDrive, Windows 10, and SQL Server. “On one hand, we had a long-standing relationship with Microsoft,” he says. “On the other, we were ourselves Microsoft clients with deep experience using its solutions. We’d built trust not just as a partner, but as a customer.”

In 2017, Bruch’s team evaluated the Google and Azure cloud platforms. His team opted for Azure, migrating two productive business system landscapes (a configuration of hardware—several servers, normally, plus software and operational elements) to Azure as a proof of concept (PoC) in late 2017. The successful PoC sparked the move to Azure.

Threading the needle in a previously on-premises world

Companies that provide vital applications can’t tolerate downtime. Global reach both heightens and complicates that challenge. “As the SAP IT department, we serve the rest of a company that constantly strives to perform at the highest level,” says Bruch. “Our end users expect 99.99 percent availability from our internal systems.”

Bruch’s team walked the fine line familiar to all on-premises companies: ensuring that the datacenter had the necessary hardware to support demand while trying not to overspend on servers. That means pressure to predict demand months ahead because lead times for procurement and installation can stretch to half a year, and in reality, the planning window needs to be much longer than that. “It takes four years to depreciate a server, which requires sizing that server for a four-year window,” explains Bruch. “And of course, that translates into oversizing to be safe. It’s not an agile model.”

Having chosen the Azure cloud platform for SAP’s internal business systems, Bruch’s teams mapped out a plan. Bruch himself also considered the cultural aspect of the shift, realizing that cloud migration can intimidate IT professionals. He wanted the teams to know that their positions were secure. The migration itself won them over. “I saw my teams move from skepticism to enthusiasm,” recounts Bruch. “They worked intently with Microsoft cloud architects and other Microsoft professionals, collaborating closely. They grasped the possibilities and the agility open to us with Azure.”

Moving forward to the final cloud migration

Following its successful 2017 PoC, SAP moved 17 more landscapes to the Azure cloud platform in late 2018. By early 2020, the company had moved a total of 28 landscapes to Azure, and 14 followed by year’s end. During 2021, another 21 landscapes are scheduled to be moved to MS Azure—and it’s the platform of choice for every new deployment.

“Our Azure PoC impressed us with the features available,” says Bruch. He recounts the other factors in the decision, including his company’s trust in other Microsoft solutions, like Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for managing and securing identities. “We’d come to depend on Azure AD prior to our cloud PoC. Most of all, it was Microsoft’s history of providing technology and services to huge enterprises that made the difference and gave us the confidence to embrace the Azure cloud platform.”

Bruch’s team had a smooth journey to get there—Microsoft teams were available when he needed them, and the support level continues. “When you move from an on-premises world where everything is in your control to one where a partner holds that infrastructure, trust is vital,” says Bruch. “Whenever we needed an answer, Microsoft Support was there for us with extremely fast, reliable service that was delivered with the utmost professionalism. In our eyes, Microsoft shows great enterprise readiness.”

Accelerating agility and security while lowering costs

Bruch’s IT teams were impressed by the advanced security that the Azure cloud platform affords, which is vital for an enterprise company that’s not only responsible for Fortune 500 customer data but is also subject to stringent compliance audits, such as with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), a US requirement for corporate financial reporting. “With Azure, security and compliance is state of the art, including its firewalls and policies,” says Bruch. “When we first considered Azure, Microsoft was the only hyperscaler that was providing updates to its SOX documents (SOC1-SOC3) every quarter. The others only did it annually.”

SAP has experienced a sharp increase in agility. “We usually get a new virtual machine up in hours,” says Bruch. “If I had to order completely new hardware for an on-premises datacenter, it would take several internal approval steps followed by a four- to six-month order, delivery, and configuration process involving multiple people.” Acquiring new compute is almost too simple. “We actually had to build in some controls because it’s so easy to click and get another virtual machine,” says Bruch.

The company “right-sizes” its virtual machines, analyzing usage to dynamically extend compute. Combined with the “snoozing” of selected machines during low-usage periods, SAP saves an average of 10 percent of its former on-premises operational costs. Most important for SAP, performance is the same or sometimes even improved from the previous environment. What’s key for Bruch is Microsoft innovation coupled with its understanding of companies with existing, possibly outdated systems. He concludes, “Microsoft understands the hybrid world; it’s in its DNA. It provides a unique enterprise readiness that works best for us while also pressing on with innovation.”

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