In 2019, Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP) was founded under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation to bring together business leaders, manufacturers, system integrators, and software providers to drive innovation and collaboration across the manufacturing community and value chain. OMP is a global alliance that aims to accelerate manufacturing companies’ innovation at scale through platform-agnostic solutions, open standards, and technologies that enable smart manufacturing, break down silos and solve real problems.

In a short period, the collaborative initiative started by Microsoft and BMW has now been gaining more members that share the common goal of supporting the manufacturing sector’s digital transformation through innovative technologies to give them the competitive edge, deliver operational efficiencies, greater factory output, increased net profits and drive agility amid disruptions.

Contributing to Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management Advancement

Similarly, enterprise software giant SAP has been supporting organisations to navigate the complexities of manufacturing and supply chain with customer-centric, sustainable supply chain management software. To further drive innovation along the digital supply chain, this time, using open standards and open source, the German company has recently joined the OMP initiative.

Recognising that a networked, sustainable and agile supply chain management requires a more modular, flexible, and transparent production, SAP will be collaborating with OMP to deliver an SAP-supported Platform Industrie 4.0 initiative that would bridge the gap between manufacturers and customers.

Nils Herzberg, SVP and global head of Strategic Partnerships for Digital Supply Chain and Industry 4.0 at SAP shared SAP’s mission of accelerating supply chain innovation at scale harnessing the power of open collaboration. He stressed:

“Not only do we live in the century of shared economies, but we also live in the time of collaborative development. The focus for the future will be stronger, more resilient supply chains coupled with agile production facilities. SAP has the supply chain applications to achieve this. As a member of the OMP, we will work with our customers and partners to create access to these future-oriented applications.“

SAP and OMP aim to:

• Create solutions based on open standards that overcome the complexity of proprietary systems and vendor lock-in
• Safely connect operational technology to the cloud to enable better data-backed decisions and predictions
• Contribute to solutions and standards that drive automation and autonomy into production and logistics systems

Christoph Berlin, Partner Group Program Manager for Azure Industrial IoT & Manufacturing at Microsoft, said that OMP gains from SAP’s industry knowledge and expertise.

“The goal of the consortium is to bring together technology and applications to enable the next frontier of business value in manufacturing. This requires all levels of the stack to embrace open principles, open-source and open standards. We also welcome the extensive knowledge that SAP brings to the table from a supply chain and manufacturing reference architectures perspective. This will further strengthen OMP’s technology partnerships and collaboration across the manufacturing ecosystem,” Berlin explained.

New OMP Members

Other organisations that have recently joined OMP initiative are Teradata, a leading multi-cloud data warehouse platform provider, and Delta Electronics, a leading provider of switching power management solutions. 

Teradata, with offices located across every region including Australia, Europe, Middle East, and Asia, brings to the OMP community its extensive experience, expertise, and solutions in cloud-based data analytics with a specific focus on the “Manufacturing Reference Architecture and “Semantic Data Structuring” working groups. Aside from delivering a blueprint for an industrial IoT architecture, Teradata will also be developing a semantic structuring layer to help manufacturers easily share, reuse, and evaluate heterogeneous data.

Meanwhile, Taipei-headquartered Delta Electronics, which has been listed on the DJSI World Index of Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for 10 consecutive years, brings into the fold decades of rich industrial experience, expertise, and solutions in cloud-based data analytics with a specific focus on the “Manufacturing Reference Architecture” and “ATS Core services” working groups. In collaboration with other members, Delta Electronics, the first Asian member in the OMP community, will develop a standard carbon footprint solution that meets international compliance.

The post SAP Extends Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management Expertise to OMP appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Heidelberg, February 22, 2021 – Following the successful launch of “Cloud Move for Azure” last year, SNP Schneider-Neureither & Partner SE will deepen its collaboration with Microsoft. The new standalone software component of the SNP data transformation platform CrystalBridge^® was developed in close cooperation with the cloud experts at Microsoft and has already been used in migration projects. This has led to results in a matter of days instead of weeks and therefore accelerated the assessment phase. The results have prompted Microsoft to expand its collaboration with SNP as its Preferred Partner for SAP on Azure migrations. In turn, Microsoft will be SNP’s preferred cloud provider.

Microsoft customers planning to move to the cloud can migrate their SAP systems quickly and with minimal risk using the new Cloud Move for Azure software as part of the highly automated CrystalBridge^® platform while also continuing to benefit from the results of joint development and project work in the future. Looking ahead, the agreement shows that the chosen path is the right one for customers and both partners alike: As part of the agreement, the two companies have therefore concluded far-reaching agreements with the aim of driving co-development, joint go-to-market initiatives, co-selling and delivery as well as leveraging the partner ecosystem for scaling and sustainable growth.

“The fact that Microsoft has chosen us as its Preferred Partner at a global level validates our work and our powerful software products, which we want to use to continuously drive the success of our customers,” says Michael Eberhardt, CEO of SNP. “In return, we chose Microsoft to be our preferred cloud provider because of their long-standing and extensive enterprise customer experience, the trusting collaboration between our organizations in the past few months, and their comprehensive portfolio for digital transformation. Additionally, we see a great level of trust in Microsoft and SNP from customers all over the world, especially in the SAP market. Together with Microsoft, we have set ambitious goals for the next three years and will continue to work together on our cloud migration solution to help Microsoft’s SAP customers throughout the world move to the Azure Cloud. It is an exciting project that we are very much looking forward to.”

Gerald Faust, Managing Director and CEO JAPAC, adds: “Predefined fixed-price packages for the initial Cloud Move for Azure assessments, subsequent proof of concepts, and the migration of SAP workloads will make the customer’s journey transparent in the future as well as shorten the transition period. Accordingly, companies can fully concentrate on getting the maximum benefit from their cloud conversion. The SNP BLUEFIELD approach, which makes it possible to move to Azure and to SAP S/4HANA at the same time, offers them an enormous advantage here. This is because it allows companies to quickly reap all the benefits of new technologies for their business processes.”

João Couto, Vice President for SAP Business Unit at Microsoft, explains: “We see a tremendous market opportunity to support SAP customers in accelerating their transformation journey to SAP S/4HANA and the cloud, and SNP is uniquely positioned to help in precisely this area. As a result, we have now chosen SNP as our Preferred Partner for moving SAP customers to the Azure Cloud quickly and securely. By leveraging SNP’s solutions and capabilities, we can provide our customers with a simplified and accelerated path to SAP S/4HANA on Azure. The integrated approach and close agreement between SAP, SNP and Microsoft provide SAP customers with extremely reliable planning and a highly automated solution, allowing them to focus on the real innovation potential and business opportunities created by SAP RISE, SAP S/4HANA and Azure as an intelligent platform.”

To learn more, download the Strategy Paper: Cloud Move for Azure (snpgroup.com)

About SNP

SNP is a world-leading provider of software for managing complex digital transformation processes. Instead of traditional IT consulting in the ERP environment, SNP offers an automated approach using specially developed software: The Data Transformation Platform CrystalBridge^(R) and the SNP BLUEFIELD^TM approach allow companies to restructure and modernize their IT landscapes much more quickly and securely as well as migrate to new systems or cloud environments more securely. This gives customers clear qualitative advantages while at the same time reducing their time and costs.

The SNP Group has around 1,500 employees worldwide. The company is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and generated preliminary revenues of around EUR 143 million in the 2020 fiscal year. It serves multinational companies in all industries. SNP was established in 1994, went public in 2000, and has been listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since August 2014 (ISIN DE0007203705) and was admitted to the SDAX^® in March 2020. Since 2017, the company has been trading as a European company (Societas Europaea/SE).

More information is available at www.snpgroup.com and SNP Business Partner Microsoft (snpgroup.com)

SNP Contacts:

This article is sponsored by SNP

The post Successful Launch of “Cloud Move for Azure”: SNP Signs Agreement with Microsoft to Expand SAP Cloud Migration Solutions appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

SAP in India has been at the forefront of helping the youth of the nation to upskill with new-age technologies and digital skills. Following the recent partnership with UNICEF centred on improving the employability of the youth amid the pandemic by providing career counseling and digital education, SAP India will now collaborate with tech giants and multinational companies to deliver training programmes across India to skill and upskill the youth with new-age skills.

In pursuit of building ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, which translates to ‘self-reliant India’ or ‘self-sufficient India’, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has urged the Indian states through the Directorate General of Training (DGT) to further expand the new-age courses across their respective training centers. DGT is the apex organisation of MSDE for the development and coordination of vocational training across India.

Helping DGT fulfill its mission, several technology companies committed to deliver 21st-century digital skillset training programmes in connection to the Industry 4.0 revolution. Accenture, CISCO, IBM India Pvt. Ltd., Microsoft Corp. (India) Ltd., NASSCOM, SAP India, and Quest Alliance are some of the key players that have signed various Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with DGT to enable the states to achieve the mission of upskilling and equipping the youth with technology.

“The new wave of technology revolution is poised to change the nature of jobs and in order to keep pace with this changing nature, we need to undertake skilling of future workforce in relevant technology areas to meet the future demands of industries. The need of the hour is to restructure the current academic framework of ITIs to offer more robust technical programs in new technology areas of Industrial Revolution 4.0 like Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, etc.,” said Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

DGT as the Technology Enabler

In support of MSDE’s call towards building ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ by meeting the local demand for a skilled workforce in the State as well as to increase the footprints of Indian workers in national and international markets, DGT is expected to provide all possible technical support to the States for the formulation of new proposals and training of instructors and trainers for such new-age courses. 

To date, DGT has already introduced 13 National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) compliant New-Age training courses that vary from 6 months to 2 years. The courses include:

• Data Analysts and Scientists
• Technician Mechatronics
• Smart Agriculture
• Cloud Computing
• Process Automation Experts
• User Experience and Human-Machine Interaction Designers
• Blockchain Specialists
• Software and Applications Developers
• Geoinformatics Assistant
• AI and Machine Learning Specialists
• Big Data Specialists
• Information Security Analysts
• Robotics Engineers and Ecommerce 
• Social Media Specialists

To address the need to train new-collar workers who are adept in technologies in manufacturing and services that are increasingly becoming digitally and artificial intelligence led, the courses have been developed in consultation and active participation of industrial experts. This means that participants should expect a wide demand and a robust curriculum.

On 12th June 2020, DGT had written to the Additional Chief/Principal Secretaries of Technical Skill Education requesting the launch of the new-age courses in all ITIs.

The post Microsoft, IBM, SAP in India Collaborate to Upskill the Youth appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

SAP’s private managed cloud service, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud will be offered on Microsoft Azure, allowing customers to run the suite in a secure, managed cloud. According to the companies, the offering will provide “the best of both worlds” – application management and product expertise from SAP and a global intelligent cloud from Microsoft.

Barry Simpson, senior vice president and chief information officer, The Coca-Cola Company, has spoken in support of the development.

“The strategic partnership announced between Microsoft and SAP is an extremely important development for the Coca-Cola System,” he said. “The value of aligned engineering, sales and delivery between these two strategic partners will allow our system to accelerate our digital agenda. This is a very positive and exciting development for us.”

Nadella and McDermott also announced their intention adopt each other’s cloud solutions internally – Microsoft will deploy SAP S/4HANA on Azure to help run its internal financial processes, as well as connect S/4HANA to Azure AI and analytics services for more efficient and financial reporting and decision-making. SAP plans to move more than a dozen of its key internal business-critical systems, which run on S/4HANA, to Azure, including the software supporting Concur.

The projects will be documented and used to provide guidance to other customers for deployment of SAP applications on Azure.

“As technology transforms every business and every industry, organisations are looking for the right platforms and trusted partners to help accelerate their digital transformation,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Building on our longtime partnership, Microsoft and SAP are harnessing each other’s products to not only power our own organizations, but to empower our enterprise customers to run their most mission-critical applications and workloads with SAP S/4HANA on Azure.”

“We are taking our partnership to the next level with this new capability to run SAP S/4HANA in the Microsoft Azure environment,” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott. “The world’s significant businesses trust Microsoft and SAP. Together, we will help companies win the customer-driven growth revolution.”

The post SAP and Microsoft integrate cloud further; adopt S/4HANA on Azure appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

It will be the first time SAP has supplemented its own infrastructure by operating SAP SuccessFactors solutions in a third-party public cloud.

According to Microsoft, the deal will provide significant additional capacity to run operational SAP SuccessFactors workloads on Azure, starting with demo environments, to supporting its rapid growth.

The relationship between Microsoft and SAP already encompasses integrations between Office 365 and SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite, as well as SAP Fieldglass Vendor Management System, SAP Ariba and Concur solutions.

“Microsoft and SAP share a commitment to empowering digital transformation across every aspect of business,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president, worldwide commercial business, Microsoft.

“The combination of SAP’s market-leading, innovative human capital management solutions with Microsoft’s intelligent cloud will equip companies around the world to help maximise the potential and skills of their most valuable asset, their people.”

Mike Ettling, president of SAP SuccessFactors, said adoption of the solution has grown exponentially over the last two years, with 42 million users now using them.

“In selecting Azure, we will be able to expand our reach even further, with the reliability that is required of these mission-critical applications, and continue to innovate and enhance services to meet client needs across additional environments,” said Ettling.

The partnership also includes broad support for the SAP HANA platform on Azure, with Microsoft recently announcing the general availability of Azure large instances for the largest and most demanding SAP workloads.

The post SAP SuccessFactors to be offered on Azure appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

The partnership will encompass support for the SAP HANA platform, including S/4 HANA, deployed on Microsoft Azure; integration of Microsoft Office 365 and cloud solutions such as Concur, Fieldglass, SuccessFactors and Ariba from SAP; and provide enhanced management and security for custom SAP Fiori apps through Microsoft Intune.

These integrations will be available starting in the third quarter of 2016.

“At Microsoft, we are focused on empowering organisations to advance their digital transformations,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.

“Together with SAP, we are bringing new levels of integrations between our products that provide businesses with enhanced collaboration tools, new insights from data and a hyper-scale cloud to grow and seize new opportunities ahead.”

“We believe the IT industry will be shaped by breakthrough partnerships that unlock new productivity for customers beyond the boundaries of traditional platforms and applications,” said McDermott.

“SAP and Microsoft are working together to create an end-user experience built on unprecedented insight, convenience and agility. The certification of Microsoft Azure’s infrastructure services for SAP HANA along with the new integration between Microsoft Office 365 and cloud solutions from SAP are emblematic of this major paradigm shift for the enterprise.”

Choice on HANA maintenance, new hybrid and SME offerings

SAP also announced the latest release of the SAP HANA platform, which includes a new hybrid data management service in the cloud, an expanded maintenance strategy and a new offering for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs).

Among the features of the new platform are graph data processing, and capture and replay of live IT workloads. IT organisations will also be able to choose between consistent maintenance of their SAP HANA software environment for up to three years, or adopting SAP HANA innovations twice a year.

SAP has also announced an invitation-only beta program to allow certain customers to get hands-on access to hybrid data management services in the cloud, offering lower total cost of ownership by requiring less hardware infrastructure and rapidly integrating cloud and on-premise deployments.

“Our new beta program breaks down the traditional silos of on-premise and cloud, allowing customers to freely use both approaches for greater agility,” said Daniel Schneiss, senior vice president and global head, SAP HANA Platform and Databases, SAP.

“The true hybrid model allows organisations to test the impact of IT system change requirements in the cloud before committing the upgrades to an on-premise environment — ultimately promoting cost-effective IT management. We designed the program in close collaboration with our customers to shape the next wave of data management services in the cloud.”

SAP has also released a low price point version of SAP HANA – Edge edition – designed for SMEs. Supporting a 32 GB database and 128 GB of dynamic tiering, the new version is packaged with SAP Predictive Analytics.

Spring HANA Cloud Platform update announced

SAP also announced innovations to be included in the Spring 2016 edition of the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, such as an API hub; prebuilt extensions for applications based on SAP S/4HANA; enhancements to the SuccessFactors extension package; new lines of business and mobile apps from partners, such as IBM MobileFirst for iOS and MacroMicro Org Insight, and added services such as a beta edition of Cloud Foundry, and the cloud edition of SAP Fiori.

SAP is also offering a promotional program for June 2016 to enable customers to use the SAP HANA Cloud Platform for a significantly reduced price for 12 months. More information is available at https://hcp.sap.com/sapphire/promo.html.

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