Introduction
Today at Sapphire, we made an array of exciting announcements that strengthen the Microsoft-SAP partnership. I'd like to share additional details that complement these announcements as well as give updates on further product innovation. With over three decades of close collaboration and co-innovation with SAP, we continue to deliver RISE with SAP on Azure and integrations with SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, allowing customers to innovate with services from both SAP BTP and Microsoft. Our new integrations enhance security through multi-layer cloud protection for SAP and non-SAP workloads, while our AI and Copilot platform provides unified analytics to improve decision-making for customers.
Samsung C&T's Engineering & Construction Group is a leader in both the domestic and international construction industries. It recently embarked on the ERP Cloud transformation with RISE with SAP on Azure to enhance its existing ERP System, which is optimized for local environment, to support the global business expansion by transitioning to RISE with SAP on Azure.
“Samsung C&T’s successful transition to RISE with SAP on Azure serves as a best practice for other Samsung Group affiliates considering cloud-based ERP adoption. It also demonstrates that even highly localized operations can be integrated into a cloud-based environment that supports global standards.”
Aidan Nam, Former Vice President, Corporate System Team, Samsung C&T
SAP on Azure also offers AI, Data, and Security solutions that enhance customers' investments and help unlock valuable information stored within ERP systems. When Danfoss, a global leader in energy-efficient solutions, began searching for new security tools for business-critical SAP infrastructure, it quickly leveraged Microsoft Sentinel solution for SAP applications, to find potential malicious activity and deploy multilayered protection around its expanding core infrastructure thereby achieving scalable security visibility.
“With Microsoft Sentinel and the Microsoft Sentinel solution for SAP applications, we’ve centralized our security logs and gained a single pane of glass with which we can monitor our SAP systems,”
Kevin Cai, IT Specialist in the Security Operations Center at Danfoss
We are pleased to announce additional SAP on Azure product updates and details to further help customers innovate on the most trusted cloud for SAP.
- Simplified onboarding of SAP BTP estate with the new agentless data connector for Microsoft Sentinel Solution for SAP
- Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for SAP applications is now fully SAP HANA aware offering unparalleled protection for SAP S/4HANA environments.
- Public Preview of SAP OData as a knowledge source making it easy to add content from SAP systems to Copilot Studio.
- The new storage and memory optimized Medium Memory Mbv3 VM Series (Mbsv3 and Mbdsv3) is now SAP certified, delivering compute capabilities with IOPs performance of up to 650K.
- The Mv3 Very High Memory series now features an expanded range of SAP-certified VM sizes, spanning from 24TB to 32TB of memory and scaling up to 1,792 vCPUs.
- General Availability of SAP ASE (Sybase) database backup support on Azure Backup.
- SAP Deployment Automation Framework now supports validation of SAP deployments on Azure with public preview of SAP Testing Automation Framework (STAF), automating high availability testing process to ensure SAP systems reliability and availability.
- The Inventory Checks for SAP Workbook in Azure Center for SAP Tools now comes with New Dashboards for Enhanced Visibility.
Let's dive into the summary of product updates and services.
Extend and Innovate
Microsoft Sentinel Solution for SAP
Business applications pose a unique security challenge with highly sensitive information that can make them prime targets for attacks. Attackers can compromise newly discovered unprotected SAP systems within three hours. Microsoft offers best in class security solutions support for SAP business applications with Microsoft Sentinel.
The new agentless data connector is our first party solution that re-uses customers’ SAP BTP estate for drastically simplified onboarding. In addition, new strategic third-party solutions have been added to the Microsoft Sentinel content hub by SAP SE and other ISVs making Sentinel the most effective SIEM for SAP workloads:
- SAP LogServ: RISE, addon for SAP ECS internal logs -infra, database, etc. (Generally Available)
- SAP Enterprise Threat Detection (Preview)
- SecurityBridge (Generally Available)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for SAP applications
We are thrilled to announce a major milestone made possible through the deep collaboration between SAP and Microsoft: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) is now the first NextGen antivirus solution that is SAP HANA aware. This joint innovation allows organizations like COFCO International to protect their SAP landscapes seamlessly and securely, without disruption.
This groundbreaking capability sets MDE apart in the cybersecurity landscape, offering unparalleled protection for SAP S/4HANA environments — all without interfering with mission-critical operations.
Thanks to close engineering collaboration, MDE has been carefully trained to recognize SAP HANA binaries and data files. Specialized detection training ensures MDE accurately identifies these critical components and treats them as known, trusted entities — combining world-class cybersecurity with SAP-native awareness.
API Management
SAP Principal Propagation (for simplicity often also referred to as SSO) is the gold standard for app integration – especially when it comes to 3rd party apps such as Microsoft Power Platform. We proudly announce that SSO is now password-less with Azure. Microsoft Entra ID Managed Identity works seamlessly with SAP workloads such as RISE, SuccessFactors and more. Cut your maintenance efforts for SAP SSO in half and become more secure in doing so.
Find more details on this blog.
Teams Integration
In addition to the availability of the SAP Joule agent in Teams and Copilot, the “classic” integration of Teams with products like SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud is available as well. What started as “Share links to the business context (apps) in chats” has now evolved to Adaptive Card-based Loop components, Chat, Voice and Video calls integrations in contact cards and To Dos in Teams.
Users of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud can stay in their flow of work and access their business-critical data from with SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud or connected Teams applications.
Copilot Studio – SAP OData Support in Knowledge Sources
Knowledge Sources in Copilot Studio enhance generative answers by using data from Power Platform, Dynamics 365, websites, and external systems. This enables agents to offer relevant information and insights to customers.
Today, we announce the Public Preview of SAP OData as a new knowledge source. Customers and partners can now add content from SAP systems to Copilot Studio. Users can query the latest status of Sales Orders in SAP S/4HANA, view pending Invoices from ECC, or query information about employees from SAP SuccessFactors.
All you need to do is connect to the relevant SAP OData services as a knowledge source in Copilot Studio. Copilot Studio will not duplicate the data but analyze the data structure and create the relevant queries on demand whenever a user asks a related question. The user context is always kept ensuring roles and permissions in the SAP system are taken into account.
Head over to product documentation to read more and get started.
New SAP Certified Compute and Storage
Thousands of organizations today trust the Azure M-series virtual machines to run some of their largest mission-critical SAP workloads, including SAP HANA.
Very High Memory Mv3 VM Series
We are excited to unveil updates to our Mv3 Very High Memory (VHM) series with the addition of a 24TB VM, a testament to our ongoing commitment to innovation. Building on our past successes, this series integrates customer insights and industry advancements to deliver unmatched performance and efficiency. It features advanced capabilities for diverse workloads, powered by the 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8490H processors, which offer faster processing speeds and better price-performance. You can learn more about our new Mv3 VHM here link. Below is the summary of the recently released Mv3 VHM SKUs.
- (New) Standard_M896ixds_24_v3: Designed for S/4HANA workloads, with 896 cores and SMT disabled for optimal SAP performance. It is SAP certified for OLTP (S/4HANA) Scale-Up/4-node Scale-Out, and OLAP (BW4H) Scale-Up operations.
- Standard_M896ixds_32_v3: Designed for S/4HANA workloads, with 896 cores and SMT disabled for optimal SAP performance. It is SAP certified for OLTP (S/4HANA) Scale-Up/4-node Scale-Out, and OLAP (BW4H) Scale-Up operations.
- Standard_M1792ixds_32_v3: Designed for S/4HANA workloads, with 1792 cores. It is SAP certified for OLTP (S/4HANA) Scale-Up/2-node Scale-Out, and OLAP (BW4H) Scale-Up operations.
The new VM Size provides robust memory and CPU power, ensuring exceptional handling of large-scale in-memory databases. With 200 Gbps bandwidth and adaptable storage options such as Premium Disk and Azure NetApp Files (ANF), these VMs deliver speed and flexibility for SAP HANA configurations.
Medium Memory Mbv3 VM Series
The new Mbv3 series (Mbsv3 and Mbdsv3), released in September 2024, featuring both storage-optimized and memory-optimized are now certified as SAP certified compute VM as of March 2025. The new Mbv3 VMs are based on the 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, scale for workloads up to 4TB, and deliver with NVMe interface for higher remote disk storage performance. It offers up to 650,000 IOPS providing a 5x improvement in network throughput over the previous M-series families and up to 10GBps of remote disk storage bandwidth, providing a 2.5x improvement in remote storage bandwidth over the previous M-series families.
Details of SAP Certified Compute Mbv3 VMs are here link.
SAP on Azure Software Products and Services
Azure Backup for SAP
We are pleased to announce the general availability of backup support for SAP ASE database running on Azure virtual machines using Azure Backup. SAP ASE databases are mission critical workloads that require a low recovery point objective (RPO) and a fast recovery time objective (RTO). This backup service offers zero-infrastructure backup and restore of SAP ASE databases with Azure Backup enterprise management capabilities.
Key benefits of SAP ASE database backup
- 15-minute RPO with point-in-time recovery capability.
- Striping to increase the backup throughput between ASE Virtual Machine (VM) and Recovery services vault
- Support for cost-effective backup policies and ASE Native compression to lower backup storage costs.
- Multiple databases restore options including Alternate Location Restore (System refresh), Original Location Restore and Restore as Files.
- Recovery Services Vault that provides security capabilities like Immutability, Soft Delete and Multiuser Authentication.
SAP Testing Automation Framework (STAF)
While deployment automation frameworks like SAP Deployment Automation Framework (SDAF) have streamlined system implementation, the critical testing phase has largely remained a manual bottleneck – until now. We are introducing the SAP Testing Automation Framework (STAF), a new framework (currently in public preview) that automates high-availability (HA) testing for SAP deployments on Azure. STAF currently focuses on testing HA configurations for SAP HANA and SAP Central Services. Importantly, STAF is a cross-distribution solution supporting both SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), reflecting our commitment to serve the diverse SAP on Azure customer base..
STAF uses modular architecture with Ansible for orchestration and custom modules for validation. It ensures business continuity by validating configurations and recovery mechanisms before systems go live, reducing risks, boosting efficiency, and ensuring compliance with standards.
You can start leveraging its capabilities today by visiting the project on GitHub at https://github.com/azure/sap-automation-qa. To know more about the framework please visit our blog: Introducing SAP Testing Automation Framework (STAF)
Azure Center for SAP solutions Tools and Frameworks
We are pleased to introduce three new dashboards for Azure Inventory Checks for SAP, enhancing visibility into Azure infrastructure and security. These dashboards offer a more structured, visual approach to monitoring health and compliance.
Here are the new dashboards at a glance
- Summary Dashboard: Offers a snapshot of your Azure landscape with results from 21 key infrastructure checks critical for SAP workloads. It highlights your environment’s readiness and identifies areas needing attention.
- Extended Report Dashboard: This view presents the Inventory Checks for SAP in a user-friendly dashboard layout, with enhanced navigation and filtering.
- AzSecurity Dashboard: This dashboard presents 10 key Azure security checks to provide insights into configurations and identify vulnerabilities, ensuring compliance and safety.
These dashboards transform raw data into actionable insights, allowing customers to quickly assess SAP infrastructure on Azure, identify misconfigurations, track improvements, and prepare confidently for audits and reviews.
SAP + Microsoft Co-Innovations
Microsoft and SAP are continually innovating to facilitate business transformation for our customers. This year, we are strengthening our partnership in several areas including Business Suite, AI, Data, Cloud ERP, Security, SAP BTP, among others. Please ensure that you check out our blog to learn more about the significant announcements we are making this year at SAP Sapphire.
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