RISE with SAP on Microsoft Azure now available to business in Africa

Christopher Tredger
By Christopher Tredger
Johannesburg, 15 Sep 2023
Kholiwe Makhohliso, MD, SAP Southern Africa.
Kholiwe Makhohliso, MD, SAP Southern Africa.

SAP and Microsoft have extended their long-term partnership to deliver the RISE with SAP cloud ERP solution hosted on Azure to busineses in Africa.

RISE with SAP is a bundled offering of software, infrastructure and services to help customers move their on-premises ERP data to the cloud.

According to the two software giants, RISE with SAP on Microsoft Cloud offers companies an accelerated migration path to cloud-based enterprise software such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Benefits include having a trusted cloud provider, access to partners and skills from a global partner ecosystem and a service level agreement for 99.7% application uptime.

Kholiwe Makhohliso, MD for Southern Africa at SAP, says by leveraging RISE with SAP, companies of all sizes can "take full advantage of business-transformation-as-a-service to power their digital transformation and innovation efforts."

The SAP and Microsoft partnership builds on a 30-year history of collaboration and co-innovation. Makhohliso says they enable organisations to run their enterprise applications in the cloud "with easy integration, a wealth of advanced services, and high levels of security and compliance." 

Since its launch in 2021, Rise with SAP has gained over 3 000 customers, including Microsoft itself, HP,  Standard Chartered and Standard Bank. Vanessa Padiachee, group CIO for corporate function at Standard Bank, says partnering with both SAP and Microsoft in the bank's cloud journey "made complete business sense".