ORLANDO, Fla. – SAP sounded a conciliatory tone in launching its new Embrace reference architecture that focuses on stripping away complexity that has hindered enterprises from fully embracing their cloud journey.

Embrace is a platform that places a framework around an enterprise’s move to SAP’s S/4HANA in the cloud. It includes recommendations on platforms, software, services, and infrastructure from SAP, preferred hyperscale providers, or an enterprise’s own preferred service partner. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and system integrators collaborated on the project.

The platform includes four components: a set of foundational services running on SAP Cloud Platform to support the integration and extension of SAP systems to third-party applications running in the cloud or on premises; a technical blueprint that includes the required SAP and hyperscaler components to run the customer’s applications; a guide into the S/4HANA platform generated by hyperscalers and system integrators; and a set of services boldly dubbed “Max Services” to support customers running a cloud or hybrid infrastructure on a hyperscaler.

Jennifer Morgan, president of SAP’s Cloud Business Group, explained during a roundtable discussion at this week’s SAP Sapphire event in Orlando, Florida, that the focus of the work was to smooth a path into SAP’s S/4HANA cloud platform that has grown increasingly complex and daunting for an enterprise’s IT department. She explained that customers today were piecing a lot of this work together themselves, but that with Embrace customers are getting something that is “much needed and probably a little bit later than many needed. The market is just moving very fast.”

“It’s more a frustration around spending time with customers talking about the wrong things,” Morgan said of the reasoning behind the new project. “The natural result will be that customers will understand the path more clearly.”

Microsoft is just one partner in the program, but was highlighted with a seat at the roundtable.

That seat was occupied by Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business, who echoed Morgan’s take on the genesis of Embrace. “In the name of providing great optionality we have learned we have too much variability and too many options,” he said.

Morgan explained that based on SAP’s initial data, it wanted to “cut its teeth and work with Microsoft. … They have put in the work on this.”

“In the past we were going to our customers with too many specific projects,” Morgan said. “To have that SAP and Microsoft Azure reference architecture it makes it more clear for our customers.”

SAP and Microsoft have been working together recently on a number of similar initiatives. One is the Open Data Initiative that was initially announced in 2017. That program provides a blueprint for the sharing of data between the companies’ respective applications and platforms. The main goal is to lower barriers between customer experience management silos.

Outside of the named cloud providers, Morgan said that SAP’s system integrator partners were on board with the program. She explained that the reference architecture allowed those vendors to layer on their own intellectual property on top of the platform.

“If a customer’s world is all SAP and they want SAP to drive it, we have engineered it to work that way,” Althoff added. Or, he continued, a third-party system integrator like Accenture can run the program using an abstracted control plane. “We have designed it to run both ways.”

The Embrace components are scheduled to roll out over the next several months with full availability of the project expected by year-end.