SNP Group. Of the many driving forces behind business transformation, SNP Group says there are "two major events that are impacting companies across the globe: the shift to SAP S/4HANA and COVID-19 disrupting business operations and forcing a mass accelerated adoption of cloud."

SNP explains it maintains "close partnerships with a number of vendors, including Microsoft, that they rely on to help transition customers to cloud and S/4HANA as seamlessly as possible," and naturally, SNP sees great opportunity within APAC, additionally identifying Australia and New Zealand as a key driver for the region.

As such, SNP notes its focus on growing its footprint in A/NZ and leveraging the successes achieved in this market to the wider APAC region, as well as further developing its partnership with Microsoft to help drive software-centric and partner-centric transformations for local customers.

Naturally, its list of over 12,500 successfully completed projects, many of which you can read about here, are a great example of its prowess, capability and power, with its CrystalBridge transformation platform that uses a blend of services and automation to enable SNP's magic and with its BLUEFIELD approach of SAP S/4HANA integration to upgrade and migrate to S/4 in a single go-live project, combining the best of greenfield and brownfield approaches.

Whether it is learning "Why digital transformation must start with a clear, defined mission statement,” or its partnerships with Microsoft and other hyperscalers such as AWS and Google Cloud, or whether it is working with partners such as PwC, Accenture, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), IBM, and many others, the company means business, and wants to help digitally transform yours.

One of its aforementioned partners is Microsoft and its Azure Cloud platform. Joining me and SNP Group’s MD & CEO for the APAC/ME regions, Gerald Faust, for the video interview is Luka Debeljak, the GM of Azure Infrastructure, Greater Asia Region, Microsoft.

Debeljak notes Gartner prediction that “80% of Enterprises will shut down their data centres and move to public cloud by 2025,” and how this provides “exponential business growth opportunities, and at Microsoft Asia, I am leading the team that is helping customers with their journey to our cloud platform: Microsoft Azure."

He also states that he and his team "strives to holistically engage customers, help them realise the benefits of the public cloud platform, consult them on their cloud journey, and support them with their technical adoption plans", and how his team is "specifically focused on complex cloud workloads (SAP, HPC, hybrid cloud, advanced networking and migration...) and in many cases also spearhead business development efforts by landing new Azure services across various markets in Asia and enabling partners with their go-to market efforts."

So, to learn more about the ultra-modern digital transformation that SNP Group and its partner Azure Infrastructure offer, let alone with its numerous other top-tier global and local partners, Gerald and Luka joined me for a discussion on video, which you'll see below, after which is a summary of the topics we spoke about:

• I started by introducing Gerald and Luka, and welcomed them to the program.
  
  
• Gerald then took us through SNP Group's founding in 1994, and recapped why SNP Group is "the data transformation company", and what it offers to the market in 2021, just a few short weeks away from 2022.
  
  
• Luka also shared some information about Azure Infrastructure and its offerings to the market, too.
  
  
• Noting the massive business and life disruption caused by COVID, and the digital acceleration we've seen in cloud adoption and more, Gerald shared he we would characterise the driving forces behind business transformation for SNP Group and its customers, with Luka sharing his views, too.
  
  
• With SNP maintaining close partnerships with a number of vendors including Microsoft, I asked both Gerald and Luka to tell us about their partnership and the things SNP Group and Azure Infrastructure's customers are achieving together.
  
  
• We looked at some of the software and partner-centric transformations for local customers they wanted to highlight, and answered my question over what else we should know about SNP Group, SAP, S/4HANA, Microsoft and Azure.
  
  
• I then asked both to share their views on how both companies might evolve over the next couple of years, and what the industry might look like in 2030.
  
  
• They both shared memories of their first computers, the best piece of advice they'd each received in life to help them get where they are today, and their final messages for iTWire readers and viewers, and to their current and future customers and partners.

So, please watch the video interview above with Gerald and Luka to learn more!