Maryanne Baines is a titan in the cloud consultancy space, renowned for her deep dives into hyperscaler ecosystems and her strategic oversight of enterprise-level digital transformations. With decades of experience evaluating how heavy-duty tech stacks integrate across diverse industries, she has become a go-to authority for organizations navigating the complexities of hybrid environments. Today, we sit down with her to deconstruct the architectural shift behind Nokia’s massive migration to a unified SAP S/4HANA environment on Microsoft Azure. We explore the strategic weight of the “RISE with SAP” methodology, the transition from fragmented legacy systems to a “clean core” philosophy, and how a global leader manages the delicate balance between internal modernization and its role as a critical infrastructure supplier.
Nokia is embarking on a massive journey to consolidate multiple fragmented ERP systems into a single S/4HANA landscape. From an architectural perspective, what are the primary challenges of harmonizing functions like finance, logistics, and global trade under one roof?
The primary challenge lies in the sheer gravity of the data and the historical weight of legacy customizations that typically accumulate over decades. When a company like Nokia, which has used SAP for many years, decides to move finance, logistics, and warehouse management into a unified S/4HANA landscape, they aren’t just moving files; they are re-engineering their entire operating model. You have to consider how SAP Master Data Governance and Extended Warehouse Management will interact in real-time without the friction of the old, siloed systems. By the end of 2025, when this agreement was finalized, it became clear that the goal was to create a seamless flow for order fulfillment and trade services. Achieving this requires a rigorous alignment of applications and data structures to ensure that functions like “advanced available-to-promise” can accurately check product availability across the globe instantly.
The decision to use the RISE with SAP methodology on Microsoft Azure shifts a significant amount of management responsibility to the vendors. How does this managed service model change the internal IT dynamics for a company of this scale?
This shift is a fundamental change in how IT teams allocate their intellectual capital, moving them away from “keeping the lights on” toward true business innovation. Under the RISE with SAP framework, SAP actually manages the Azure subscriptions and the underlying resources, which means Nokia’s internal teams no longer have to worry about the granular details of high-availability or disaster-recovery architectures. This allows the organization to adopt what SAP calls a “clean core” approach, which is vital for maintaining agility in a fast-paced market. By keeping the ERP system close to the standard version and limiting heavy, custom-coded modifications, Nokia can implement updates and new features much faster. It effectively turns the ERP from a static back-office anchor into a dynamic platform that can evolve alongside their business-critical enterprise workloads.
Nokia selected Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider for this transformation, yet they also have a separate agreement to supply Microsoft with data center hardware. How do these overlapping roles as both a customer and a supplier influence the technical partnership?
It creates a fascinating, high-stakes ecosystem of mutual dependence where both companies are deeply invested in each other’s success. On one hand, you have the November 2024 agreement where Nokia supplies routers and switches to Azure data centers across more than 30 countries to bolster Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. On the other hand, Nokia is now relying on that very same infrastructure to run its most sensitive internal ERP processes, including global trade services and finance. This “virtuous cycle” of partnership means that the technical expertise and support provided through the joint RISE with SAP on Azure initiative are bolstered by a deep, hardware-level understanding of the platform. It’s a sophisticated relationship where the scale, security, and performance Nokia requires for its ERP are directly supported by the network equipment they themselves helped build.
While details on specific AI use cases remain limited in this agreement, the mention of the SAP Business AI Platform suggests a long-term vision. How should an enterprise prepare its data landscape today to take advantage of these AI-enabled functions as they are rolled out?
Preparation for AI begins with the “clean core” strategy we discussed, because AI-enabled functions require high-quality, standardized data to provide any real value. As Nokia gradually adopts these tools, they will likely focus on operational outcomes in areas like order fulfillment and logistics where predictive analytics can make a massive difference. We are already seeing the momentum for this in Nokia’s financials, where their AI and Cloud net sales grew by an impressive 49% in the first quarter of 2026. With EUR 1 billion in orders generated in that sector alone, the pressure is on to ensure the internal ERP can support that level of growth. By integrating SAP S/4HANA Cloud for advanced ATP now, they are essentially building the nervous system that will eventually carry the AI “intelligence” across their entire global supply chain.
What is your forecast for the “clean core” movement in the enterprise sector over the next few years?
I expect the “clean core” philosophy to move from a “best practice” to an absolute mandate for any company that wants to survive the AI revolution. We are moving away from the era of “monolithic” ERPs where companies spent millions on bespoke customizations that eventually became technical debt and prevented them from upgrading. In the next few years, we will see a massive surge in organizations migrating to managed environments like RISE on Azure specifically to shed this debt and regain operational speed. This shift will allow enterprises to treat their ERP like a living organism that receives monthly AI injections and feature updates without breaking the system. Ultimately, the companies that thrive will be those that prioritize standard software versions and leverage cloud-native tools to handle their unique business needs through extensions rather than core modifications.
