The company is deepening its partnerships with EMC and VMware to improve business agility and scale efficiencies.
As cloud computing and virtualization rapidly evolve, business
management software specialist SAP (NYSE: SAP) is working in a
three-way strategic collaboration with partners EMC (NYSE: EMC) and
VMware to develop tools and services that make it possible for
businesses to adopt cloud and run SAP systems in cloud infrastructures
with increasing levels of automation. The company is deepening its
partnerships with EMC and VMware to improve business agility and scale
efficiencies by taking advantage of two transformational technologies:
cloud computing and in-memory technology.
SAP said it would work closely with EMC and VMware and is currently
evaluating options to deliver an end-to-end stack optimized for running
SAP applications. Together, the three companies plan to invest and
integrate application, database, virtualization, management and
information infrastructure technologies, as well as deliver new
services to support and accelerate business' journey to the cloud.
Additionally, consulting services and global support offerings from
SAP are planned to focus on helping businesses assess, design,
implement and optimize a virtualization and cloud strategy. As a part
of this broader engagement, SAP and VMware expect to deliver an
extended support program by integrating a configuration and health
check for SAP systems running on VMware cloud infrastructure into SAP
GoingLive Check services and SAP EarlyWatch Alert service. The
development should help customers gain a better ability to monitor and
manage their SAP systems running on the VMware platform, the company
said.
"We are co-innovating with industry leaders in our vast ecosystem to
deliver openness and choice to customers, making it much easier for
them to adopt cloud technologies," said Vishal Sikka, member of the SAP
executive board for technology and innovation. "Market observers agree
that SAP's next-generation architecture is truly bringing the power of
these disruptive innovations to our customers without disruption. Our
work with EMC and VMware demonstrates this. It is possible to bring
these benefits to our customers while working together with partners in
a spirit of openness, trust and co-innovation."
SAP also intends to drive an improvement in the manageability of
enterprise applications in private clouds by evaluating the delivery of
VMware vSphere-based virtual appliances, orchestrated by declarative
models in the TOSCA language recently submitted to OASIS for
standardization. SAP, VMware and EMC plan to collaborate to develop new
automation and management tools that can interpret and execute the
TOSCA models provided by SAP. EMC and SAP will also explore
collaboration opportunities around the SAP Hana platform to deliver
high-end system availability and EMC's automated storage tiering
technologies (FAST).
"With virtualization now pervasive throughout the enterprise and
baseline applications deployed, SAP customers are turning their
attention to cloud computing strategies for mission-critical
environments, " said Pat Gelsinger, president and COO of information
infrastructure products at EMC. "EMC, SAP and VMware are working
together to accelerate SAP customers' journey to hybrid cloud
computing. By integrating technologies and delivering new services we
hope to both improve business agility and lower IT costs for our mutual
customers."
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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