SAP again selects Sun servers, storage to run mission-critical applications in $8.5m upgrade deal

SAP has again selected Sun Microsystems as the platform of choice for its US-based data centre in an upgrade deal valued at $8.5 million.

The company is upgrading from its current Solaris Operating Environment to new UltraSPARC III-based Sun Fire servers and is using Sun StorEdge 9960 technology for its storage requirements. SAP has also selected Sun Professional Services to handle all migration and implementation services.

Daryl Blundell, solutions sales manager at Sun Microsystems SA, says he is not surprised at SAP's decision to select Sun as a partner.

"When looking at the leading supplier of Unix in all aspects - revenue, systems, operating systems, storage, developer community and market share - there is no other vendor that can compare with Sun.

"Sun's commitment to Solaris and Sparc spans more than 10 years of development around the single operating system and CU architecture. Who would you trust with your internal systems? Somebody who has already got it right or still trying to get it right?" says Blundell.

"SAP's decision of selecting Sun as a partner to run its internal systems makes sense," he adds.

Jonathan Pletschke, consulting manager, technology at SAP Africa, says the company's US operation is almost as big as the German head office and its decision to deploy Sun architecture shows commitment to the infrastructure. "This decision by SAP in using these technologies is indicative of Sun's strength in the data centre environment."

Based on Sun's proven scalability, reliability and price/performance advantages, SAP is utilising Sun's Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris OE) and the UltraSPARC III platform to run its mission-critical SAP R/3 applications for the Americas, including HR, Payroll and Web Services.

Sun will also handle additional processing services for SAP worldwide. "To meet the levels of application access and performance demanded by end-users today, Sun offers the right combination of hardware and software," says Pletschke.

Potential SAP and Sun customers are encouraged to visit the SAP America data centre site for a real-world demonstration of the SAP-on-Sun implementation, illustrating how Sun's Solaris OE delivers a more reliable and highly scalable environment to meet their business-critical SAP application needs.

"SAP has maintained a historically successful relationship with Sun Microsystems both from an internal perspective having used Sun systems and storage in our data centre for a number of years, and from a customer perspective with a large number of customers running our applications on Sun systems," says Pletschke.

As close business partners SAP knows that Sun systems and the Solaris OE can handle the demands of its dynamic data centre environment. SAP has placed its trust in Sun to be scalable, reliable and flexible enough to adapt to the requirements of its next-generation e-business applications to come.

Currently, worldwide Sun revenues for SAP implementations exceed $400 million, illustrating the overwhelming success of the Sun-on-SAP solution.

"This deal represents a major win over many of Sun's key competitors and makes SAP's decision to upgrade its data centre with Sun Fire servers and Sun StorEdge systems a true testament to their ability to provide the high availability and massive scalability generally required by SAP application users," says Daryl Blundell at Sun SA.

With this new implementation, joint prospective customers will have an in-depth view of how SAP and Sun together deliver superior collaborative enterprise e-business solutions to customers.

Utilising Sun's Professional Services team of dedicated SAP migration experts, SAP America is able to swiftly upgrade its data centre with a complete, customised and production-ready environment for its mission-critical enterprise applications.

Sun Enterprise Services will also be providing SAP America with 24x7 support under a four-year Platinum Contract.