SAP drives cloud strategy

cloud-based services during the Sapphire conference, in Madrid, PCWorld reports.

Much attention will likely focus on HANA, SAP's in-memory database, which the vendor intends to weave through its software portfolio. For one, SAP will announce the availability of its Business Warehouse software running on top of HANA, said executive board member and technology chief Vishal Sikka in an interview prior to the conference.

As a next step to extensive and ongoing innovation with partners to unleash the benefits of pervasive virtualisation and cloud computing, SAP will work closely with EMC and VMware, and is currently evaluating options to deliver an end-to-end stack optimised for running mission-critical SAP applications, Market Watch says.

Together, the three companies plan to invest and integrate best-of-breed application, database, virtualisation, management and information infrastructure technologies, as well as deliver new services to support and accelerate customers' journey to the cloud. Additionally, consulting services and global support offerings from SAP are planned to focus on helping customers accurately assess, design, implement and optimise a virtualisation and cloud strategy, with minimal impact on the business.

As 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. Customers should gain a better ability to monitor and manage their SAP systems running on the VMware platform.