IBM And SAP Buddy Up For Enterprise Cloud

The Cloud (c) Melpomene, Shutterstock 2013

SAP opens its Hana platform to potential new customers with its arrival on Big Blue’s Cloud

German enterprise software giant SAP AG has entered into a strategic cloud partnership with IBM.

The deal will SAP offers its Hana Enterprise Cloud offering on IBM’s Cloud infrastructure.

IaaS Partnership

SAP said the decision to use the IBM Cloud has essentially tripled its cloud capacity while giving its clients instant access to IBM’s global network of local cloud hubs in every major market. The service is available immediately to customers.

Both companies are touting the benefits of the deal, in that enterprise customers across the global will now be able to quickly access complex and demanding workloads, across different regulatory environments, but in a secure manner.

“We look forward to extending one of the longest and most successful partnerships in the IT industry,” said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. “The demand for SAP HANA and the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA in the cloud is tremendous and this global agreement with IBM heralds a new era of cloud collaboration. We anticipate customers will benefit from this collaboration and expansion of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.”

virginia rometty IBM CEO“This announcement is a significant milestone in the deployment of enterprise cloud,” said IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty. “It builds on our two companies’ long history of bringing innovation to business, and extends IBM’s position as the premier global cloud platform. Our secure, open, hybrid enterprise cloud platform will enable SAP clients to support new ways to work in an era shaped by Big Data, mobile and social.”

It should be noted that SAP software has been available on IBM’s cloud for a number of years now for joint customers. But the new deal will see IBM acting as an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider, with SAP running its Cloud platform and software as a private and managed cloud service, sitting on IBM’s IaaS.

IBM has not been afraid to make partnership deals of late. In the summer Big Blue signed a Cloud-based risk analysis deal with Chinese financial data firm Shanghai Wind Information, in an effort to circumvent a growing government crackdown on the use of foreign hardware and software.

It also signed a wide-ranging partnership with Apple, in which IBM will bring its cloud, analytics and mobile management services to iOS, and supply customers with iPhones and iPads running industry-specific applications.

Late Arrival

Yet IBM is a relative late comer to the Cloud arena. IBM bought SoftLayer in June 2013, and very quickly made it the centre of IBM’s cloud services offering.

This June, IBM announced the London data centre it promised as part of a $1.2 billion (£707m) cloud expansion plan centred on its SoftLayer subsidiary, to be built in Chessington.

That data centre is one of fifteen being constructed around the world, to offer SoftLayer customers local data services. These data centres will be linked to a network Point of Presence (PoP) in London, and to SoftLayer’s Amsterdam data centre.

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