IBM Drives Capabilities for SAP Software Workloads on Hybrid Cloud

IBM has announced new services, partnerships and capabilities designed to help clients accelerate their hybrid cloud journeys and deploy and run SAP software workloads wherever they choose – from the IBM public cloud to on-premises. These new offerings expand on IBM and SAP’s global alliance partnership to help clients optimise their SAP software workloads.

Global clients across industries are choosing to run their SAP software workloads on IBM Cloud, including Peruvian construction company Cementos Pacasmayo, Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP), the world's largest Coca-Cola bottler based on revenue, and Italian fashion footwear retailer Primadonna Collection. Reinforcing IBM’s commitment to   investing in a hybrid cloud ecosystem, IBM and SAP are also expanding their ecosystem of GSI and ISV partners, to include Syniti, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tech Mahindra and others, to help simplify and speed how clients run their SAP software workloads on IBM Cloud.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, enterprises around the world are looking to modernize their operations. According to a recent IBM IBV study,   64 percent of executives surveyed now plan to shift to a more cloud-based business model over the next two years. With this acceleration comes the need for deploying complex enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business process workloads in a way that provides clients with the industry's highest levels of security. Based on IBM Hyper Protect Crypto Service, the only service in the industry built on FIPS 140-2 Level 4-certified hardware.

"The global pandemic has seen a year's worth of digital transformation efforts with the acceleration of cloud adoption compressed into months,” said  Harish Grama, GM, public cloud, IBM. “Clients across industries are looking to shift to cloud and this is the core focus of our collaboration with SAP. This is all done through an open hybrid cloud architecture so our clients have a choice in how they approach their digital transformation, guided by the industry expertise needed to be successful in their journey.”

Commenting on the partnership expansion,   Shailesh Agarwal, VP, Strategy & Cloud Platform, IBM India/South Asia, said, "We work with many clients in India who prefer  to run SAP business applications.  Together we have supported clients to modernsze their ERP systems and business processes based on an open, hybrid cloud approach. The expansion of IBM's strategic partnership with SAP by launching  new services is designed to speed a secure adoption of hybrid cloud capabilities for clients running SAP workloads."

IBM launches new partnerships, services and capabilities to support SAP software deployments:

·      IBM is expanding its SAP ecosystem of GSI and ISV partners with the addition of Syniti, TCS, Blue IT, H.T. High Technology and Tech Mahindra. SAP also sells the SAP Advanced Data Migration application by Syniti. Syniti is a SAP partner offering solution extensions to SAP software. IBM and TCS are engaging in joint go-to-market initiatives focused on accelerating transformation journeys with TCS industry solutions and extensions for large enterprises.

·        New offerings through IBM Services: To help ease and speed clients’ cloud deployment processes, services are powered by IBM to help clients deploy to SAP S/4HANA. IBM Services offers clients a hybrid option to allow customers to selectively deploy applications to the new cloud-based platform.

·        New SAP certifications: IBM recently acquired several new SAP certifications – adding to its portfolio of more than 100 solutions tested and certified by SAP -- to allow customers more choices around where and how to run their SAP software workloads. These will allow clients running SAP software workloads on an IBM infrastructure to access SAP applications in an optimized, quality-controlled way. The new certifications include:

o        IBM Power Systems Virtual Server – helps customers modernize their SAP software workloads with the option to run them in a virtualised infrastructure hosted in IBM data centers.

o        2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based servers on virtual private cloud -- enterprises can grow business value with faster data insights from SAP certified instances on IBM Cloud with Intel technologies.

o        NetApp certified storage for SAP workloads – gives clients running large and highly complex enterprise workloads access to ultra-high performance storage. IBM is now offering up to 180,000 IOPS of NetApp-based storage in the cloud – previously available only on-premises – to deliver high levels of performance, resilience and reliability.

As part of their global alliance partnership, IBM and SAP have worked with hundreds of clients across the globe on more than 5,500 individual projects to modernize their systems and business processes based on an open, hybrid cloud approach. IBM brings deep industry expertise and experience gained from 37,000 SAP-certified professionals, and is one of the most awarded SAP partners, named an SAP Pinnacle Award winner 36 times.