In order to deliver expanded support options to companies
running their business operations on SAP applications and the SUSE Linux
Enterprise operating system, Novell and SAP announced an extension of their
long-standing relationship. In a move that will help meet the growing demand
for SUSE Linux Enterprise and provide support for the open source community,
Novell and SAP are planning to offer enhanced options for customers who choose
to run open source.
As part of this initiative, the companies will work together
to enable SAP's enterprise applications to work with SUSE Linux Enterprise and
Novell's virtualization and identity management technologies to provide new
data center options for customers. In addition, the companies plan to optimize
SUSE Linux Enterprise for SAP's data center infrastructure requirements,
further promote SAP Business All-in-One solutions based on SUSE Linux
Enterprise and collaborate within the SAP Enterprise Services Community program
to help strengthen customers related to the SAP governance, risk and compliance
(GRC) practices. As a result, companies of all sizes will be enabled to run
more of their mission-critical operations on SUSE Linux Enterprise, helping to
further lower the total cost of ownership (TCO).
“From our entrance into the Linux market, our focus has been
on delivering Linux for mission-critical deployments in the data center, and
this relationship with SAP is a key step forward in that effort,” said Ron
Hovsepian, Novell president and CEO. “We can now offer one of the best data
center platforms and application stacks on the market, bar none. Extending this
cooperation will make this a real game-changing relationship in the
marketplace. We are excited to cooperate with SAP to deliver mission-critical
applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise, along with top virtualization and
security management capabilities.”
“As Linux continues to grow as a mainstream platform for
supporting business applications, it becomes increasingly important for
collaborative relationships between application software vendors such as SAP
and infrastructure software vendors such as Novell,” said Al Gillen, research
vice president, System Software at IDC. “This development, support and
go-to-market effort should make it possible for SAP and Novell to deliver a
better-integrated and more technically complete solution than users could
achieve by assembling the same components on their own today. The end result is
a lower barrier to adoption for SAP applications, particularly for midmarket
companies, and an expanded addressable market for SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server.”
New Virtualization Offerings Provide Data Center
Options for Customers
The broad agreement between Novell and SAP is designed to enable
SAP's enterprise applications to work with SUSE Linux Enterprise and Novell's
virtualization and security management technologies to provide powerful new
data center options for customers. Working under the agreement, Novell plans,
supported by SAP, to optimize SUSE Linux Enterprise for SAP's data center
infrastructure requirements, create an SAP Business All-in-One solution based
on SUSE Linux Enterprise for small businesses and midsize companies, provide
virtualization management for the Adaptive Computing Controller tool from SAP
with Novell ZENworks Orchestrator, and integrate Novell's identity and security
management solutions with the SAP GRC Access Control application.
Novell and SAP will integrate ZENworks Orchestrator,
Novell's cross-platform virtualization management solution, with the Adaptive
Computing Controller tool within the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. This
integration will increase virtualization options for SAP customers and
therefore can support the reduction of costs and allows for optimized
deployment of SAP applications.
Optimized SUSE Linux Enterprise Provides Open Platform for
SAP Applications
As part of their expanded relationship, Novell will work
with SAP to create an optimized version of SUSE Linux Enterprise that will
bring even more value to SAP customers. Through a variety of engagements –
including SAP Hosting services, the SAP Developer Network (SDN) community, SAP
Business ByDesign and SAP Business All-in-One solutions – Novell and SAP have
made SAP applications available on SUSE Linux Enterprise. As a result,
customers may see a reduced complexity of application deployments and are
enabled to lower costs. SAP suggests SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to its
customers with SAP Business All-in-One as a recommended Linux platform.
SAP is also using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (64-bit
version) as one of the platforms for its SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence
Accelerator (SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator) software, an appliance jointly
developed with HP, IBM and Intel that improves the performance of business
intelligence queries, reduces administration tasks and shortens batch
processes. This enhanced offering gives customers fast response times,
regardless of the volume of data, number of users or complexity of analysis.
Offerings Optimized for SME Customers
While more than 700 of SAP's midmarket customers are already
embracing SUSE Linux Enterprise, the recently announced collaboration with
Intel will provide a new dimension of integration. The new offering for SAP
Business All-in-One will be designed to combine business software, database,
operating system and hardware into one optimized package, which will provide
lower TCO for customers. The included hardware and software components will be
pre-tested to help enable a faster time to value and to increase investment
protection, and will be available through local OEMs in various geographies.
Furthermore, SAP has also chosen SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server as the platform for its hosted offering, SAP Business ByDesign, giving
midmarket customers powerful, scalable, cost-effective access to SAP
applications.
Enhanced Governance, Risk and Compliance Solutions SAP and
Novell are collaborating within the SAP Enterprise Services Community program,
hosted by SAP, to strengthen customers' governance, risk and compliance
practices by supporting business access risk policies directly to user
provisioning activities. Novell's cross-platform identity and security
management offerings will leverage Web services available with SAP GRC Access
Control, further enabling customers to extend compliant user provisioning
across the complete enterprise, including the SAP application environment and
systems from other vendors. By leveraging SAP GRC Access Control, companies are
enabled to maintain compliance by matching employees' security authorizations
with their roles and duties. The solution features user provisioning
capabilities, which help manage compliant access across customers' varied IT
landscapes.
“Organizations worldwide are increasingly turning to open
source solutions with Linux as their core platform, so teaming with Novell and
offering our customers SAP applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise meets a direct
customer need,” said Léo Apotheker, deputy CEO and president of Customer
Solutions and Operations, SAP. “Our cooperation goes beyond Linux to leverage
industry-leading technologies from each company to give customers high-value,
low-complexity solutions to pressing challenges such as regulatory requirements
and optimizing applications in virtualized environments. This relationship
marks another step forward in SAP's support of open source and standards-based
computing.”
Furthermore, SAP is using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
internally as its Linux development platform, ensuring SAP applications are
engineered from the ground up to run well on Linux.