IBM Drives Capabilities for Clients to Run Business-Critical SAP Software Workloads on Hybrid Cloud

IBM 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 optimize 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.

Harish Grama, general manager, public cloud, IBM, said, “The global pandemic has seen a year’s worth of digital transformation efforts with the acceleration of cloud adoption compressed into months. Clients across industries are looking to shift to cloud and this is the core focus of our collaboration with SAP – giving our clients the ability to embrace the benefits of cloud without compromising on security and controls. 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.”

Clients globally choose hybrid deployments to run SAP software workloads:

Clients working to deploy their SAP software workloads to IBM Cloud include:
Peruvian construction company Cementos Pacasmayo, who deployed its SAP S/4HANA suite to IBM public cloud as it sought to expand beyond construction sales to value-added services, which allowed it to handle the additional ERP complexity that came with its new business line.
Coca-Cola European Partners, who is deploying several large SAP software workloads — including the SAP ERP application and the SAP BW/4 HANA solution — as part of its hybrid transformation. The work is designed to help CCEP deliver higher levels of service to its customers by leveraging advanced analytics while retaining a reliable infrastructure.
Italian footwear retailer Primadonna Collection, who deployed its IT infrastructure to a certified SAP software environment on IBM public cloud for VMware to improve manageability and performance. This is designed to help Primadonna Collection modernize its business-critical processes, such as sales and customer care, as it looks to expand its global footprint.

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

New partnerships, services and capabilities are designed to make it easier for businesses to deploy their SAP applications to IBM public cloud – or another environment of their choice.

Expansion of partner ecosystem: To help clients more quickly and easily deploy SAP technologies in the cloud, IBM is expanding its SAP ecosystem of GSI and ISV partners with the addition of Syniti, TCS, BlueIT, H.T. High Technology, and Tech Mahindra. Syniti’s Knowledge Platform Cloud Edition on IBM Cloud is helping speed project times by up to 46 percent for clients deploying complex datasets to SAP S/4HANA. SAP also sells the SAP Advanced Data Migration application by Syniti, with a cloud edition delivered on IBM Cloud. Syniti is an SAP partner offering solution extensions to SAP software. IBM and TCS are engaging in joint go-to-market initiatives focused on accelerating cloud 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 including IBM Rapid Move for SAP by IBM, are powered by IBM Cloud to help clients deploy to SAP S/4HANA. The services are bundled to include access to IBM Services, IBM Cloud and IBM Global Financing. 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:
IBM Power Systems Virtual Server – helps customers modernize their SAP software workloads with the option to run them in a virtualized infrastructure hosted in IBM data centers. With this certification, IBM can run applications based on SAP HANA® or the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform within its virtual server stack. IBM Power Systems Virtual Server is a private infrastructure-as-a-service offering with access to the full catalog of IBM Cloud offerings.
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.
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.