SAP teams with Intel for SMB appliance

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SAP teams with Intel for SMB appliance

SAP's All-in-One ERP suite for the midmarket took on more features today, as SAP teamed up with Intel to offer a Xeon-based appliance.

Under the agreement, announced at the CeBIT conference being held this week in Hanover, Germany, the two companies will unite to offer SAP's ERP for the midmarket suite on Xeon-based systems using SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell and the SAP MaxDB database. The appliance is currently being offered in five countries, executives said, with plans to expand to 20 this year, including the United States in the second quarter. It will be sold through resellers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

"This accelerates our fast-start program for All-in-One and adds value and lower TCO [total cost of ownership] for prospects and customers," said Hans Peter-Klaey, president of Global SME for SAP.

SAP has set an ambitious goal of reaching 100,000 customers by 2010, a feat that will rely heavily on penetration of the midmarket. In the past year, Peter-Klaey said, the small and medium enterprise (SME) unit has added 7,400 new customers to reach 34,000, more than 74% of SAP's total customer base of 46,000.

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Selling the full, preconfigured technology stack will help reach those customers, he said. The Intel collaboration lowers total deployment costs by 45% and lowers the TCO of All-in-One by 25%.

"The SME segment is absolutely morphing into an appliance model," said Prasad Rampalli, vice president of the Intel Digital Enterprise Group. "As we get into details of the appliance-based deployment and delivery model, the core requirements on the Intel platform are faster time to deployment, a lower entry point and lower TCO."

Currently, more than 700 midsized companies run SAP applications on Linux, and more than 35% of those are in combination with SAP MaxDB, according to SAP.

The offering targets companies in manufacturing, service and trade industries.

Prospective customers can access an online configurator to determine a cost estimate based on their deployment needs.