IBM and SAP form biggest cloud partnership to accelerate enterprise adoption

Fresh from a groundbreaking partnership with former rival Apple Inc.,  IBM has nailed another blockbuster deal. IBM and SAP just announced the industry’s largest cloud deal -- and the biggest win for IBM Cloud to date. With this agreement, IBM has become the global enterprise cloud platform  providing large companies and mainstream business with access to SAP's complex and business-critical applications via the IBM Cloud. 

“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." Hit jump for more details.

This announcement brings together two of the biggest technology companies with massive enterprise client bases that face similar business challenges, IBM’s cloud is built for putting complex and demanding workloads on the cloud. And with this first of its kind deal, SAP is able to expand to every major market by taking advantage of IBM’s global cloud footprint to deliver enterprise apps in the cloud. 

Together, IBM and SAP have the expertise, solutions and cloud infrastructure to deliver SAP business solutions on the IBM Cloud. SAP brings the power of realtime through in-memory computing capabilities of SAP HANA combined with the ability to run mission-critical business applications, like SAP Business Suite, in a cloud environment. IBM brings enterprise depth and the open architecture of IBM Cloud Managed Services and SoftLayer — enabling customers to securely manage SAP workloads from trial to production on a consistent infrastructure, with transparency and control over where data resides. In addition, customers will benefit from the technology and services from both companies that offer industry-specific best practices, enabling customers to transform their organizations.

SAP and IBM customers of all sizes will benefit from this joint collaboration of two of the most trusted companies in the industry.

Specifically, SAP's enterprise apps will now be available in IBM’s highly scalable, open and secure enterprise cloud, essentially tripling SAP's cloud capacity while generating an entirely new source of revenue for IBM in the cloud.  This premier partnership firmly entrenches IBM as the enterprise IT leader in the cloud era and signals another significant milestone in IBM's cloud leadership.  Additionally, this partnership delivers a simplified experience by providing clients the ability to consume the entire SAP Business Suite in the IBM Cloud. 

Key Benefits to Enterprises of All Sizes Are Expected to Include: 

• Customers can take advantage of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud with the global footprint of IBM Cloud. This enables customers to put data to work with SAP HANA and business applications in the IBM Cloud built for speed, transparency and control.

• SAP HANA will run on IBM Cloud to provide an open-standards-based approach that will help create the foundation to more easily integrate existing technology investments with new workloads.

• IBM and SAP are committed to security for enterprise customers in the cloud. The IBM Cloud provides visibility and control to enable enterprises to apply and extend their security best practices into a cloud environment.

• Companies will now have additional reach and scale to more easily start locally and scale globally with cloud capabilities and also comply with data residency and other regulatory mandates.

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