Lab to Offer Hands-on Environment for Collaborative Work With Partners and Customers Around Enterprise SOA
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The SAP Co-Innovation Lab will provide an efficient work environment for joint projects and will feature a simulated heterogeneous data center incorporating hardware and infrastructure software from the various participating vendors. To accurately simulate what is needed to support enterprise SOA effectively, the lab will re-create real-world performance and security required for Web-enabled and Internet/intranet-accessible business applications.
"The opening of the SAP Co-Innovation Lab exemplifies the tremendous power of the SAP ecosystem and is a physical manifestation of how SAP is truly engaging partners and customers in joint collaboration," said Zia Yusuf, executive vice president, Global Ecosystem and Partner Group, SAP. "We've established this lab as a trail-blazing facility for ISVs, SIs, technology vendors and customers to come together to exchange ideas and develop the next generation of innovations that customers need to run their businesses as efficiently and effectively as possible. We are pleased Cisco, HP, Intel, NetApp and our ecosystem of partners stand behind this vision."
Sponsors of the lab will participate in joint projects with ISVs, systems integrators and other technology vendors, and also will collaborate with SAP to develop solution blueprints to help customers create data center environments optimized to support enterprise SOA. ISVs and SIs will leverage the lab to collaborate with SAP and customers around enterprise SOA, as well as have the opportunity to test and demonstrate their products in an IT environment that supports heterogeneous systems based on the open standards that customers demand today. Callidus Software, Novell, Questra and Wonderware are among the first ISVs signing on to initiate projects in the SAP Co-Innovation Lab.
Technology vendors will leverage the lab to optimize their infrastructure products for SAP customers and ensure that their offerings simplify customer adoption of enterprise SOA. Citrix Systems and F5 are among the first infrastructure partners committing to initiate projects in the SAP Co-Innovation Lab.
"SAP and Cisco are committed to helping customers realize the full potential of their IT investment and enable technology to transform their business," said Bill Ruh, vice president of Advanced Services, Cisco Systems. "Critical to achieving this value is the convergence of application and IT infrastructures. The SAP Co-Innovation Lab is a valuable resource for our customers to witness the potential of their overall IT investment while assuming best practices in their deployments."
"This announcement enhances our long-standing relationship with SAP by leveraging elements of HP's Business Technology portfolio with SAP's evolving product and service offerings for enterprise SOA," said Ron Eller, vice president and general manager of Enterprise Solutions Alliances, HP. "The collaboration will create a future generation of highly agile and adaptable solutions that provide better business outcomes for our customers."
"We have a long and mutually beneficial relationship with SAP that is always focused on delivering inventive technologies and computing solutions to the marketplace as fast as possible," said Elliot Garbus, general manager, Intel Corporation's Developer Relations Division. "Being a founding sponsor of the SAP Co-Innovation Lab reflects this spirit, and will help SAP's developers and customers accelerate the adoption of innovative technologies on Intel-based computers and our Core microarchitecture processors."
"Helping SAP administrators rapidly implement robust storage infrastructures to easily scale with their business growth is what NetApp does best," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing, NetApp. "This initiative compliments what lies at the NetApp core-architectural simplicity and innovation. NetApp has a long history of innovation with SAP and we are pleased to be a founding sponsor of the SAP Co-Innovation Lab. NetApp looks forward to participating in key projects and solution blueprints such as virtualization within the SAP Co-Innovation Lab, helping customers to reduce complexity, accelerate their deployments and upgrades, and optimize their data center storage architecture to support enterprise SOA."
The SAP Co-Innovation Lab builds on a successful pilot of a co-innovation facility in Silicon Valley for network vendors that ran from November 2006 to April 2007. The goal of the pilot facility was to give leading network vendors hands-on experience testing their products and services together with SAP applications, while SAP could explore ways to optimize the network performance of its enterprise SOA offerings. By expanding the concept and opening a hands-on co-innovation lab in the heart of Silicon Valley, SAP customers will benefit from reduced integration costs and faster innovation cycles.
SAP Silicon Valley Week Activities
SAP Silicon Valley Week is a series of events that provide an opportunity for SAP to demonstrate its on-going commitment to Silicon Valley and all it has to offer SAP's customers, partners and employees. SAP's Silicon Valley presence continues to grow and has become a vital component of the company's globalization and organic growth strategies.
The week is packed with a wide variety of activities and meetings designed specifically for SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, Deputy CEO Leo Apotheker and SAP senior management to engage with customers, ecosystem partners, the venture capital community, academic leaders, SAP Labs employees and local media.
SAP also announced today the opening of its inaugural North American Academic Symposium (see press release titled, "SAP Launches Inaugural North American Academic Symposium to Showcase Role of Academia in Business Innovation" at http://www.sap.com/company/press/press.aspx?pressID=7859). SAP and the Computer History Museum announced the museum has acquired a new collection of rare computers, made possible by a $250,000 donation from SAP (see press release titled, "SAP Donation Helps Computer History Museum Procure Rare European Computer Collection" at http://www.sap.com/company/press/press.aspx?pressID=7719).
About SAP
SAP is the world's leading provider of business software*. Today, more than 39,400 customers in more than 120 countries run SAP(R) applications-from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small businesses and midsize companies to suite offerings for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver(R) platform to drive innovation and enable business change, SAP software helps enterprises of all sizes around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP solution portfolios support the unique business processes of more than 25 industries, including high tech, retail, financial services, healthcare and the public sector. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." (Additional information at http://www.sap.com)
(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle management and supplier relationship management.
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