Tuesday, 30 January 2007

HP, SAP Strengthens Ties Around SOA

HP has decided to offer more services to stand behind SAP's Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to IT . In November 2006, HP had revealed that it will collaborate with SAP AG on research aimed at improving the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of IT systems...

HP has decided to offer more services to stand behind SAP's Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to IT . In November 2006, HP had revealed that it will collaborate with SAP AG on research aimed at improving the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of IT systems for businesses of all sizes. The companies hope to take advantage of synergies between HP's Adaptive Infrastructure management technologies and SAP's enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The research work is being called the Adaptive SAP project.

Rich Friedrich, director of HP's Enterprise Software and Systems Lab expects the research to result in both incremental and more significant technology developments. "I think we'll look back at this announcement as the start of something quite significant", he said.

The research will focus initially on hardware and software virtualisation, Friedrich said. The idea will be to find ways to maximise the utilisation of HP servers by SAP enterprise applications so that customers can cut costs by decreasing the amount of hardware and software they use. The other initial driver for the research will be finding more ways to connect the demands of customers' businesses with their IT systems, he added.

The companies didn't provide any financial details of the partnership or say how many staffers will take part. While some face-to-face meetings will take place, Friedrich said he didn't expect any significant relocation of staff. There is no specified time limit for the agreement.

"SAP is one of the most complex solutions in computing," Tim Treat, manager of worldwide packaged applications for enterprise applications services at HP said. "If you solve a problem in SAP, you can solve problems across infrastructure everywhere."

"There will be other appliances throughout the entire ecosystem, and, like BIA, they will solve very specific problems," Treat said.