By Kim Yoo-chul
SAP and IBM have announced a major business partnership in the booming cloud-based computing solutions, the companies said in a joint statement.
The collaboration calls for IBM to become the primary provider of cloud infrastructure services for SAP's applications that include SAP HANA and SAP Business Suite, the two said.
IBM and SAP are longtime business partners. The expanded partnership means SAP's HANA-branded "in-memory" database, which can crunch through huge amounts of data quickly, will be crucial to help IBM boost its cloud computing business.
"We look forward to extending one of the longest and most successful partnerships in the IT industry. The demand for SAP HANA and the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA in the cloud is tremendous and this global agreement with IBM heralds a new era of collaboration. We anticipate customers will benefit from this collaboration and the expansion of the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud," SAP CEO Bill McDermott said in the statement.
The business partnership is expected to provide additional momentum for SAP to better compete with Oracle in a heated race for database businesses amid growing calls to handle "big data" from corporate clients.
SAP's HANA data base has been recognized as an "Oracle-killer."
IBM and SAP officials said it's no surprise to see that the two companies joined hands for future businesses as IBM has been selling SAP applications to corporate customers for decades.
Analysts said there's another benefit to the agreement. They said the NSA spying scandal has made European companies suspicious of using cloud services hosted in the United States.
IBM runs a lot of data centers in Europe and is in the middle of building 15 more outside the United States, too.
"This announcement is a significant milestone in the deployment of the enterprise cloud. 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, and mobile and social networking," IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty, said in the statement.