IBM, SAP Strengthen Partnership
Last week at the SAPPHIRE e-business conference in Orlando, SAP AG and IBM extended their existing alliance to cover the entire mySAP.com e-business platform. The enhanced agreement is designed to offer better integration of products and will require both companies to commit more resources.
As part of the alliance, IBM will license and integrate technology from SAP Portals Inc., a subsidiary of SAP AG, for IBM’s WebSphere Portal Server. By doing this, SAP and IBM are giving customers the opportunity to have shared access from their desktops to a greater number of applications and information. WebSphere will also be used by SAP Markets for development projects designed to help customers streamline operations and improve supply chain efficiencies via the Internet.
Currently, IBM has more than 5,000 consultants working on SAP projects, making SAP one of Big Blue’s leading partner-driven sources of business. To prepare for anticipated growth in demand for mySAP.com, IBM Global Services is retraining a large portion of its consulting practice to better cover the mySAP.com e-business platform.
In addition, SAP has certified IBM as an SAP Global Hosting Partner, allowing IBM to offer application management as part of its portfolio of services for SAP customers.
With these latest developments, IBM and SAP have forged relationships across all of their major brand offerings. The commitment of IBM product brands, including DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere, Lotus, Tivoli, as well as eServer pSeries, iSeries, xSeries and zSeries, underscores a 20-year relationship between the two companies.