SAP NetWeaver™ Slashes Operational TCO with Adaptive Computing Infrastructure

SAP Unleashes New Levels of Application Scalability and Adaptability; Leading Automotive Lighting Manufacturer Significantly Cuts Operating Costs Running SAP® Solutions on Fujitsu Siemens Computers Blade Server

ORLANDO, Fla. - June 17, 2003 - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that the innovative design and architecture of the SAP NetWeaver™ technology platform continues to prove its ability to significantly reduce operational costs and effectively leverage the high performance of new technology advances in hardware. Through the unique capabilities of SAP NetWeaver™ and a newly developed service virtualization, SAP is building a sophisticated bridge between software and hardware, allowing SAP customers to deploy any service on any server at any time. SAP is innovating in tight cooperation with hardware partners to exploit the full power of blade servers and virtual servers. For example, in extensive tests at Hella Corporation, a leading global manufacturer of automotive lighting, SAP® solutions running on Fujitsu Siemens Computers blade servers and storage systems from Network Appliance, Inc. cut operational expenses by more than 30 percent. The announcements were made at SAPPHIRE® ’03, SAP’s international customer conference being held in Orlando, Florida, June 16-18.

Together, SAP NetWeaver and blade servers offer businesses a compelling combination for dynamically managing demand upon and maximizing the efficiency of technology resources. The adaptive computing infrastructure, leveraged by SAP NetWeaver, the industry’s leading open integration and application platform, dynamically adjusts computing demand to ensure maximum operational efficiency, creating unparalleled levels of scalability and adaptability. SAP’s platform also enables blade servers to assign tasks dynamically, so that if one blade is nearing overload, it will preemptively assign tasks to another -- automatically, quickly, and seamlessly. As a result, customers can simplify maintenance of their IT landscape.

“SAP’s software and architecture innovations are leading the market and setting the pace of progress in bringing business solutions performance up to par with hardware advances,” said Peter Zencke, executive board member, SAP. “The cost-reducing breakthrough of SAP business solutions on blade servers validates our forward-looking, strategic design of SAP NetWeaver. The unique ability of SAP’s underlying architecture to dynamically allocate resources to blade servers on demand can also be applied to other hardware platforms, thus leveraging existing investments.”

Addressing Key Business Issues
Recognizing potential total cost of ownership (TCO) savings for customers, SAP began its research on the adaptive computing infrastructure at its global headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, in early 2002. The goal of this initiative was to quickly gain experience with blade server technology not just in the laboratory, but also by testing this new infrastructure at SAP’s internal system support department in software development and training. After nine months of testing, SAP reported a TCO reduction potential of up to 25 percent savings in operational costs of running enterprise applications at SAP headquarters. That demonstrates the synergy of SAP software and blade server hardware, delivering an exceptional price-performance ratio.

SAP has developed specific features for the adaptive computing infrastructure within SAP NetWeaver, such as shared services and service virtualization, which decouple services from their assignments to specific physical servers and dynamically re-assign them to the best-performing hardware. Customers using SAP NetWeaver will benefit from its capacity-on-demand capabilities for business-critical applications. These capacities can also be dynamically adjusted and brought in or shut off as required, giving the applications the flexibility to easily expand their computing power mapping and to contend with increased system loads resulting from business growth.

The combination of SAP solutions and blade servers addresses several key business issues. First, many businesses are looking to consolidate their IT infrastructure -- which currently consists of running several systems on several servers in multi-tier environments. With SAP solutions deployed on blade servers, businesses can minimize their server landscape and thus reduce their operational costs significantly. Second, many companies today have deployed or are in the process of deploying portal applications, which are used by thousands of users simultaneously. With the adaptive computing infrastructure leveraged by SAP NetWeaver, blade servers can manage concurrent demand for hardware resources efficiently and flexibly and allow applications to scale linearly. Finally, businesses that deploy the full mySAP™ Business Suite family of business solutions can use one blade server farm to run all of the solutions, rather than a series of dedicated servers tied specifically to certain portions of the solutions.

More Business Power at Hella
Hella KG is a worldwide leader in the international automotive supply industry offering lighting technology and automotive electronics. By taking part in the adaptive computing infrastructure initiative of SAP, Hella saw an opportunity to improve the underlying infrastructure that supports mySAP Business Suite solutions. Hella implemented solutions such as mySAP™ Supplier Relationship Management (mySAP SRM), mySAP™ Product Lifecycle Management (mySAP PLM), mySAP™ Business Intelligence (mySAP BI), and mySAP™ Supply Chain Management (mySAP SCM).

“Innovative IT strategies coupled with IT infrastructures that are streamlined and flexible are the recipe for success when it comes to developing, implementing, and operating our SAP solutions,” said Stefan Osterhage, CIO, Hella KG. “Intelligent use of IT resources delivers the added value for which we strive with our SAP business solutions.”

“As companies closely scrutinize their IT budgets, solutions that deliver high-end system performance at low cost of operation are key,” said Adrian von Hammerstein, president & CEO, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. “SAP solutions are tapping new levels of performance from our innovative solution FlexFrame for mySAP Business Suite, which is based on our PRIMERGY BX300 blade servers. In our cooperation with SAP, we demonstrate how companies can leverage the powerful synergy between innovative software architecture and hardware technology to reap maximum cost-saving and computing potential, meet today’s computing needs, and gain the flexibility to expand computing power as demands grow.”

At SAPPHIRE ’03, SAP and Fujitsu Siemens Computers will be demonstrating the performance capabilities of blade servers at each level of integration with SAP NetWeaver, including mySAP™ Enterprise Portal (integration of people); mySAP Business Intelligence (integration of information); and mySAP™ Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM) and SAP® R/3® (integration of processes). The demonstration will be part of the keynote address by SAP executive board members Shai Agassi and Peter Zencke.

Network Appliance, Inc. (NetApp), a world leader in unified storage solutions for today’s data-intensive enterprise, worked together with SAP and Fujitsu Siemens Computers on the Hella project as well.

“NetApp is very excited to partner with SAP to deliver these leading-edge solutions,” said Mark Santora, senior vice president of marketing, Network Appliance. “SAP is a business solution leader, and the dynamic flexibility of its technology infrastructure enables customers to take advantage of our integrated solutions to significantly reduce their infrastructure and management costs while increasing availability and flexibility.”

About SAP
SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions. Through mySAP™ Business Suite, people in businesses around the globe are improving relationships with customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving significant efficiencies throughout their supply chains. The unique core processes of various industries, from Aerospace to Utilities, are supported effectively by SAP's 23 industry solutions. Today, more than 19,600 companies in over 120 countries run more than 62,000 installations of SAP® software. With subsidiaries in over 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)

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