The longstanding and successful alliance between IBM and SAP goes back more than 30 years. Success is documented by numerous joint customers around the world. The partnership is exceptional when you consider:

• IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate.
• IBM Global Business Services (IBM GBS) is the largest SAP integrator in the world. With more than 9,000 SAP practitioners and more than 3,700 SAP implementations worldwide, IBM GBS understands your company's need for tangible business results.
• SAP solutions are certified for all IBM server platforms.
• IBM DB2 is the SAP development database of choice, with more than 8,000 joint installations worldwide. In May 2006, IBM and SAP announced a special version of DB2 optimized for SAP applications. For more information, please visit the DB2 Web site.

Alliance Overview

IBM is an SAP global partner in the technology, service, and software categories. In addition, IBM service subsidiaries are an important part of the SAP channel partner community focusing on the midmarket. For an overview of the different areas of our alliance, please check the latest alliance brochure (available in eight languages).

Key Customer Benefits

IBM and SAP have joined forces to help companies realize immediate business value and sustainable growth by improving processes and enhancing efficiencies. We assume the role of a trusted advisor – a responsibility we take very seriously and practice every day.

From business consulting to systems integration, infrastructure development, and implementation, we offer you the flexibility to choose when and how to utilize our services and solutions – onsite, outsourced, or on demand. What makes our alliance unique is how we have aligned our competencies – collaborative business process experience; industry and technology thought leadership; plus integrated, closed-loop solutions. These solutions form a truly value-based platform engineered to help you anticipate growth, adapt quickly, and control risk.

Working with your SAP and IBM team, you can consolidate systems, applications, data, and business processes, and you can streamline communications with employees, subsidiaries, customers, and partners.

Capabilities and Industry Expertise

IBM has established a network of SAP Customer Competence Centers. Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, the headquarters of SAP, the IBM SAP International Competence Center (ISICC) serves as the central access point to the centers. Joint support teams help to deliver best-in-class solutions to our customers, building on three decades of experience in optimizing IT infrastructure and service offerings for SAP solutions.

As part of the technical alliance, the SAP and IBM Collaboration Technology Support Center (CTSC) focuses on supporting IBM and SAP collaboration strategies for IBM WebSphere and the SAP NetWeaver platform. The alliance goals are to demonstrate our two companies' capabilities in linking SAP and IBM technologies, identifying new integration scenarios, defining proof of concepts, and providing solution assurance – all based on open standards.

You can access technical details on the SAP NetWeaver platform and IBM WebSphere interoperability. Questions and discussions can be posted to the CTSC Forum on SAP Developer Network.

Testimonials

"An intensive relationship with IBM forms the basis for our projects. Our cooperation has extended for more than 30 years and serves as the foundation for a cooperative relationship with SAP. These are optimal conditions for the implementation of innovative IT solutions."
Host Leber, Vice President Enterprise Data Center, Lufthansa Systems

"In making our selection, we were looking for trusted partners, as well as industry-leading products and the most robust technology road map."
Ed Toben, Chief Information Officer, Colgate-Palmolive

More than 10,000 enterprises can attest to the alliance's capabilities, which have been proven in many successful implementations, including those at IBM, where nearly 30,000 IBM employees work with SAP applications.

The alliance between IBM and SAP has generated numerous reference stories. You can read them using the reference story search tool on our alliance Web site.

About IBM

IBM (NYSE: IBM) is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key business partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions, and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information visit IBM online. Learn more about how the SAP and IBM alliance can help you build lifetime value for your business.

Contact

IBM SAP International Competence Center