News from 2011 SAPPHIRE NOW: SAP Announces Strategies to Leverage Relationships with Sybase and Accenture

At SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP's annual user conference taking place this week in Orlando, SAP and Sybase, Inc. (an SAP company), announced plans to make the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP ERP the first SAP Business Suite application running on the Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) relational database management system (DBMS). In combining SAP applications with Sybase technology, along the companies said they aim to offer organizations worldwide a new database option for running SAP applications and accessing critical information.

According to the companies, their plans foresee SAP ERP releases being certified out-of-the-box with the latest Sybase ASE in-market releases, and the life cycle of Sybase ASE being fully synchronized with SAP maintenance policies to simplify release and deployment planning for customers. Additionally, customers will be able to engage with a single partner focused on efficient business operations and on providing "attractive" licensing and maintenance terms and conditions, the companies said in a press release. Ramp up and general availability of the combined solution is planned for later this year.

With this release, SAP and Sybase said they will continue to build a foundation for long-term growth of Sybase ASE, investing in technology innovations and certifying Sybase ASE with key SAP Business Suite applications. Further planned development efforts will extend the certification to additional SAP applications, including the most recent releases and enhancement packages of the SAP Customer Relationship Management, SAP Supplier Relationship Management, SAP Product Lifecycle Management and SAP Supply Chain Management applications, as well as the SAP NetWeaver Portal component, the SAP NetWeaver Process Integration offering and the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse component.

In other news from SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP and partner Accenture announced their plans to jointly develop and manage the deployment of new enterprise mobility solutions leveraging Sybase Unwired Platform coupled with Accenture Mobility Services enterprise mobility offerings.

Enterprise managed mobility allows large companies to integrate mobile devices such as smartphones into existing SAP applications as a service, enabling information access and business transactions from outside the walls of the enterprise -- executed with little complexity, minimal setup time and no infrastructure requirements at a low cost.

Accenture and SAP intend to enter into an agreement to build differentiated solutions. Pre-packaged mobility solutions are available to provide the market with ideas on how to reap the value of enterprise mobility. The strategic relationship also calls for the companies to develop a structured "go-to-market" model aimed at promoting collaboration between their sales teams, according to the partners.

The two companies will leverage existing Accenture Mobility Services offerings and have already built solutions that include: Mobility Consulting Services for Enterprise Strategy; Mobility Software Services for Application Development; Mobility Business Integration Services for Field Force Transformation; and Mobility Managed Services for Mobile Application and Device Management.

Katherine Burger is Editorial Director of Bank Systems & Technology and Insurance & Technology, members of UBM TechWeb's InformationWeek Financial Services. She assumed leadership of Bank Systems & Technology in 2003 and of Insurance & Technology in 1991. In addition to ... View Full Bio