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Cisco enables cloud SAP services through unified computing

10th May 2013

By: Schalk Burger

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Networking and server group Cisco can provide the products of enterprise resource software company SAP in a cloud format using its unified computing developments, which enable the 30-year-old kernel of legacy SAP applications to be distributed and managed in private and public clouds, says Cisco SAP Competence Centre head Dr Michael Missbach.

“Legacy SAP applications require dedicated server instances that carry the SAP licence key. This prevents companies from easily moving SAP applications between server and networking resources. SAP bookkeeping and production planning functions are business critical, forcing customers to operate SAP solutions as islands within their data centre architecture.”

However, Cisco has moved towards unified computing, where older Ethernet connections, fibre and TCP/IP connections are passed through smart cables that carry all traffic and reduce the complexity of cabling in data centres. Further, all new networking and server functions are software-controlled, enabling active infrastructure and resource management.

“An SAP licence is applied to a single piece of hardware, making it more difficult for information technology managers in a company to provision a failover server or to migrate the application to a new server. This can now be overcome by simply migrating an SAP service profile to a virtualised or ‘bare metal’ server.”

The significantly reduced number of cables, owing to unified computing, allows air to flow more easily through the server racks, resulting in lower CPU temperatures, as experienced by the data centre for the stock exchange in Stuttgart after conversion to Cisco’s unified computing system, notes Missbach.

Hana
Meanwhile, Missbach notes that Cisco has also designed high availability architectures for SAP’s new high-performance analytics appliance, called Hana. This architecture can perform analytic database functions up to 1 000 times faster than traditional database architectures.

“This new architecture enables companies to reduce the run time of reports from hours to seconds, enabling faster reaction to changes in market conditions and new business processes that were not possible before. SAP cofounder and University of Potsdam professor Hasso Plattner achieved this by combining column orientation which is necessary for analytics processing, and raw orientation, which is used for transactional information with in-memory processing and other advanced database technologies. The hybrid column and raw orientation make Hana different from all other databases available for business applications,” he explains.

The aim of these developments is to enable users to move towards real-time systems, which was the aim of SAP’s R/3 system, says Missbach.

“We want to enable all users of a company to simultaneously generate ad hoc reports from real-time data. Some of our customers from the retail sector are even able to do ad hoc analysis of point of sales so that the replenishment of goods can be planned the same second an article is sold in the shop.”

Further, Missbach notes that Cisco is making the SAP Hana available to non-SAP customers to replace their conventionally structured databases.

Cisco has focused heavily on skills and training to ensure that consultants with hands-on SAP experience are available worldwide to provide customers with application-specific support, ensuring the effective and easy implementation of SAP on Cisco Unified Computing infrastructures.

“We have dedicated resources and specifi- cally trained staff in South Africa who can work on SAP applications to help SAP users faster and ensure stability, whether in a traditional or cloud format,” he concludes.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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