CenturyLink has introduced its latest SAP® software–focused solution with enhanced automation for infrastructure management, SAP software deployment and configuration. The fully managed solution, built specifically for optimising customers' workloads running on SAP software, is designed to dramatically change how customers address the deployment and ongoing development and management of SAP applications and analytics efforts. The solution, announced at SAPPHIRE NOW® and ASUG Annual Conference, will be available in early summer. SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, the world's premier business technology event and largest SAP customer-run conference, are being held May 16–18 in Orlando.
Working closely with Cisco and SAP, CenturyLink built this offering on FlexPod technology developed by NetApp and Cisco. It is designed to help customers realise faster time-to-value at lower costs and reduce risk with improved governance and automation. Customers can leverage CenturyLink's consulting expertise in SAP software, managed private cloud services, and secure network infrastructure that has been specifically designed and certified to SAP operational standards.
"CenturyLink has built comprehensive capabilities for designing, implementing and managing a wide range of SAP solutions," said Gary Gauba, Chief Enterprise Relationship Officer and President Advance Solutions Group in CenturyLink's IT & Managed Services business unit. "With this new offering, combined with our recent acquisition of SEAL Consulting, we are continuing to increase our value proposition to the SAP ecosystem." "CenturyLink and Cisco are fully committed to the SAP HANA market, and we are pleased that CenturyLink has selected Cisco's Unified Computing System to power SAP customer services," said Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's Computing Systems Group. "According to a recent primary research study by IDC, Cisco UCS now leads the market in SAP HANA deployments; this deep SAP technology expertise from both companies helps ensure an optimal SAP experience for CenturyLink customers."
CenturyLink's offering includes secure, SAP-certified, enterprise-scale private cloud and application development as well as ongoing management of applications, infrastructure, network and security for SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, and the SAP Customer Relationship Management and SAP ERP applications. The offering leverages FlexPod converged infrastructure from Cisco and NetApp, Cisco UCS, and policy-driven automation from an industry-leading vendor to help provide:
- Accelerated deployment of SAP systems by leveraging policy-driven automation for the management, auditability and compliance of SAP business applications and SAP HANA environments
- Flexible deployment options such as bare metal configuration or a virtualised configuration on the same infrastructure
- Single point of contact delivering support for SAP solutions, including facilitation of higher-tier support with partners.
