SAP and IBM Expand Partnership, Introduce Optimized DB2 Database

SAP and IBM Expand Partnership, Introduce Optimized DB2 Database

SAP AG and IBM today unveiled an optimized version of the industry-leading DB2 Universal Database to help customers ease configuration, enhance performance and increase availability of their SAP® solutions running on DB2. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® ‘05, being held in Copenhagen, Denmark, April 26-28.

Working closely together, SAP and IBM have integrated new features into the latest version of DB2, version 8.2.2, that enhance deployment, maintenance and availability in a scalable architecture for SAP customers. Customers using the new DB2 offering will achieve improved performance over DB2’s already industry-leading benchmark results. Customers also will benefit from advanced autonomic capabilities, such as DB2’s “SAP tuner” feature developed to auto-configure DB2 in an SAP solutions environment.

“With the availability of DB2 version 8.2.2, IBM has made significant strides by streamlining the installation and configuration process along with improving upon the self-managing features of DB2,” said Jochen Guther, general manager, TFX IT Europe. “We are confident that this increased level of partnership will allow us to better serve our customers by optimizing our IT resources through shifting more focus to managing business-critical processes.”

The optimized DB2 offering for SAP solutions and Enterprise Services Architecture is tailored for both new and existing SAP application developers and customers-a group that includes more than 4,400 joint customers worldwide who are running their SAP solutions on DB2. DB2’s low operation and maintenance costs will allow SAP customers to recognize a significantly lower total cost of ownership.

“Since 1999, SAP has worked closely with IBM around DB2 to give our customers a competitive edge,” said Karl-Heinz Hess, senior vice president, Active Global Support, SAP. “IBM’s latest release of DB2 is a substantial step in our joint integration efforts. This tighter integration will allow our customers to enjoy more enhanced performance of SAP solutions at an even lower cost.”

“This new release of DB2 is just the beginning of a multiyear technology collaboration that will enable the pre-configured DB2-SAP platform to be a growth engine into the future,” said Janet Perna, general manager, IBM Information Management Software. “Our collaboration with SAP will remain focused on producing the advanced, integrated software solutions customers require to build on demand information infrastructures that generate value from business data.”

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