HP and Dell cosy up to SAP HANA

Hewlett-Packard and Dell have both announced new SAP HANA solutions to coincide with the Sapphire 2014 event currently running in Florida.

Dell has unveiled migration tools for SAP legacy environments; certification of its SAP HANA appliance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and VMware vSphere; and Dell Services Shop Floor, a tablet solution for manufacturing environments.

A statement from the vendor said Red Hat support would be available globally in the third quarter of 2014 and vSphere would be supported from June internationally. Dell Services Shop Floor solutions are currently available in most regions but not Australia.

"Dell's PowerEdge R920 has been certified by SAP for scale-up deployments of the SAP HANA platform, which allows easy scaling of server memory capacity in deployments and helps reduce the need to 'rip and replace' when systems are upgraded," according to Dell's statement. "This gives customers the ability to buy what they need today, with the confidence that their infrastructure can keep pace as their needs increase."

Meanwhile HP has revealed a new packaged hardware-software solution, the ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA. The new addition to the ConvergedSystem range is the "only system certified by SAP to deliver 12 terabytes of data in a single memory pool" and "enables firms to manage and analyse large and diverse datasets", according to HP.

"CS900 is one of the biggest and fastest SAP Hana environments in the world," said Raj Thakur, director and general manager HP Servers & Converged Systems, HP Enterprise Group, South Pacific.  "Converged systems come with a full software suite, great for big data. As well as SAP HANA, we also cater for Microsoft, VMware and Citrix through the range."

An HP spokesperson told CRN that the ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA is "scheduled to be available in Australia from September".

Thakur told CRN that an Australian channel strategy for HP ConvergedSystems would be launched soon.

"We'll announce in about 30 days our ConvergedSystem channel strategy," said Thakur.

"The channel would have previously sold components – storage, software, and so on. But now we have one system that has everything included. Partners can spend less time on integration and move to high value services – things like pre-deployment, planning, disaster recovery, etc," he said.

"It's a great shift for channel partners, giving them strength in getting to market quickly."

The HP executive also told CRN that ConvergedSystems will be available as-a-service, saying it will be "available for partners to use as hosted or managed servers, in order for customers to move from CapEx to OpEx and delivery-as-a-service".

While the Australian market will have to wait until spring for the enterprise-grade 900, Thakur said that the lighter ConvergedSystem 500 is already available for SMB needs. "The CS500 is more aimed at the analytics space," he said.