EMC to introduce information lifecycle management for SAP solutions

EMC Corporation, the world leader in information storage and management, today announced enhanced software, solutions and services to meet the growing information lifecycle management (ILM) needs of SAP customers.

EMC is showcasing the new solutions to thousands of users at SAPPHIRE `05, taking place this week in Boston. With two new EMC Proven Solutions - EMC Archiving for SAP with Documentum, and EMC Performance Monitoring & Optimization for SAP - and new SAP NetWeaver support for EMC DatabaseXtender for SAP BW, EMC continues to offer innovations to help customers reduce costs and execute an ILM strategy for critical applications such as those from SAP.

Organisations running enterprise business applications software, such as mySAP ERP, generate large volumes of information that change greatly in terms of value to the business over its lifetime. As these environments continue to grow in complexity, the storage monitoring, archiving, data relocation, landscape management and optimisation take on added importance. If these functions are not managed properly, customers can face slower application transaction response times, slower backup processes, reduced system up-time, poor storage utilisation, and longer upgrade and migration timeframes.

The new offerings from EMC help SAP customers address these challenges using a pre-tested and validated combination of EMC`s industry leading storage hardware, software and services. Using these EMC Proven Solutions, customers can automate and consolidate archived data in SAP solutions and identify and relocate historical data within SAP BW databases to cost-effective networked storage tiers. In addition, customers can utilise EMC and SAP methodologies for data collection and analysis that enable them to optimise SAP data layout storage configurations consistent with required service levels.

The new offerings, software and services for SAP solutions include:

EMC Archiving for SAP with Documentum

EMC Archiving for SAP with Documentum is a new EMC Proven Solution that integrates EMC and Documentum services (project management, preparation, assessment, and implementation), EMC Documentum software, and the EMC Centera storage platform. This solution helps enhance SAP system performance and productivity while lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) by offloading information to an online content repository that can be accessed through their SAP application. Also, by providing fast online access to archived information via Centera, organisations address corporate and regulatory compliance requirements by archiving transactional data (ie ADK) in SAP solutions, reports (ie print lists) and outbound documents to content addressed storage. This solution ensures authenticity of fixed content, applies retention policies, and leverages industry leading WORM (write once, read many) technology.

EMC DatabaseXtender for SAP BW

EMC DatabaseXtender for SAP BW manages data growth in SAP BW environments by identifying and selectively relocating historical and detail data to a more cost-effective storage platform while keeping the data online and easily accessible. By reducing the size of the primary SAP BW database on the primary storage system, DatabaseXtender boosts the system performance, improves data and system availability, and decreases IT infrastructure costs. At the same time, DatabaseXtender provides real-time user access to detailed historical data for effective business intelligence without having to reload the data into the primary SAP BW database. SAP BW is a component of SAP Business Intelligence.

EMC Performance Monitoring and Optimisation for SAP

EMC Performance Monitoring and Optimisation for SAP is an EMC Proven Solution that provides SAP customers a best practice assessment for monitoring, analysing and optimising their SAP application environment and supporting storage configurations to achieve required service level agreements (SLA) and lower TCO. EMC service personnel conduct a detailed analysis of the current environment including the SAP database, server and storage configurations. The goal of this analysis is to identify I/O issues and other potential performance bottlenecks.

In addition, EMC installs the appropriate monitoring and analysis tools to document baseline performance. Based on its analysis, EMC will provide a set of best practice recommendations that align with SLA requirements and ensures an optimised SAP database deployment on EMC networked storage. Using this service from EMC, customers can reduce support costs and service response time using remote storage configuration monitoring.

Howard Elias, EMC Executive Vice-President of Corporate Marketing and Office of Technology, said: "With compliance and good corporate governance driving data retention requirements, organisations are left with a variety of challenges on how to manage application information and assign value to it over time. SAP customers can leverage EMC software, EMC Proven Solutions, and our services offerings to reduce complexity, mitigate risk and drive down TCO as application data changes throughout its lifecycle."

The EMC Archiving for SAP with Documentum and EMC Performance Monitoring and Optimisation for SAP solutions will be available at the end of June. EMC DatabaseXtender for SAP BW is available on 9 June 2005.