Citrix Systems, Inc., the global leader in application
delivery, today announced that leading enterprise resource planning
(ERP) manufacturer SAP AG will be virtualizing an estimated 500 servers
with Citrix XenServer by the middle of 2009. SAP has also deployed
Citrix XenApp application virtualization technology to deliver
applications to both SAP employees and external partners. In addition,
SAP expects to receive the benefits that a combined XenServer and XenApp
solution provides - such as streaming standardized workload images and
superior management functionality - which the company anticipates will
generate a 35 percent savings in terminal server costs.
SAP was looking to consolidate its server infrastructure and also wanted
to create a much more flexible and dynamic computing architecture.
Following an extensive test of XenServer, the company decided to move
forward with a multi-stage roll-out of the server virtualization
solution onto 500 servers, initially in the company’s Saint Leon Rot,
Germany office. In the next phase of the project, the servers that power
the worldwide training centers will be virtualized, followed by the
project management division with several hundred development, test, and
support environments. After the server virtualization project in Germany
is complete, the roll-out will continue at the end of 2009 to SAP’s
offices in Asia and the United States.
SAP has also deployed Citrix XenApp application virtualization
technology to deliver more than 40 applications, including Microsoft
Office and the SAP Business Suite software, to its entire user base. In
total, there are more than 50,000 end users who access the XenApp
infrastructure to work on tasks such as product development and support.
“We are extremely proud that SAP has selected our server virtualization
technology,” said N. Louis Shipley, group vice president and general
manager, XenServer Product Group, Citrix. “This project is an excellent
example of how an end-to-end virtualization solution can help companies
optimize their IT infrastructure and reduce their costs.”
“We were impressed by the performance benefits that the Citrix server
and application virtualization solutions provided,” said Dietmar Bruder,
vice president, SAP IT Infrastructure Services. “Our goal in
implementing Citrix XenServer is to not only reduce the costs of our
server infrastructure, but to also significantly lower its carbon
footprint. By leveraging Citrix virtualization technology we believe
that in the future we will be able to cut SAP’s carbon emissions by up
to 600 tons annually in addition to the immediate savings on hardware.”