Intel and SAP will develop new datacenter technologies

08.08.2019 1,810 14

Martin Deshev

There has been a lot of talk about and around datacenters lately. This isn’t a surprise. Datacenters are on the verge of big transformations. It’s a needed part of their evolution, considering the big expectations for IoT, data traffic and data consumption in general in the not-so-distant future.

Coupled with the need for energy efficient and more eco-friendly facilities, this means the future of datacenters will be very dynamic. A lot will change for the better and many companies are currently working towards that goal. Intel and SAP are among them and they have recently announced a big new partnership in that area.

Optimized hardware and software

The new partnership has a multi-year span. It covers several areas. One of them is a vast overhaul of SAP’s software.

The company’s business software will get special optimizations to run better on Intel’s Xeon Scalable CPUs and Intel’s Optane DC persistent memory. These optimizations will include and cover SAP’s end-to-end enterprise software applications.

Both companies will also work together in developing entirely new technologies. Intel and SAP will establish a Center of Excellence where they will allow customers to evaluate, innovate and adopt the new technologies.

Along with processors, memory and storage, Intel will also offer accelerator technologies for SAP customers. Both companies tout that a SAP HANA configuration on Intel Optane DC can reduce recovery times from 50 minutes to 4 minutes on a 6TB SAP HANA instance. The companies also promise performance improvements, faster start times for databases and simplified data tiering.

Welcome to the Experience Economy

Companies these days seem bent on thinking of new eras and buzz words. SAP and Intel also have a new phrase – the Experience Economy. The phrase itself isn’t that new, as it dates back to 1998. But it wasn’t really at the forefront for years and years. Now this could change.

“The platform innovation delivered across Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Optane DC persistent memory unleash[es] memory persistence and capacity that allow our customers to become intelligent enterprises in the Experience Economy,” said Irfan Kahn, president of platform and technologies at SAP, in a statement.

Both companies see that the world is becoming more and more data-centric. Today we all generate and store more data than ever. Yet, less than 2% of the data generated over the past 2 years has been analyzed. The two companies want to help change that by simplifying IT and giving more data management options.

To do this both companies want to work closer with customers. They will help them use the new technologies to the fullest. Intel and SAP feel this will also help them gain more insight into new developments and it will help them with their AI and machine learning efforts. So, in a way the new partnership is also a building block for even more projects and alliances in the future.