VMware has announced the availability of solutions that will enable customers using SAP (News - Alert) solutions to migrate to virtualized infrastructure powered by VMware and HP technologies.

These solutions include HP reference architectures for use with SAP solutions. They are designed to increase agility, performance and scalability of running SAP applications. In addition, these solutions are expected to reduce capital and operating costs.

Virtualizing SAP solutions on the VMware platform can benefit customers who are thinking of refreshing their current hardware, migrating from proprietary platforms or planning to deploy SAP solutions for the first time.

“Virtualization delivers the benefits of cloud computing to existing legacy applications by providing dynamic scalability, built-in high availability, provisioning in minutes and automated disaster recovery at the infrastructure level,” said Gary Green, vice president for Global Strategic Alliances at VMware.“Working with HP and SAP AG, we are helping customers virtualize their business-critical applications to create dynamic datacenters that can deliver IT as a Service.”

“Organizations that run SAP applications expect their data to be secure and always available,” said Paul Miller, vice president of Solutions and Strategic Alliances for enterprise servers, storage and networking at HP. “The HP reference architecture for use with SAP software integrates VMware vSphere together with HP Converged Infrastructure, enabling organizations to move their high-priority business applications onto virtual machines securely.”

SGL Group, provider of carbon-based products, said that it had a corporate requirement to consolidate its deployment of the SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM) application in its U.S. operations onto a virtualized platform with the help of VMware vSphere.

Additionally, the company had to migrate the SAP SRM systems to a standardized SAP application stack based on IBM (News - Alert) DB2 database software and the Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system.

The company turned to VMware’s partner Texperts for help. “Leveraging VMware and HP solutions, we assisted SGL Group, as their virtualization consulting partner, to create an updated system that has been integrated into a corporate-wide standard platform,” said Gerhard Saumweber, CEO at Texperts.

“The implementation took exactly three months and we've already lowered overall support and operational costs for the underlying hardware and software,” said Marshall Munyak, manager of technical applications for North America corporate business systems at SGL Group.

The company was able to consolidate from three SAP instances to two, he said, adding that the company’s IT support team has been receiving positive feedback from end users regarding an overall improved system response.

“VMware and HP, together with the expertise provided by Texperts, were key to our success,” Munyak said.

Recently, VMware announced the acquisition of Socialcast, a provider of social networking platforms and solutions.