InformationWeek

August 21, 2000

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SAP Apps Join Database Server On IBM S/390s

Running Mysap.com and ERP Apps on the mainframe can help avoid having to split database

By Steve Konicki

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BM and SAP are aiming at global E-commerce companies and the large E-business exchanges of the future by jointly offering SAP's enterprise resource planning and mySAP.com applications for IBM's S/390 mainframe. SAP's database server already runs on S/390s.

SAP's R/3 4.6b and mySAP.com applications on the mainframe are more scalable than the same apps running on Unix or Windows NT server farms and can more easily handle heavy spikes of activity, says Tom Rosamilia, IBM VP of S/390 software development. Running the SAP database server and applications on the S/390 lets companies handle extremely heavy loads on a single, central cluster of servers without splitting their database across separate server farms, Rosamilia says. More than 400 large companies run the SAP database server on S/390 servers with SAP apps on Unix or NT systems. IBM expects E-business companies that handle heavy Web traffic to add significantly to the number of organizations running the SAP database on the S/390.

Meta Group analyst Doug Lynn doubts that the new versions of SAP products will have wide application, though he says they're good news for a relatively small number of very large companies that have had to split up their database.

The S/390 versions of SAP's applications are available now. Pricing depends on the number of concurrent users and the SAP modules employed.

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