14 DAY TRIAL // Red Hat Inc. and SAP AG have recently announced their collaboration for bringing the SAP applications to the virtual servers. The collaboration would mainly consist of a certification that SAP AG, global provider of business software solution, released for its SAP NetWeaver platform on Red Hat's Enterprice Linux Advanced Platform 5. It seems that this certification targets the virtualization technology embedded in RHEL 5 for use with SAP apps.
This certification offered by SAP implies that all criteria necessary for full interoperability of Red Hat solutions with all modules of SAP NetWeaver are in compliance. Red Hat officials have showed themselves very satisfied with this agreement, saying that they consider it a good opportunity for the two companies to bring new innovations and investment security for the enterprise customers. Werner Knoblich, Red Hat's vice president and general manager for EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa):
"Customers can substantially reduce costs, time and effort with Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform that would only otherwise be possible through the purchase, implementation and maintenance of software for virtualization, storage management and high availability. At the end of the day, with Advanced Platform, customers can put their money back into their core business instead of investing heavily in costly infrastructure. This certification of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 by SAP, a Red Hat Premium Partner, underlines the close partnership of the two market leaders and brings additional innovation and investment security for enterprise customers."
As it is also mentioned in an article on Linux-Watch, the virtualization technologies included in the Advanced Platform were seriously tested by the SAP during the certification procedure and therefore they can be used also in the production environments. According to Dan Kusnetzky, analyst with the Kusnetzky Group, by certifying NetWeaver on RHEL 5's virtual machines, the RHEL virtualization becomes more a way for SAP customers to get value from server virtualization.