Thread,
The following news release is one-day old, but I don't think it's been posted on this thead yet:
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Business Wire SAP AG AND MICROSOFT SIGN NEW LICENSING AGREEMENT AND ANNOUNCE IMMEDIATE AVAILABILITY OF R/3 ON SQL SERVER 7.0 BUSINESS EDITORS, HIGH-TECH WRITERS WALLDORF, GERMANY, AND REDMOND, WASH.--(BUSINESS
WALLDORF, Germany, and REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Jan. 13, 1999--
Five Productive SAP R/3 Customers, Including Microsoft,
Utilize The Latest Release for Enhanced Performance;
SAP Customers Can Now Acquire Leading Enterprise
Software Solution With a SQL Server Database License
SAP AG (NYSE ADR:SAP.N) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT.O) today
announced the immediate availability of SAP(tm) R/3(R) on Microsoft's
new enterprise database software, SQL Server(tm) 7.0.
Both companies signed a new worldwide licensing agreement, which
allows SAP to distribute the Microsoft(R) SQL Server database directly
to SAP customers. Through its improvements in database response and
run times, SQL Server 7.0 represents an easy-to-implement solution
that enhances SAP customers' return on information.
Five SAP customers, Applied Automation Inc., Bitburger Brewery,
Lyondell-Equistar Petrochemicals Co., Pennzoil Co. and Microsoft, are
already productive with their R/3 solutions running on SQL Server 7.0
and are realizing enhanced database reliability, scalability,
performance and ease of use. In addition, more than 100 SAP customers
have started to deploy SQL Server 7.0.
"As a result of our extensive testing and development efforts
with Microsoft, we are pleased to offer our customers immediate
support for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0," said Karl-Heinz Hess, executive
vice president of systems technology development and member of the SAP
AG extended executive board. "Microsoft's powerful database fits
customer requirements ranging from desktop to enterprise solutions.
With the new reseller agreement, SAP customers can now obtain R/3 and
SQL Server 7.0 directly through SAP."
Benefits to SAP Customers
Among its enhancements, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 offers greater
scalability and reliability, improved performance and unprecedented
ease of use. Features such as Dynamic Row Level Locking and the new
Query Optimizer provide SAP customers with enhanced ability to deploy
highly scalable R/3 solutions with increased data volumes and
thousands of users. In conjunction with Microsoft, SAP has also
created tools to allow customers of SAP R/3 to quickly and easily
upgrade from previous versions of Microsoft SQL Server.
"SAP has vast experience in satisfying customers with enterprise
business software, and is now a leading supporter of SQL Server 7.0,"
said Steve Ballmer, president, Microsoft. "In addition to our joint
efforts in testing SQL Server 7.0 with R/3, SAP and Microsoft have now
closed a licensing agreement which will make it much easier for our
joint customers to deploy R/3 on SQL Server."
Customer Results
Over the past two years, SAP Basis developers worked on site with
the Microsoft SQL Server development team to ensure readiness of SQL
Server 7.0 for R/3. SAP and Microsoft developers ran rigorous tests in
the beta phase using actual R/3 customer data. These development and
test efforts allowed database conversions of several productive R/3
solutions to SQL Server 7.0 with very positive results.
Pennzoil is one customer that has relied on Microsoft and its
strong alliance with SAP to ensure that its requirements were met and
the conversion went as smoothly as possible. "Microsoft and SAP did
extensive testing with SQL Server 7.0 and SAP R/3, and the result
reflected this," said Britt Mayo, CIO for Pennzoil. "Since migrating
to SQL Server 7.0, the R/3 System at Pennzoil has been stable and
reliable, and our users appreciate the substantial improvements in
response and run times."
Bitburger Brewery has also noted similar success with its R/3
solution on Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. "Since migrating to SQL Server
7.0, we have not had a single technical problem nor any downtime with
our R/3 installation," said Hans Werner Rolinger, IT manager at
Bitburger Brewery. "But best of all, our users are enthusiastic about
the dramatic improvements in response and run times."
Today, more than 50 percent of new SAP customers select Microsoft
Windows NT(R), with more than 1,300 customer installations running
Microsoft SQL Server with R/3. Recent SAP initiatives created to speed
implementations for SAP customers -- including Accelerated SAP(tm),
SAP Accelerated Solutions(tm) and SAP Ready to Run R/3(tm) -- have
rapidly increased deployment of R/3 Solutions on Windows NT and SQL
Server.
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Ibexx |
