By Siobhan Kennedy
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) giant, SAP AG, yesterday became the latest software giant to lend its weight to the Linux operating system, announcing support for the software across its range of R3 applications. SAP becomes the latest in a long line of industry heavyweights, including Oracle Corp, Novell Inc, Sybase Inc, Informix Software Inc and Sun Microsystems Inc, to announce support for the free OS in the last couple of months.
As part of the announcement, SAP teamed up with Compaq Computer Corp, IBM Corp, Hewlett Packard Co and Siemens AG, who showcased versions of the R/3 Linux system on their server hardware. Speaking to ComputerWire yesterday, SAP spokesman Steve Smith said the software vendor had moved over to Linux in response to requests from its customer base, many of whom told SAP they wanted to move to running their systems in the open source OS environment.
But unlike other application vendors, who have announced support for all versions of Linux, SAP said its R/3 applications will only run on RedHat Software Inc’s release, although Smith added that it’s likely SAP will add support for the other versions in time. SAP hardware partners will provide support for hardware and operating systems in the same way they do now. Full support will be available under Linux release versions specified by SAP, ensuring stability from release to release, the company said. Customers will also be able to order pre-installed and pre-configured Ready-to-Run R/3 systems on Linux, SAP added.
The company also used the CeBIT trade show in Hanover yesterday to unveil seven of its planned nineteen industry solution road maps. SAP first talked about the road maps at its user conference in Los Angeles last year. Aimed at specific vertical industries, the maps are designed as a blueprint of the software applications and systems companies within specific industries will need in order to run their business processes. The maps include SAP’s ERP applications, its front office and data warehouse products and products from third party vendors in spaces where SAP has no solution.
The first seven maps, for the banking, high-tech, media, retail, consumer products, oil and gas, and higher education and research industries, were officially launched yesterday and the others are due to be announced some time later this year, SAP said.
