NetApp and SAP explore deeper integration for SAP Cloud Infrastructure

NetApp and SAP are planning to expand their long-standing partnership by exploring deeper cloud-native integration of NetApp capabilities into SAP Cloud Infrastructure, SAP's Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform.

The companies say the collaboration will focus on strengthening the storage and data infrastructure supporting SAP applications, SAP Business AI Platform and customer workloads, with an emphasis on performance, availability, security and resilience.

The initiative also includes plans to explore joint go-to-market activities and evaluate the use of NetApp Object storage within SAP Cloud Infrastructure.

Strengthening the infrastructure layer

The NetApp Platform already supports key elements of the SAP Cloud Infrastructure storage architecture, including file and block storage services designed for high availability and performance.

NetApp also provides proactive data protection and data replication capabilities intended to support SAP's global availability model.

The companies now plan to explore deeper integration between these capabilities and SAP Cloud Infrastructure as they look to strengthen the underlying infrastructure supporting enterprise workloads.

Supporting global cloud environments

SAP Cloud Infrastructure operates across multiple regions and availability zones, creating infrastructure requirements that extend beyond performance and availability.

The expanded collaboration is also intended to support country- and industry-specific compliance requirements, particularly for organisations operating in highly regulated environments.

NetApp's governance, visibility and automation capabilities are expected to play a role in supporting SAP's security and data sovereignty objectives as the companies evaluate the integration.

Preparing infrastructure for SAP and customer workloads

The infrastructure layer supporting enterprise applications is becoming increasingly important as organisations modernise their cloud environments and adopt AI-driven workloads.

Under the planned collaboration, NetApp and SAP will explore ways to support SAP applications, SAP Business AI Platform and customer workloads with consistent performance, resilience and security.

For customers, the objective is to create an infrastructure foundation capable of supporting demanding workloads while maintaining operational and governance requirements across cloud environments.

Exploring cloud transformation opportunities

The partnership will also include potential joint go-to-market initiatives focused on helping customers migrate, modernise and operate both SAP and non-SAP workloads on SAP Cloud Infrastructure.

The companies say these initiatives will target enterprise requirements around performance, resilience, security and operational consistency.

This could give customers a more integrated path for cloud transformation, particularly where SAP environments sit alongside broader enterprise workloads.

Evaluating NetApp Object storage

As part of the next phase of the partnership, NetApp and SAP also plan to evaluate NetApp Object storage within SAP Cloud Infrastructure.

The evaluation is expected to include a technical validation, although the companies have not announced a general availability timeline or committed product offering.

The distinction is important as the current announcement relates to planned exploration and future integration rather than a completed product launch.

A deeper partnership around enterprise cloud

The expanded relationship builds on a long-standing partnership between NetApp and SAP at a time when enterprises are placing greater demands on cloud infrastructure.

As organisations modernise SAP environments while adopting AI and increasingly distributed workloads, infrastructure needs to provide a balance of performance, resilience, security and governance.

For NetApp and SAP, the planned integration represents an effort to strengthen that infrastructure layer and give enterprise customers more flexibility as they move workloads into cloud environments.

About NetApp

NetApp is an intelligent data infrastructure company providing data management, storage and cloud technologies for enterprise workloads. Its platform is built around NetApp ONTAP and supports data across cloud, on-premises and AI environments.

About SAP

SAP is an enterprise software company providing applications and cloud infrastructure for business operations, including enterprise resource planning, data management and business AI.

Source and Credits

NetApp official announcement