Novell, SAP Ink Linux-ERP Support Deal

Published: May 22, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

ERP software giant SAP held its annual Sapphire user and partner conference in Vienna, Austria, last week, and commercial Linux distributor Novell was on hand to talk about a new joint support arrangement that the two companies have created to make the job of supporting customers running their respective wares better and easier.

The product that the two are working on is called SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Priority Support for SAP, and with this offering SLES 10 will be integrated into SAP's Solution Manager application management tools and will hook into the SAP support network, which monitors SAP applications, as well as provisioning application and database servers and patching the whole shebang. As part of the deal, the German software giant is committing to lead with SLES 10 rather than another Linux for customers who want Linux for their SAP applications--which stands to reason, given SUSE's German heritage, but is also a bit perplexing given Red Hat's dominant share of the commercial Linux market.

As part of the deal, Novell and SAP are working to optimize SLES with SAP's NetWeaver middleware and its Business Suite ERP software.

Novell and SAP are offering customers discounts if they sign up for the SAP priority support within the next 90 days. Novell's direct and indirect channels are authorized to sell this specialized support offering.

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