• RISE For SAP Could Be A Boon For IBM’s PowerVS Cloud

  March 17, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  German application giant System Analyse Programmentwicklung, better known as SAP, has spent more than five decades to deliver five major versions of application software to help companies run themselves. They are R/1 in 1977, R/2 in 1981, R/3 in 1992, mySAP.com (which became Business Suite) in 1999, SAP HANA in 2011 with its S/4HANA application suite in 2015. And today, the company has over 400,000 customers.

  As is well known, SAP wants to create an application system, which is a phrase that resonates with the OS/400 and IBM i faithful. SAP was founded by five ex-IBMers from Germany and started …

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• Rimini Supports IBM i Environments with New Outsourcing Biz

  May 10, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rimini Street’s new outsourcing business, Rimini ONE, supports IBM i application environments, the company confirmed to IT Jungle. In addition to delivering application support services for JD Edwards and SAP running on IBM i, the Las Vegas company is also offering to manage the full stack of technology upon which these ERP systems run.

  Rimini Street has provided third-party support and maintenance services for a variety of ERP systems for over a decade. You may have recalled the epic legal battle it waged with Oracle, which accused the company of stealing its intellectual property in pursuit of its …

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• The Power10 Machines That Will Take IBM i To 2025

  July 12, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM i shops that have been waiting for an upgrade path that will take them to the other half of this decade do not have to wait any longer. Finally, after a change of foundry (to Samsung) and process technology (from 10 nanometers down to 7 nanometers) as well as a new implementation of the Power instruction set packed with all kinds of vector and matrix math goodies that are perfect for embedding AI into commercial applications, Big Blue is ready to start shipping the entry and midrange Power Systems machines based on the Power10 processor.

  We made it, despite …

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• ERP Transitions Loom for SAP on IBM i Customers

  May 23, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Unless SAP changes its plans, the company will end mainstream support for its business software running on IBM i in five years, with an option for extended maintenance through 2030. The looming end of support for the decades-long partnership between the IBM i organization and the German software giant puts about 1,500 joint customers in the tough spot of deciding how to transition away from their current ERP platform. And one they have probably invested a lot of time, money, and effort into.

  SAP’s preferred destination for all of its ECC (ERP Central Component) and Business Suite customers – …

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• Skytap Bullish as Momentum Grows for Cloudy Power LPARs

  April 6, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Since announcing support for IBM i in late 2018, Skytap has seen interest build for its public cloud offering, which leverages Power servers installed Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud data centers. Now, thanks to an expanded partnership with Microsoft and a new certification with SAP, the company expects migrations of IBM i and AIX customers into the cloud to continue picking up steam.

  Skytap has a unique offering in the cloud hosting business, particularly as it pertains to Power customers, who have a much smaller set of runtime options in an X86-dominated world.

  The Seattle, Washington, company has a deal …

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• The Big Iron Customers That The Power E1080 Is Aimed At

  September 27, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the central tenets of our philosophy here at The Four Hundred is: Anything that makes Power Systems stronger helps IBM i last longer.

  For as long as we have been watching the AS/400 and IBM i market, big iron has driven a lot of revenue for machines based on IBM’s proprietary CISC processors and then PowerPC and Power RISC processors. And the big iron machines drove even more of the profits from these products. Big iron is, therefore, important. But just how much money are we talking about?

  A lot more than you probably think, as it …

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• COVID-19 Delivers 2020 Clarity for Omnichannel

  September 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  The viral pandemic is impacting society in profound and multi-faceted ways. In the consumer goods supply chain, which includes a good chunk of IBM i shops, COVID-19 is forcing manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to get a lot nimbler in a hurry — particularly as it relates to diversifying sales channels and embracing omnichannel fulfillment strategies.

  Ecommerce has exploded during COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdowns, as consumers elect to make purchases online instead of venturing into stores, which raises the risk of being exposed to the novel coronavirus. According to Adobe Analytics’ Digital Economy Index, ecommerce spending surged by 78 …

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• How SAP HANA Helps Keep IBM i Strong

  February 24, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been a good 12 months for Power Systems in the cloud. Not only did Big Blue launch entry Power8 and high-end Power8 machines on its IBM Cloud supporting IBM i and AIX and promise to get high-end Power9 iron on its cloud as well, but Google, Skytap, and Microsoft also launched Power9 iron on their respective public cloud and offered to run Linux, AIX, and IBM i on these machines. Last week, it was the turn for enterprise software giant SAP, which is adding high-end Power E980 systems to its own cloud services so customers can run HANA …

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• Where Does SAP On IBM i Go From Here?

  January 15, 2020 Alex Woodie

  In Monday’s issue of The Four Hundred, we covered some of the challenges that SAP has created for itself by having two very different mainstream ERP suites (see “SAP Sending Mixed Messages on ERP Platform Support.”) On the one hand, it wants to move forward with S/4 HANA, but on the other hand, it doesn’t have all the features that exist in the older Business Suite. That puts customers who run Business Suite on IBM i in a bit of a bind.

  HANA debuted in 2010 as an in-memory columnar database for handling online application processing (OLAP) workloads. In …

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• SAP Sending Mixed Messages On ERP Platform Support

  January 13, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Thousands of SAP Business Suite customers around the world are awaiting clarification from the German software giant about whether their chosen ERP software will continue to run on their chosen platform in five years. SAP is strongly hinting that it may move forward just with S/4 HANA, which at the moment is a Linux-only affair. But its actions suggest a more diverse array of databases and operating systems may be accommodated in the future.

  Questions about SAP’s intentions originated with a statement it made in 2014. At that time, SAP announced that it would fully support its current flagship …

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