SAP Teams With HP, IBM For Business Software AppliancesSAP Teams With HP, IBM For Business Software Appliances

SAP, as part of its effort to lure more midsize business customers, will introduce appliance-like systems pre-loaded with its ERP software, a database, and a Linux operating system, running on hardware from Hewlett-Packard or IBM.

At its Sapphire 2008 user conference in Orlando on Monday, SAP said it will offer HP BladeSystem and ProLiant servers that have been loaded and configured with its Business All-in-One ERP suite and the SAP MaxDB database running on Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise. The appliances are intended to lower cost of ownership and provide midsize businesses in the service and trade industries with a quick path to ERP. They will be designed as "turnkey" systems with simplified setup and operations. SAP did not disclose product pricing, availability, or configuration options.

SAP and IBM, meanwhile, say they are "evaluating" three potential offerings; IBM System x or BladeCenter servers featuring either SAP All-In-One, IBM DB2 or SAP MaxDB, and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, or IBM Power Systems with SAP All-In-One, IBM DB2 and IBM i (formerly i5/OS).

Similarly, the planned offerings are intended to lower cost of ownership and would be provided through SAP and IBM resellers. More specifics, such as pricing and availability, weren't disclosed.

SAP has been working for at least two years to expand its business beyond its usual installed base of large companies. It reported Monday that it has 11,700 businesses using All-In-One and 18,690 using Business One, for small businesses. Those figures represent a 28% increase in SAP's small-and-midsize customer base for its first financial quarter ended March 31 over last year's first quarter. SAP reported particularly strong growth of SMB customers in Brazil, India, and Russia.

The appliance approach shows how SAP is trying to develop offerings for SMBs that are simple and less expensive, yet don't involve software-as-a-service, the latest trend in achieving those objectives. SAP's SaaS business, in fact, has started off slowly, with just 150 customers signed on since Business ByDesign SaaS suite was announced last September.

SAP said last week it was purposefully controlling the growth of the SaaS service while it worked on some internal cost and technical issues.