Verizon chosen by SAP to manage, streamline the company’s global network
Verizon is expanding its role in SAP’s global network, with a new agreement to consolidate, streamline and manage the company’s worldwide network infrastructure.
SAP has historically relied on an in-house team to handle its global IT networks, with support from various technology companies. However, citing the “exponential growth of its cloud business,” SAP is opting to consolidate management of its network and turn to new technologies such as software-defined networking for reliability and scalability, so its own employees can focus on customer-facing activities.
Verizon said that it currently works with SAP in two key areas: developing a new global network to link SAP offices around the globe, including data and voice services; and providing the Internet connectivity to connect SAP’s customer-facing data centers, which enables the company’s cloud business.
Verizon described its new role as consolidating and streamlining SAP’s global network infrastructure for easier and more cost-effective network management. SAP’s end objective is “improved internal connectivity and collaboration, a secure stable platform to support customer-facing applications, and a better experience for employees and customers around the globe.”
“SAP has an extremely clear vision for its customers around the globe,” said George Fischer, president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, in a statement. He went on to add that the company’s “clarity of purpose is extremely important, as it makes it crystal clear where we need to focus our attention as well. This was a great opportunity for us to use Verizon’s innovative network solutions to build a future-ready infrastructure that can support SAP’s exponential growth. When a company is growing as quickly as SAP, the network is foundational. And network is at the heart of what we do.”
“Secure, resilient global connectivity is crucial for our future business success and critical to running our business,” said Thomas Saueressig, CIO and EVP of global cloud infrastructure for SAP, in a statement. “As we move more of our business to the cloud, our customers’ success depends on our ability to connect them to our applications, and to help ensure those applications deliver the highest standards of performance and security.”
