MEI Migrates SAP Application to AT&T

AT&T’s Leading Application Services Capabilities Allow MEI to Manage Its Business in a Cost-Effective, Flexible Environment

San Antonio, Texas.- AT&T, Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced that MEI, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of electronic bill acceptors, coin mechanisms and other unattended transaction systems, selected AT&T to host its SAP® enterprise application. Today’s announcement builds on news earlier this year of AT&T’s agreement with SAP America, Inc., under which AT&T serves as a preferred SAP hosting provider, offering independent hosting services for business customers with headquarters in North America.

“When we considered migrating our SAP solution to another vendor, we wanted to find a provider who could support our need to upgrade as well as our plans for future growth,” said Tim Michel, MEI’s chief information officer. “AT&T offered us the flexibility we needed during our transition as well as a team of professionals experienced with SAP solutions.”

MEI holds the world’s largest installed base of unattended payment systems, handling over 2 billion transactions per week in more than 100 countries. The company developed the first electronic coin mechanism in the 1960s, followed by the first electronic non-contact bill acceptor, and more recently its credit card capability and vending management solution. Recently, MEI reached a milestone of selling more than four million bill acceptors and five million coin mechanisms worldwide. Its products are in widespread use in the vending, soft drink, gaming, amusement, transportation, retail, and kiosk markets.

As part of its migration to AT&T Hosting and Application Services, MEI will upgrade its current implementation of SAP solutions to the SAP ERP application Release 6.0. AT&T will manage the technical refresh and, upon go-live, will offer support for SAP Basis and hosting of SAP solutions for 48 months, supporting users around the world.

“MEI’s business is global, and AT&T can provide the service and performance MEI needs around the world so its associates can focus on projects core to the success of its business,” said Jeff Esposito, Managing Director of AT&T’s SAP practice. “In today’s global economy, organizations need access to their core business information in an on-going, flexible way. We can help enterprises realize the performance and elasticity they need.”

As a certified SAP hosting provider, AT&T offers a full portfolio of hosting and application services for the complete SAP application lifecycle. AT&T’s team of SAP Applications Specialists focuses on optimizing SAP solution-based environments to drive the highest value from them based on over 10 years of experience and 170-plus enterprise application clients.

In addition to AT&T’s proven managed application hosting, AT&T offers SAP clients a suite of application services including implementation and infrastructure management as well as operational and on-going support services such as technical and functional support for end-users, upgrade services, and performance tuning. In addition, AT&T provides development hosting site services for testing, monitoring, training and development.

Today, AT&T serves its hosting and application services customers through its 38 Internet Data Centers located in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. To support its business for SAP solutions, AT&T created, within its Global Business Services unit, an SAP services practice that includes experts in dedicated sales, technical and applications-specific management.