NetApp Customers Using SAP® Solutions Transform Data Operations

In a recent study conducted by Oliver Wyman, a global strategy consultancy firm, customers concluded that when using SAP® solutions in conjunction with NetApp® data and storage management solutions, it helped mitigate risk, achieve faster time to deliver business value, lower data management costs, and increase flexibility. The study was conducted to examine the growing importance of development and test solutions in SAP solution-based environments, discuss customer perspectives on the impact of development and test storage environments for SAP enterprise applications, and highlight storage solutions that provide an advantage over key competitors in SAP solution-based development and test deployments.

Participants in the study were recruited by Oliver Wyman for interviews and were targeted to provide diversity on a number of categories, including, storage vendor, networked storage protocol, geographic region, industry, size of SAP solution-based environment, and complexity of the development and/or test environment. Key findings from the study include:

* SAP customers using NetApp solutions were able to better mitigate risk to production systems through increased testing capabilities. On average, NetApp customers created more development and test instances than the average customer.
* SAP customers using NetApp solutions experienced faster time to deliver business value by reducing the time spent in development and test cycles.
* SAP customers using NetApp solutions realized data management cost savings of 40% to 64% compared to typical respondents.
* NetApp FlexClone® and Snap technologies reduced storage overhead requirements and enabled operational efficiencies in SAP solution-based development and test environments.

Organizations across verticals worldwide leverage NetApp data and storage management solutions to simplify their infrastructure needs in regards to SAP solutions and enable business breakthroughs. NetApp offers flexible solutions that provide customers with rapid upgrades and deployments of SAP solutions with the ability to create space-efficient SAP system copies in minutes versus hours.

With FlexClone technology, customers are able to provide complete images of large SAP datasets to developers, enabling customers to do concurrent development and testing without having to wait for data access and slow replication processes. This allows customers to develop and deploy new SAP applications faster than ever before using minimal incremental storage and with reduced risk. NetApp also provides customers in SAP solution-based environments with increased application availability, the ability to adapt easily to growth and change, and the ability to stay in control and on budget.

For the full report “Growing Importance of Development and Test Solutions in SAP Environments: Customer Perspectives on the Impact of Development and Test Storage Environments for SAP Enterprise Applications,” please visit http://www.netapp.com/us/forms/sap-dev-test-wp.html.