The ability to manage SAP environments not system by system but as the tightly integrated landscapes in which they are actually offers massive productivity improvements for IT departments. New landscapes can be provisioned in minutes and can include all types of SAP Business Suite, SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio (ABAP, Java or combined) or legacy applications. Virtual Appliance templates offer ready-to-use systems with zero post-installation effort, and as desired can be pre-seeded with production business data. Monitoring and administration is simplified to manage the SAP applications throughout the system lifecycle.

These Virtual Landscape Management (VLM) capabilities were developed in the SAP Value Prototyping data centers and have already revolutionized the capability to serve more than 500 customers in 2008 alone. Through the fluid Operations eCloudManager™ software and the GOPA ITC VLM service packages, these capabilities are now available to drive customers' enterprise clouds. Key features will be highlighted at the SAP TechEd trade show in Phoenix, October 12th to 16th, booth 311.

"We started by solving the most challenging SAP application implementation issues internal development teams and customers could throw at us," explains SAP Value Prototyping pioneer Ralf Lindenlaub, Senior Director SAP NetWeaver Platform & Services. "Moving to a virtualized environment and leveraging the VLM solution, we were able to extend our services to the strategy level to be able to drive new business process innovation for our clients."

Key advantages of VLM in comparison to traditional application management concepts are to:

• Dramatically reduce the time needed for SAP virtual infrastructure and cloud implementation and consolidation efforts
• Extend storage-based cloning and virtualization management environments such as VMware to support SAP environments
  
• Efficiently provision large numbers of virtual system landscapes systems without the need for SAP system post-installation work
  
• Build on SAP tested Virtual Appliance templates, reuse of custom versions for company-wide consistency and compliance
• Offer on-demand Landscape-as-a-Service to support internal initiatives

VLM for SAP is built on an industry-leading knowledge base accumulated over the past 6 years across more than 1000 customers and 1700 projects.

"Many IT organizations have been hesitant to move their applications to virtual or cloud-like infrastructures to benefit from the latest innovations," continues Lindenlaub. "Here now is a proven set of packaged software and services that not only enable the assurance of high IT service quality to the owners of these mission-critical applications, but that can also help to dramatically lower the TCO and ongoing effort of application delivery and innovation."