NEWS BRIEFS

Hamburg, GERMANY — SAP Business Intelligence Conference – Building on mutual success in the deployment of mySAP Business Intelligence (mySAP BI), Sun Microsystems, Inc. and SAP AG, a leading provider of collaborative e-business software solutions, showcased Sempra Energy’s integrated corporate-wide solution.

SAP Business Information Warehouse, an integral component of mySAP BI, provides companies with an integrated view of their business. Companies are able to use the same business intelligence infrastructure to develop internal efficiencies and collaborate more effectively with internal and external members of their value chain. It enables companies to develop “purchasing intelligence” to make informed, strategic decisions by allowing them to analyze vital information such as the performance of materials and vendors. This analysis promotes cost savings across the organization by identifying the highest-performing vendors and materials.

A solution as powerful as mySAP BI requires a reliable, scalable platform. The Sun platform provides maximum uptime, unmatched scalability and seamless connectivity. To enable customers to gain high returns with low risk from mySAP BI, Sun and SAP have formed a collaboration model, known as Implementation Blueprint For Success/SAP Business Information Warehouse. As a cooperative effort, Sun’s implementation blueprint for SAP Business Information Warehouse blends expertise from all team members involved in the end-to-end installation of SAP BW. Sun and SAP assess the customer’s business requirements, and collaborate to deliver a solution powered by SAP BW application software and Sun hardware and systems software. The Sun services team provides expertise in SAP BW installation, infrastructure deployment, system testing and optimization, product training, and ongoing support. Together, the teams deliver an SAP BW implementation that gives customers a complete business intelligence solution, covering their entire organization.

Peter Grendel, Global Solution Marketing, mySAP Business Intelligence, explains the benefits of SAP teaming with Sun. “We’ve chosen Sun as our platform partner in the implementation blueprint for SAP BW because not only do they have a highly scalable, excellent set of products, this is complemented by skilled technical consultants, ensuring customers get full benefit of our solutions running on the Sun platform.”

Sempra installed SAP R/3 running on Sun’s platform to unify their entire range of companies under a consistent business system. The multiple companies that comprise Sempra Energy run their own SAP R/3 on Sun. However, they are united under a single SAP BW system powered by Sun. To power SAP BW, Sempra has in place one Sun Enterprise 3500 and three 4500 servers along with Sun StorEdge A5000, L1000, and L1800 storage devices.

Sempra installed SAP BW to help understand and improve business processes. “We’re using SAP BW for supply chain and financial solutions and because we’re a utility company, for a lot of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reporting. We’re also using it for project systems and we’re beginning to expand into the area of customer care,” explained Lynne Ketchie, SAP BW project manager, Sempra Energy. “With its ability to present all necessary information at one time with just one click, SAP BW has increased productivity for our users. When we roll out our customer care solutions these benefits will be greatly extended.”

Sun’s high availability was crucial to Sempra, as a major utility company they are a mission-critical, 24×7 business, requiring strong reporting capability with no impact on production. Scalability was an additional consideration since Sempra required the flexibility to grow. Prior to the Sun deployment, Sempra was experiencing scalability and system management issues. To ensure they selected the right platform Sempra launched a three-month evaluation of leading system vendors.

“In the end it was clear that Sun was the right choice,” said Lynne Ketchie, SAP BW project manager, Sempra Energy. “Sun has it all – a record for reliability and scalability, a large share of the SAP market, and excellent support. We brought Sun’s International SAP Competence Center staff in for a two-day session so they could understand our business requirements at present and in the future. They did their assessments and came back with results that proved to be almost exactly on target.”

The success of SAP BW installations on the Sun platform is due to several factors; SAP BW and Sun have identified business’ diverse needs and harnessed their products to deliver a focused, cohesive and efficient solution. SAP BW provides the powerful application and Sun’s platform provides the availability, scalability and reliability that business demands. By installing SAP BW, companies are better informed and equipped to make the rapid, complex decisions required in today’s business environment. In addition, SAP BW helps drive down the costs of data management across the enterprise, promptly delivering return on the initial investment.

Greg Rucki, senior director, SAP Business Unit, Sun Microsystems concludes, “The implementation blueprint shows the strength of Sun’s partner network in our ability to deliver maximum value to our joint customers. Sun’s high performance data center-class servers and storage, combined with SAP’s expertise in Business Information Warehousing are meeting the demanding requirements of our SAP Business Information Warehouse customers.”

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer(TM)” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc., to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses. With $17.6 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.
NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Enterprise, Sun StorEdge and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

About SAP SAP is the world’s leading provider of collaborative e-business software solutions. Through the mySAP.com platform, people in businesses around the globe are improving relationships with customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving significant efficiencies throughout their supply chains. Today, more than 13,000 companies in over 100 countries run more than 30,000 installations of SAP software. With subsidiaries in over 50 countries, SAP generated sales of 5,11 billion euro in the fiscal year 1999. The company is listed on several exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol “SAP.” (Additional information at www.sap.com)

============================================================