VMware, SAP Team Up for Enterprise IoT

VMware has announced a new collaboration with SAP, with the goal of creating an integrated enterprise IoT solution that supports both implementation and management of IoT use cases across devices, applications, infrastructure, the edge and the cloud. The plan is to enable fast deployment and scalability of IoT projects.

In a 2016 study conducted by IDG Research Services on IoT, 47 percent of companies considered technological expertise as an important factor when selecting an IoT vendor. Companies tend to spend a large amount of time selecting a vendor and on integration when implementing IoT use cases.

Real-time decisions at the edge

“Companies win when they can make intelligent real-time decisions at the edge. SAP Leonardo supports that bold innovation,” said Nils Herzberg, senior vice president and global head of IoT Go-to-Market & Strategic Partnerships at SAP. “As customers start to implement, one obstacle to realizing that vision is tackling infrastructure lifecycle and management outside of the traditional data center. By working with VMware, we are helping mutual customers to create innovative gains while supporting a reliable, maintainable and secure IT platform,” he said.

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According to their announcement, the companies plan to work together to offer the following:

• Enterprise IT approved –– Both VMware and SAP are trusted brands and understand how to help organizations recognize real gains from IoT technology.
• OT-IT integration –– SAP provides real-time visibility by converging time-series device data with business transactional data, while VMware will enable IT to have visibility and control of the IoT use case from the infrastructure operational point of view.
• Holistic analytics — With access to both operational and business analytics, enterprises will be better able to harness the wealth of information unearthed from their IoT deployments as well as view and track the health of the IoT infrastructure itself.
• Shorter time to value ­– The companies are working together to develop a pre-integrated, pre-tested solution that aims to enable quick deployments while providing the necessary security and management capabilities for IoT architecture across gateways, micro data centers and the cloud to drastically help speed up time to value.

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Enterprise IoT-ready architecture is made up of an infrastructure plane and an application plane. VMWare’s expertise in infrastructure and SAPs expertise in analytics applications will combine to create the new solution.