IBM and SAP have expanded a global partnership, which will see the latter deliver its SAP Hana platform, SAP Hana One service and other applications on IBM’s SoftLayer cloud platform, which has been verified to run SAP Business Suite software and SAP BusinessObjects solutions.

Businesses will have access to 40 data centers in five continents for running SAP enterprise apps. According to IBM, they’ll be able to more quickly expand their businesses into new geographies with more consistent global deployments. These will improve security and improve compliance with local laws, the company says.

“Businesses today are looking for ways to lower the cost of deployment and greater efficiency in addressing new market opportunity,” said IBM General Manager of Cloud Services James Comfort. “By delivering SAP applications via IBM cloud technologies, companies will have consistent access to a global infrastructure that will assist them in tackling business needs with the speed and efficiency needed in today’s business climate.”

“Delivering SAP applications via the IBM cloud provides customers the choice they desire to respond in real time to changing industry dynamics that impact their business,” added Robert Enslin, president of Global Customer Operations at SAP. “We anticipate that this approach will prove valuable to enable customers to easily scale to constantly increasing business requirements.”

The companies say that businesses will see reduced support costs as a result of the partnership, and also that they’ll be able to speed up development and test instantly.

IBM is also working with Virtustream on a new option for managing environments running SAP solutions on the SoftLayer platform. IBM will use Virtustream’s xStream cloud management platform software, and Virtustream will use SoftLayer to expand its own services into additional locations.

Image via SoftLayer