Foreword

“IT Infrastructure must be
—as available as oxygen,
—as reliable as the sun and the moon,
—as invisible as radio waves.

—Carly Fiorina, CEO, Hewlett-Packard

In the late 1970s, SAP introduced R/2 standard business applications operating in real time (that's what the R stands for). Ten years later, SAP R/3 made a breakthrough with client/server systems providing graphical interfaces for enterprise users. Since then, SAP R/3 has become a de facto industry standard. The concept behind SAP's architecture and the motivation were articulated by Hasso Plattner, founder and CEO of SAP, in the early 1990s. Already then, the emphasis was on the end-user experience of using integrated business software. The SAP Internet Strategy with mySAP.com expands this concept to a vision of an integrated interconnected ecosystem—a true e-business platform that integrates all internal and external systems, with customers, suppliers, and the marketplace. Computer systems and networks play a key role in this new e-business economy. Therefore, IT infrastructures are required that meet the performance scaling, high availability, and operations management requirements of truly mission-critical applications.

Years ago the important success factor for business and IT was to have reliable and powerful hardware. It was a big challenge for hardware vendors to have the most powerful servers and CPUs on the market. Today, there is a difference in the market. The new business requirements of the Internet economy introduce additional demands on the IT infrastructure. For your company and business to survive now requires teaming up with an experienced partner who understands the business requirements and offers a complete solution portfolio.

We appreciate that Hewlett Packard, as one of our most valued partners, summarizes over ten years of experience with IT infrastructures for SAP systems in this book for the benefit of all our customers. After a decade of successful partnership that combined the benefits of open systems and standardized enterprise application software, SAP and HP will continue to help companies capitalize on the new Internet economy.

Karl-Heinz Hess
Member of the Extended Executive Board
SAP AG