Accenture Launches Private SAP ERP, BI Cloud Offering

Global consulting services firm Accenture has taken the lid off a solution designed for customers who want to run SAP ERP and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse business intelligence on a private cloud in their own data center. The end goal? The same SAP technology, but with majorly enhanced scalability and cost savings.

In its press release, Accenture boasts it can get a customer up and running with a private cloud in less than six months. Technology-wise, it’s using Accenture, Cisco Systems, NetApp, VMware, Red Hat and RealTech products in a FlexPod architecture. (If you remember, FlexPod is a combination of the Cisco Unified Computing System and NetApp storage.) And of course, Accenture is hyping the security and flexibility of this cloud solution.

As per the press release, here’s Accenture’s list of benefits of taking advantage of its solution:

In a prepared statement, Chakib Bouhdary, executive vice president and chief strategy and value officer of Value Engineering at SAP Americas (and likely this week’s winner for Most Convoluted Job Title), confirmed this new solution has a definite channel component:

Pricing apparently is based on geography and scale of the deployment.

This isn’t SAP’s first cloud partnership by a long shot. But it’s the first time a service provider has teamed up with SAP specifically for private ERP and BI clouds. I don’t need to tell you that we’ll be keeping close watch on both SAP and Accenture, so stay tuned.