Lenovo Breaks Out of SMB with New Servers, SAP HANA Analytics Enterprise Solutions

Lenovo’s target market long has been SMBs but the vendor is wasting no time moving upstream to enterprise accounts, leveraging the x86 server technology it acquired from IBM (IBM) last year and incorporating SAP’s (SAP) HANA analytics platform.

The vendor has unwrapped analytics-centric solutions built around new entries to Lenovo’s X6 server lineup highlighted by SAP HANA-optimized offerings. The hardware includes two Flex System models–System x480 X6 and System x880 X6– and two new rack servers–System x3850 X6 and System x3950 X6–managed by Lenovo’s XClarity system management solution.

Lenovo displayed the solutions, optimized for deployments of SAP HANA and SAP Business Suite software, at the Sapphire Now conference, held this week in Orlando, FL.

The combined hardware and Lenovo Enterprise Solution Services enable the workload-optimized solutions to be deployed in days, helping customers speed deployment of new applications and simplify on-going management of their infrastructure for SAP HANA, Lenovo said.

“Business analytics presents big opportunities and challenges for virtually every enterprise,” said Darrel Ward, Lenovo Enterprise Marketing and Storage Business Unit vice president “Our new X6 server-based solutions and services for SAP HANA and SAP Business Suite offer a powerful, scalable and fast path for turning data into a competitive advantage.”

In addition, Lenovo said it is collaborating with EMC (EMC) to delivering a complete set of fully integrated solutions and services featuring Lenovo’s System x servers and EMC’s VMAX, VNX and XtremeIO Enterprise Storage offerings. Using the SAP HANA-tailored data center integration approach, customers can leverage their existing hardware and infrastructure components for their SAP HANA-based environments, Lenovo said.

Lenovo also said it has partnered with Citrix (CTXS), Microsoft (MSFT) and VMware (VMW) on enterprise ISV solutions with a goal to “simplify and reduce deployment costs, allowing organizations with strained IT resources to focus on the needs of their growing business.”

As part of PC kingpin Lenovo’s push to build its enterprise business, the vendor last month opened a new, multimillion dollar facility in Research Triangle Park, NC specifically to showcase its products, innovations and services aimed at corporate customers.

Lenovo plans to open two other similar facilities, one in Beijing and another in Germany. 

The Research Triangle Park center “represents a multimillion dollar investment in our enterprise business and confirms our commitment to become No. 1 in the global server market,” said Jay Parker, Lenovo Enterprise Business Group senior vice president.