January 20, 2016
By Sam Del Rowe, contributing writer

CenturyLink and SAP Announce Partnership

Today, technology services company CenturyLink announced a new supplier partnership with software corporation SAP. The agreement brings CenturyLink's infrastructure and IT services capabilities to SAP's HANA business suite. This expansion of the SAP HANA platform will assist customers in achieving faster time to market.

CenturyLink provides support for cloud-based development and test environments, large-scale production workloads, and disaster recovery services, all of which take advantage of the company's advanced network capabilities. Furthermore, these services utilize CenturyLink’s international network, private cloud, and managed hosting infrastructure to assist businesses in deploying SAP application workloads to their global workforces. The company also offers a variety of technology-enabled business solutions through its Global IT Services group, including cloud enablement, Big Data-as-a-service, and digital commerce, as well as a suite of analytical solutions for operationalizing predictive models.

"The key point here is that…through this partnership, we are expanding the scale of HANA Enterprise Cloud," says Rayn Veerubhotla, vice president of business development at SAP. Veerubhotla, noting that the HANA Enterprise Cloud is the fastest-growing cloud business for SAP, says that CenturyLink is adding valuable products to expand HANA’s scope.

CenturyLink's Managed SAP Solutions seeks to help enterprises improve deployments, reduce spending, and assist in transitioning to SAP applications. According to a statement from Gary Gauba, president at CenturyLink Cognilytics, the combination of CenturyLink’s services and SAP HANA will assist in transitioning applications to the cloud and foster innovation:

"SAP HANA enables companies to make real-time, informed decisions about their business. With the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service, we further help businesses move their enterprise applications to the cloud and innovate using the latest-generation applications based on SAP HANA."

Kevin Ichhpurani, executive vice president and head of Business Development and Strategic Ecosystem at SAP, also highlighted the partnership's benefits in a statement:

"CenturyLink's expansive IT services and network capabilities provide businesses with extensive geographic coverage and essential components of enterprise-grade IT services. These are key attributes for businesses that rely on the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service for their mission-critical applications."