HP Offers SAP 'Migration-in-a-Box' Services

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Sun is finally in the hands of Oracle but that’s not stopping its competitors from continuing to pursue its customers. Hewlett-Packard (NASDAQ: HPQ) today at the SAP Sapphireconference unveiled what it calls “Migration in a Box,” a complete service kit for Sun customers running SAP apps to move to HP systems.

Migration in a Box provides initial assessment, migration guidance, implementation and ongoing support, all at a fixed cost, for SAP customers who want to move off Oracle Sun SPARC servers to HP servers, including ProLiant, BladeSystem, Integrity or Converged Infrastructure.

Customers will receive needs assessment, assistance with system design, an implementation plan and be offered on-going maintenance services along with a choice of financing options. HP (NYSE: HPQ) said the package provides a complete migration plan, roadmap and all cost estimations up front. The computer giant claims customers can realize savings of up to 90 percent in total cost of ownership over several years by making the switch to HP’s x86-based systems.

Sun’s Sparc-based system run Solaris, Sun’s flavor of Unix. Conversely, HP said it offers a variety of operating systems for the customer to choose from, including Microsoft Windows, Linux and HP-UX 11i.

HP’s Migration Center, a professional service that aids in technology transitions, is used as a part of this effort. It provides access to application migration experts, tools, best practice processes and customized services that span all database and application needs.

HP’s Financial Solution Analysis provides the customer with a TCO assessment, including how quickly a return may be realized. HP Financial Services also handles leasing and life cycle asset management services.

But such promises may be tough to keep, warns John Spooner, senior analyst with Technology Business Research. “In principle, what they are trying to do is make life simpler for the customer. In practice it takes some effort to do any software migration, especially a complex one like an ERP migration. The proof will be how quickly they can get these migrations done,” he told InternetNews.com.

Spooner said he expects HP will draw on its own experiences and practices, and likely the expertise from IT services giant EDS, which the company acquired last year. “There’s a lot of competition in the IT simplification services market. Dell offers a similar message, IBM in many respects does the same thing. The goal here is to get it done faster and better than anyone else. It remains to be seen whether HP will do it or not, and it depends on the customer implementation,” he said.

In addition to the hardware and SAP migration, there’s also the wildcard of the underlying data and database a customer has, he added, that may also prove tricky to move over.

Andy Patrizio is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.