Citrix Systems announced that leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) manufacturer SAP AG will be virtualizing an estimated 500 servers with Citrix XenServer by the middle of 2009.

SAP has also deployed Citrix XenApp application virtualization technology to deliver applications to both SAP employees and external partners. In addition, SAP expects to receive the benefits that a combined XenServer and XenApp solution provides – such as streaming standardized workload images and superior management functionality – which the company anticipates will generate a 35 percent savings in terminal server costs.

SAP was looking to consolidate its server infrastructure and also wanted to create a much more flexible and dynamic computing architecture. Following an extensive test of XenServer, the company decided to move forward with a multi-stage roll-out of the server virtualization solution onto 500 servers, initially in the company’s Saint Leon Rot, Germany office. In the next phase of the project, the servers that power the worldwide training centers will be virtualized, followed by the project management division with several hundred development, test, and support environments. After the server virtualization project in Germany is complete, the roll-out will continue at the end of 2009 to SAP’s offices in Asia and the United States.

SAP has also deployed Citrix XenApp application virtualization technology to deliver more than 40 applications, including Microsoft Office and the SAP Business Suite software, to its entire user base. In total, there are more than 50,000 end users who access the XenApp infrastructure to work on tasks such as product development and support.

“We are extremely proud that SAP has selected our server virtualization technology,” said N. Louis Shipley, group vice president and general manager, XenServer Product Group, Citrix. “This project is an excellent example of how an end-to-end virtualization solution can help companies optimize their IT infrastructure and reduce their costs.”

“We were impressed by the performance benefits that the Citrix server and application virtualization solutions provided,” said Dietmar Bruder, vice president, SAP IT Infrastructure Services. “Our goal in implementing Citrix XenServer is to not only reduce the costs of our server infrastructure, but to also significantly lower its carbon footprint. By leveraging Citrix virtualization technology we believe that in the future we will be able to cut SAP’s carbon emissions by up to 600 tons annually in addition to the immediate savings on hardware.”