CenturyLink announces new integrated managed solution with automation and management for SAP® applications

Rapid-delivery managed solution powered by FlexPod drives improved efficiency and better governance via SAP solution deployments

MONROE, La., May 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) today announced its latest SAP® software–focused solution with enhanced automation for infrastructure management, SAP software deployment and configuration. The fully managed solution, built specifically for optimizing customers' workloads running on SAP software, is designed to dramatically change how customers address the deployment and ongoing development and management of SAP applications and analytics efforts. The solution, announced at SAPPHIRE NOW® and ASUG Annual Conference, will be available in early summer.

SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, the world's premier business technology event and largest SAP customer-run conference, are being held May 16–18 in Orlando.

Working closely with Cisco and SAP, CenturyLink built this offering on FlexPod technology developed by NetApp and Cisco. It is designed to help customers realize faster time-to-value at lower costs and reduce risk with improved governance and automation. Customers can leverage CenturyLink's consulting expertise in SAP software, managed private cloud services, and secure network infrastructure that has been specifically designed and certified to SAP operational standards.

CenturyLink's deep expertise around SAP technology includes being a global premier supplier for SAP HANA® Enterprise Cloud and providing managed hosting solutions for a variety of SAP solutions.

"CenturyLink has built comprehensive capabilities for designing, implementing and managing a wide range of SAP solutions," said Gary Gauba, Chief Enterprise Relationship Officer and President Advance Solutions Group in CenturyLink's IT & Managed Services business unit. "With this new offering, combined with our recent acquisition of SEAL Consulting, we are continuing to increase our value proposition to the SAP ecosystem."

"CenturyLink and Cisco are fully committed to the SAP HANA market, and we are pleased that CenturyLink has selected Cisco's Unified Computing System to power SAP customer services," said Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's Computing Systems Group. "According to a recent primary research study by IDC, Cisco UCS now leads the market in SAP HANA deployments; this deep SAP technology expertise from both companies helps ensure an optimal SAP experience for CenturyLink customers."

CenturyLink's offering includes secure, SAP-certified, enterprise-scale private cloud and application development as well as ongoing management of applications, infrastructure, network and security for SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, and the SAP Customer Relationship Management and SAP ERP applications. The offering leverages FlexPod converged infrastructure from Cisco and NetApp, Cisco UCS, and policy-driven automation from an industry-leading vendor to help provide:

• Accelerated deployment of SAP systems by leveraging policy-driven automation for the management, auditability and compliance of SAP business applications and SAP HANA environments
• Flexible deployment options such as bare metal configuration or a virtualized configuration on the same infrastructure
• Single point of contact delivering support for SAP solutions, including facilitation of higher-tier support with partners.

CenturyLink provides solution architecture and design consulting, migration services, application development, managed services on hybrid hosting environments, and advanced analytics expertise specific to SAP software. Flexible deployment models and policy-driven automation differentiate CenturyLink from other hosting providers because the company can support cloud-based development/test environments, manage large-scale production workloads and provide metro-specific disaster recovery services, all of which are enhanced by advanced network capabilities.

About CenturyLink

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is a global communications and IT services company focused on connecting its customers to the power of the digital world. CenturyLink offers network and data systems management, big data analytics, managed security services, hosting, cloud, and IT consulting services. The company provides broadband, voice, video, advanced data and managed network services over a robust 265,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 360,000-route-mile international transport network. Visit CenturyLink for more information.

SAP, SAP HANA, SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP S/4HANA and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

SOURCE CenturyLink, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.centurylink.com