Red Hat and REALTECH Offer SAP Customers a Lower-risk Path to Platform Modernization

WALLDORF, Germany, May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- REALTECH, a leading global provider of SAP migration services, today announced that it has formed a strategic relationship with Red Hat focused on SAP Migration. As a Red Hat partner, REALTECH offers consulting services to organizations migrating SAP applications to Red Hat Enterprise Linux or consolidating heterogeneous SAP application environments to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

For over 15 years REALTECH has assisted companies in making the best use of SAP applications through platform modernization. More than 2,000 companies worldwide trust REALTECH consulting services and technology solutions. Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

"The value of working with a market leader like Red Hat is that it gives us broader exposure to the SAP customer base considering migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. REALTECH already successfully performed several hundreds of migrations from and to diverse platforms and is experiencing increased client demand for migrations to Linux. We consider the package of our consulting expertise and Red Hat's technology a very competitive solution that will be honored by many of our customers," says Nicola Glowinski, CEO of REALTECH AG.

The partnership between REALTECH and Red Hat delivers many years of in-depth experience in migrations, upgrades, and Linux architectures. REALTECH provides the necessary migration services required by SAP whenever a migration to a new platform and or database is performed. REALTECH's core SAP migration practice provides such services and has demonstrated expertise in migrating SAP customers from UNIX platforms to Linux environments. The agreement enables Red Hat to contract REALTECH for providing SAP migration services as a part of Red Hat's current service portfolio and establishes a framework to deliver consulting services to joint customers globally.

"Our shared objective is to assist companies to operate their SAP systems more efficiently on a powerful, stable, and cost-effective platform.  With REALTECH's SAP migration expertise we now deliver a more comprehensive service and technology solution to our customers," said Dion Cornett, Vice President, Strategic Alliances, Red Hat.

REALTECH Inc, the US subsidiary of German based REALTECH AG, and Red Hat recently partnered to deliver a unified services and technology solution to Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) is a global leader in production of copper, gold, molybdenum and cobalt. FCX started a large worldwide SAP implementation project in early 2010 and after a technical review decided to upgrade their legacy UNIX environment. This led to the decision to replace the infrastructure with a cutting edge cloud-architected environment. Red Hat, REALTECH, Cisco, Accenture and NetApp teamed up to present a unified solution including Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The solution offered simplified deployment of new servers, cloning of SAP systems, hardware independence and reduced overhead costs. REALTECH leveraged its years of SAP migration experience to develop a plan to complete the migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux while meeting the customer's timeline. This OS/DB Migration project included a development system used 24/7 by 200 project personnel. REALTECH successfully finished the migrations in time and on budget in early March of 2011. FCX is very satisfied with the performance and flexibility of the new environment.

"We wanted a platform that would be with us for the next 10 years. With REALTECH's expertise and help we were able to meet our SAP implementation timeframe and provide a significant architecture uplift". Ketan Patel, Director of Infrastructure, Freeport-McMoRan.

Another joint project was one of the largest Linux migrations in Europe ever performed, which was at Munich Re, one of the world's leading reinsurers.

Besides reducing operational costs, Munich Re streamlined the performance of its own server landscape with more than 80 SAP systems by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Another goal was to add more flexibility to the allocation of computing power. At the same time, Munich Re placed heavy demands on the technical stability of its infrastructure. To achieve these objectives Munich Re decided to migrate its entire SAP landscape from HP-UX to Linux.

To perform the migration smoothly Munich Re needed the assistance of an SAP-certified consulting firm. They had to find a migration partner with outstanding technical expertise and previous experience with projects of similar complexity, and REALTECH proved to be the perfect match for their needs. Backed by extensive expertise and many years of experience, the SAP consultancy has established itself as a trusted SAP consulting partner and Linux expert.

"In REALTECH, we have found a migration partner with proven technical expertise. Thanks to REALTECH's support, Munich Re can now count on a reliable and cost-effective server infrastructure for mission-critical, high-performance SAP systems," says Stefan Zahrer, IT project manager, Munich Re.

More Information:

http://www.realtech.com/wInternational/pdf/referenzen/REALTECH_success_munichre_e.pdf

REALTECH AG

REALTECH AG is a full-service company specialized in SAP consulting and a software provider with a focus on business process and IT service management.

Companies turn to REALTECH to help them shape the future of their IT organizations. Its employees work closely with the customer to create added value through IT solutions. With two business divisions that perfectly complement each other, strategic IT consulting and software solutions for business service management, REALTECH supports companies of all sizes along the value chain.

REALTECH AG, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, is listed on the German stock exchange and generated revenues of 52.5 million euro in fiscal 2010. Today, more than 2,000 customers worldwide have chosen REALTECH. For more information, go to http://www.realtech.com

SOURCE REALTECH