In SiliconANGLE’s ongoing coverage of the Sapphire Now 2013 conference, John Furrier spoke with Henrik Wagner of Global SAP Practice at EMC and Hsinte James Yen of SAP Basis. In The Cube they discuss the advantages of the SAP environment, particularly concerning virtualization. Yen’s advice to potential SAP end users is straightforward: “[Don’t] be afraid. Virtualization is there now, not in the future. Have to do it now to start saving. Feel confident. [We’ve had] no unplanned outages.”

Wagner mentioned that a major advantage of the SAP Environment was “improved business agility,” which fundamentally reduces the cost of infrastructure. Clients can deploy a private cloud infrastructure on premise or off and transition from physical and private infrastructure easily.

James Yen, spoke to the advantages of the SAP environment from a client perspective. Yen explains that before implementing VBLOCK, his company’s solutions could not meet demand.

Wagner also notes that application upgrades and data center moves would usually take 12 to 15 months. Companies were hesitant to make the switch because of the time and risk factor. SAP, he argues has been able to reduce the risk and transition time to 6 months.

When it comes to virtualization, both Wagner and Yen noted financial and time savings as an important incentive. Yen explains that his company reduced CPU by 7 percent with the transition, which allowed them to save many license fees regarding Oracle. Also, Wagner suggests virtualization is more efficient noting that “when users want to have a new system we can easily have a new system within hours.” Enhanced efficiency also translates into more monetary savings. According to Wagner, time savings allows companies to react to business demand quicker, can integrate a new company in 3 months instead of 9 months. Wagner says this “is such a big win that IT gets a seat in the boardroom and becomes more relevant in the boardroom because its an advantage for your company.”

See the entire segment below: