IBM, SAP Expand Partnership to Accelerate Cloud Deployments, AI Innovation
With the imminent release of RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server in the second quarter, IBM and SAP continue to highlight the platform’s technology and business advantages.
IBM and SAP jointly announced RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS in January to modernize legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) environments with AI-powered business processes. It also fortifies and expands IBM and SAP’s 50-year partnership and emphasizes the enhanced synergies it brings to their common enterprise customer base.
RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS delivers a slew of advanced performance, reliability and security capabilities. IBM and SAP said the hyperscaler accelerates the SAP S/4HANA Cloud migration time from on-premises IBM Power Systems to the cloud to 90 days or less. It also improves total cost of ownership return on investment by providing organizations with guaranteed uptime and price parity with rival Intel systems.
RISE With SAP on IBM Power VS Product Highlights
IBM Power VS is the cloud-based version of the IBM Power platform utilized in on-premises ERP. RISE with SAP is an all-in-one hyperscaler solution that bundles essential components like SAP S/4HANA Cloud (a cloud ERP solution), SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and managed services.
The upcoming RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS will allow enterprises to securely transform SAP ERP systems on public and hybrid clouds, modernize business processes and become more agile with minimal disruption to existing services as they upgrade.
In a series of analyst and customer briefings throughout January and February, IBM Power VS and IBM cloud executives detailed the technology, reliability, security, business, and monetary benefits of their expanding partnership. They include:
- Accelerated deployment – RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS affords customers 15-25% faster migration to the cloud. This in turn reduces cost and manpower hours, says Zane Adam, vice president of IBM Cloud. “It will take about 90 days to migrate SAP S/4 HANA servers on IBM Power Virtual Server to the cloud.” Prior to this, Adam says, “businesses might have spent four to six months from design to deployment.”
- Guaranteed levels of reliability/uptime in service level agreements (SLAs): IBM and SAP say they will guarantee “four nines,” or 99.99%, uptime for RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS deployments in customer SLA. Both IBM and SAP divulged that they have “a world class penalty payment wherein they will pay their customers back if they fail to meet the [terms and conditions] of SLA agreements.”
- Price parity with x86 intel platforms – IBM and SAP claim they’ve reached pricing parity with SAP RISE on Power VS with all other Intel-based platforms. “Once the customer agrees on price, that’s the cost. RISE price is based on the system configuration, the storage size and the number of users,” says Peter Pluim, president of SAP Enterprise Cloud Service. “Customers are charged one monthly fee for SAP RISE running on IBM Power VS.”
- Customer discounts: IBM says organizations that sign up for its “3-year Committed Use Savings Plan” are eligible for discounts of up to 45% off list pricing; businesses that opt for a “1-year Committed Use Savings Plan” can receive discounts of up to 30%.
- Buy-back program: IBM offers a buyback program for eligible on-premises Power servers to help clients maximize their investments.
- Security: RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS incorporates IBM’s Zero Trust embedded security. Satya Sharma, IBM Power CTO, says IBM’s strong security has fewer common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). “Fewer CVEs means there’s far less disruption [in operations] which is crucial to businesses as they upgrade their environments,” Sharma says.
IBM Power systems servers, particularly the newest one, Power 10, consistently rank as the most reliable and secure among all server distributions. IBM’s Power 10 hardware delivers “eight nines” – 99.999999% reliability/uptime; this equals a miniscule 315 milliseconds of per server/per annum downtime due to inherent flaws or server failures, according to the ITIC 2025 Global Server Hardware, Server OS Reliability Survey from ITIC Corp., a Boston-based research firm. IBM Power servers have achieved top rankings for the last 16 years in ITIC’s Global Server Hardware Security Survey. The latest 2025 study, which polled 1,900 customers worldwide, found that only 2% of IBM Power servers had downtime due to security hacks and data breaches in the last year.
To give clients choice, IBM is also in the process of working with other global systems integrators and services partners to architect, deploy and migrate RISE with SAP projects.
RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS customers and IBM business partners will also have access to a new IBM Transformation Suite for SAP Applications to help begin the migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud and RISE with SAP. It will include a bundle of software and services for the assessment of current environments, data migration and automated testing.
Analysts, Enterprises React Positively
The analyst and corporate enterprise reaction to the upcoming RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS solution has been positive. Analysts and customers that spoke with TechChannel called out IBM and SAP’s decision to guarantee “four nines” uptime in enterprise SLA agreements as a “game changer.”
“RISE with SAP has emerged as a business priority for enterprises across all industries as they move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud,” said Anurag Agrawal, founder and chief global analyst, TechAisle. “The new offering from IBM and SAP promises to be a compelling option for businesses looking to migrate their mission-critical ERP workloads securely, quickly and with minimal disruption.”
“IBM and SAP are offering a penalty payment to customers if SAP RISE on IBM Power Virtual Server fails to deliver 99.99% uptime levels. That’s a rare thing,” says Michael Dortch, an independent consultant and president of Dortch On IT in Santa Rosa, California.
“Everyone is on the AI bandwagon. Corporations focus on the bottom line and use cases that provide demonstrable benefits. IT departments’ two biggest challenges are ‘How much will new deployments cost and what do we do when it breaks?’” Dortch says.
Dortch notes that SAP RISE on IBM Power VS is a potent combination of technology and operational cost efficiencies that few rival vendors can match. “The IBM/SAP alliance goes back five decades; that’s a wealth of experience,” Dortch observes. “As a team they check off all the boxes: leading technology, top notch security, aggressive pricing and now, guaranteed customer payback if they fail to meet their customers’ SLA reliability and performance metrics.”
Joint IBM/SAP customers and SAP RISE on IBM Power VS beta sites, agree.
The economies of scale enabled by the RISE with SAP on IBM Power VS platform—which it delivers by speeding cloud migrations while offering and aggressive pricing with Intel—is “exactly what our C-suite executives require in order to green-light upgrades given the current economic uncertainty and ongoing supply chain issues,” notes the vice president of IT at a nationwide bank based in the upper Midwest.
“Innovation is a must. We cannot stand still without falling behind,” bank VP of IT observes. But the bank grapples with the need to cut capital and operational expenses, demonstrate tangible technological gains and strong security, and improve profitability.
“RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server demonstrably simplifies and accelerates our cloud migration and AI. IBM and SAP offer outstanding reliability, great service and support and leading-edge security,” the IT executive says. “Putting their money where their mouth is by guaranteeing 99.99 percent uptime is the icing on the cake. The bank’s executives love saving money, and I love the fact that IT can sleep at night,” he says.
“IBM and SAP are addressing and solving their customers’ questions and concerns with clear and compelling answers,” Dortch says. “I would expect that at least privately, their competitors will be compelled to match these terms and conditions.”