Application Hosting for Education and ResearchConcepts of an SAP University Competence Center - Powered by a SUN Server Farm

Abstract

The SAP University Competence Center (UCC) is a non-profit initiative established jointly by SAP, Sun Microsystems and the University of Passau and has been live since May 1999. It provides access to SAP Software for teaching and research purposes, which is currently used by 36 higher learning institutions via the German Research Net (DFN). The software runs on a SUN Server Farm consisting of 40 E250 servers. The UCC acts as an Application Service Provider (ASP) granting the following services: - Reliable maintenance and upgrades of the software - First- and second-level basis and application support - Introductory training for teachers (jointly with SAP) - Regular user meetings - Access to the mySAP.com Workplace containing information and course material Due to the excellent support of all partners the connected institutions only have a few administrative tasks. They can concentrate on what they do best: Using the software in research and teaching. The presentation will describe the concepts in detail and will report on the experience of the connected institutions.