SAVVIS Selects SAP to Support Strong Growth

by SAP AG

IT Infrastructure Services Leader to Deploy Integrated Suite of Business Applications for Improved Customer Experience

SAP AG today announced in continuing evidence of its strength as a provider for business applications tailored to industry needs, that SAVVIS, Inc., a global leader in IT infrastructure services for business applications, selected SAP to replace existing legacy systems to better support their growth projections and improve business processes. With the implementation of SAP(R) ERP, SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) and the SAP for Professional Services and SAP for Telecommunications solution portfolios, SAVVIS will consolidate disparate systems, streamline internal operations and reduce operational costs. The company will also further improve customer service and sales productivity through a unified focus across all customer-facing departments. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE(R) '07, SAP's international customer conference, being held in Atlanta, Georgia, April 22 - 25.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., SAVVIS operates a global network and 24 data centers in the United States, Europe and Asia encompassing approximately 1.4 million square feet. From this impressive IT infrastructure platform, SAVVIS delivers a variety of flexible and cost-effective managed services to business and government enterprises that can easily be mixed and interchanged. These include a broad portfolio of hosting services, network solutions and managed security services. SAVVIS pioneered the industry's first virtualized IT utility services platform, which delivers on-demand access to server cycles, storage capacity, network bandwidth, security traffic management and load balancing.

"To grow our business, while retaining our trademark reliability, security and customer focus, we had to improve our underlying business management systems," said Phil Koen, CEO, SAVVIS. "Through the fully integrated SAP Business Suite applications, we can quickly configure sales and service processes to address changing customer needs, creating new cross-selling opportunities while increasing customer satisfaction."

Replacing Legacy Systems for Enhanced Customer Focus

SAVVIS's highly customized existing IT systems were aging and, following several acquisitions, SAVVIS faced further productivity challenges associated with integrating disparate IT systems. Moreover, the legacy systems, manual processes and lack of integration were barriers to achieving SAVVIS's corporate objectives of employee productivity and increased margin.

Looking to consolidate all IT systems across the growing business units onto one platform, SAVVIS selected SAP. By unifying business operations onto one SAP platform, SAVVIS will significantly reduce the cost of maintaining and integrating disparate systems, reduce operational cost and mitigate operational risk. The integrated solution will present a single source of customer data and enable a 360-degree view of the customer that will allow SAVVIS's global sales force to better serve its customers by speeding response time and creating valuable cross- and up-selling opportunities.

"We are proud to add SAVVIS to the ranks of 'best run' IT service providers," said Bill McDermott, president and CEO, SAP Americas and Asia Pacific Japan. "SAVVIS is a dot-com start-up that has grown to an $800 million world leader in IT infrastructure services over the past seven years. With SAP, SAVVIS can leverage our industry and business process expertise and systems to manage mission-critical operations and improve the overall customer experience."