Highest Performance for SAP's R/3 SD Benchmark; Digital Equipment and Software AG establish industry leading performance standard for SAP's R/3 SD Benchmark

Business Wire, March 12, 1996

RESTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 12, 1996--Digital Equipment Corporation and Software AG today announced the best performance results for SAP's standard sales & distribution (SD) benchmark using Digital's powerful 64-bit Alpha architecture and Software AG's high performance relational database ADABAS D. The benchmark achieved an average dialog response time of 1.44 sec. A total of 1,700 SD benchmark users was measured, performing 535,746 dialog steps per hour -- the largest ever reached throughput for the benchmark. Running on Digital's AlphaServer 8400 5/300 system with the ADABAS D database, the R/3 results demonstrate again that the 64-bit Alpha symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) capability delivers to customers better performance and affordability than that of any other platform in SAP's widely accepted business application environment.

"The teaming of Software AG and Digital offers our customers a solution that is powerful and comprehensive," said Werner Feld, Digital Global Business Manager for Software AG. "The SD-benchmark results achieved by ADABAS D are just outstanding and clearly demonstrate Software AG's capability to offer best in class database performance for SAP R/3 on Digital's Alpha platform. 1.44 sec response time for 1700 SD benchmark users clearly proves that very large R/3 implementations can have excellent performance."

Benchmark Configuration

A joint SAP/Digital/Software AG team measured the performance of the system using the standard SAP benchmark of the R/3 Sales & Distribution (SD) module at the Digital/SAP Technology Center in Viernheim, Germany. The benchmark environment was based on Digital UNIX V3.2C and ADABAS D V6.1.1.15 supporting SAP R/3 release 2.2F. This benchmark fully complies to SAP's recently issued stringent benchmark regulations and has been audited and certified by SAP.

The client/server configuration included seven 300MHz AlphaServer 8400 5/300 systems driven by the world's fastest and first BIPS (billion instructions per second) microprocessor -- the Alpha 21164. The database server was equipped with 12 CPUs (99 percent CPU utilization) and 4 gigabytes (GB) of main memory. Six application servers were used in total (95 percent CPU utilization). Five served as dialog and update servers and employed 12 CPUs with 4 GB of main memory each. One machine was used as the enqueue and message server and employed 4 CPUs and 4 GB of main memory. Total disk space layout was 480 GB. Further technical details can be obtained from Digital or SAP AG.

Alpha's Performance Advantage

Recently Digital was awarded 11 AIM 1996 HOT IRON AWARDS at the February 1996 UniForum show, demonstrating once again the powerful 64-Bit Alpha architecture leadership for business-critical applications such as SAP R/3.

With more than 1,000 shipped high-end AlphaServer 8000 series systems, Digital delivers the industry's highest RISC performance and best price/performance for business-critical applications through a pricing structure that is very aggressive when compared to competitive mainframe offerings.

Only Digital is shipping the high-performance 64-bit servers, AlphaServer systems, and a 64-bit operating system, Digital UNIX, which together make Very Large Memory Technology (VLM64) possible. Digital's VLM64 technology dramatically improves database and application performance by raising the amount of information that can be stored in main memory. While 32-bit systems are limited to less than 4 GByte of memory, Digital's 64-bit architecture is not. Today Digital's AlphaServer 8400 systems can utilize up to 14GB of data in main memory.

Software AG ADABAS D Advantage

Software AG's relational database for the open systems market is ADABAS D. Its market differentiation from other open systems RDBMS is based on ease of use and ease of administration, reduced overall cost of ownership, industry leading price/performance and high availability. ADABAS D fully supports Digital's VLM64 bit technology.

"We have always known about the superiority of the ADABAS D and Alpha VLM64 combination in large enterprise environments, both for high-volume transaction processing and for data warehouse solutions," says Karl-Heinz Schwalme, Software AG's Vice President of ADABAS D Line of Business. "These record-setting results clearly confirm this."

Software AG is the 10th largest independent software firm in the world. With 26 years of successful enterprise-wide experience, the company develops and markets open, multi-platform software solutions. Its products include: ENTIRE for developing and deploying distributed computing solutions; NATURAL, MIDRANGE Systems "Buyer's Choice Award," for application engineering, award-winning ESPERANT, a state-of-the-art query and reporting tool (and PC Week Labs "Top Product of the Year" and 1994 Datamation "Editor's Choice Award"), and ADABAS for database management. In 1994, Software AG launched a successful Open Data Warehouse Program that has already garnered three awards: DB Expo's RealWare Award in Data Warehousing in collaboration with The ERTL Company, Inc.; a 1995 Datamation Quest Award for data warehousing for its collaboration with the State of Minnesota; and a 1996 Enterprise Systems Journal/DCI "Excellence in Business Information Award" for its work with the State of Minnesota.