The multi-year partnership includes giving SAP early access to emerging Intel technologies and building a Center of Excellence. “We’re announcing a multi-year technology partnership that’s focused on optimizing Intel’s platform innovations… across the entire portfolio of SAP’s end-to-end enterprise software applications including SAP S/4HANA,” Rajeeb Hazra, corporate vice president of Intel’s Enterprise and Government Business, told TechCrunch.

He says that this will cover broad areas of Intel technology, including CPU, accelerators, data center, persistent memory and software infrastructure. “We’re taking all of that data-centric portfolio to move data faster, store data more efficiently and process all kinds of data for all kinds of workloads,” he explained.

The idea is to work closely together to help customers understand and use the two sets of technologies in tandem in a more efficient manner. “The goal here is [to expose] a broad portfolio of Intel technologies for the data-centric era, close collaboration with SAP to accelerate the pace of innovation of SAP’s entire broad suite of enterprise class applications, while making it easier for customers to see, test and deploy this technology,” he said.

Irfan Khan, president of Platform and Technologies at SAP, says this partnership should help deliver better performance across the SAP suite of products including SAP S/4HANA, its in-memory database product. “Our expanded partnership with Intel will accelerate our customers’ move to SAP S/4HANA by allowing organizations to unlock the value of data assets with greater ease and operate with increased visibility, focus and agility,” Khan said in a statement.

Hazra says that this is part of a broader enterprise strategy the company has been undertaking for many years, but it is focusing specifically on SAP for this agreement because of its position in the enterprise software ecosystem. He believes that by partnering with SAP at this level, the two companies can gain further insight that could help customers as they use advanced technologies like AI and machine learning.

“This partnership is [significant for us] given SAP’s focus and position in the markets that they serve with enterprise class applications, and the importance of what they’re doing for our core enterprise customers in those areas of the enterprise. This includes the emerging areas of machine learning and AI. With their suite [of products], it gives those customers the ability to accelerate innovation in their businesses by being able to see, touch, feel and consume this innovation much more efficiently,” he said.