Fall is upon us, which means once again it's time for SAP TechEd in Las Vegas and Barcelona, twin cities which couldn't be more similar.

Legend has it that Hercules founded Barcelona when one of his ships wrecked on the site during his search for the Golden Fleece. Since then, it's convenient location on a busy coastal route, and its ability to entertain and accommodate thousands of IT professionals has ensured its continued importance throughout the ages.

Likewise, Las Vegas came into its own after World War II when mobster Bugsy Siegel founded a gambling mecca at a convenient location on a busy route to the coast. Bugsy's premature death from lead poisoning kept him from seeing the fruits of his labor, the ability to entertain and accommodate thousands of IT professionals.

So now we find ourselves in two of the most culturally significant destinations in the modern world.   Mostly stuck inside for lectures.  But you don't need lectures to understand the strategic nature of SAP for most companies, including your own.  SAP applications serve as your critical operational backbone and probably one of your largest IT investments.  Tchotchkes and entertainment aside, that's why you're going to TechEd.

But protecting your investment while modernizing your landscape can be a challenge.  Enterprises want to refresh infrastructures, take advantage of flexible new architectures, and add competitive functionality, without disrupting established business processes.  Given the complexity and risk involved, it's not surprising that 70% of enterprises are still running core ERP applications on traditional and often aging platforms.

But what if you could instantly modernize your SAP landscape and the only change your clients would see is performance improvement?

That's Cisco's goal for our customers.  We believe the secret to successfully modernizing legacy application environments is building the broadest possible portfolio of integrated solutions, designed and tested to work together, on-premises and in the cloud, from the Core to the Edge, to provide you the performance and simplicity of the latest data center technology, without risk, without disruption, and without compromise.  Gain without pain.

We start with Converged and Hyperconverged multicloud infrastructure; simplify it with policy-based automation; connect it with high-speed, intuitive networks; add ubiquitous performance management & monitoring; include containerized data & analytics for real-time insights, and protect it all with layers of award-winning cybersecurity.

No other SAP partner offers a comparable portfolio of end-to-end SAP Datacenter Solutions.

Interested in learning more?  Visit Cisco's SAP website, and stop by Booth 230 @SAPTechEd in Las Vegas or Stand P19 in Barcelona, where we can share a complimentary glass of organic fruit juice and discuss modernizing your SAP datacenter.

Gain without pain.  I promise!