As SAP moves to SUSE Linux, seize the opportunity to transform

28 September 2018 | 5582 Shares

Shutterstock

The future for SAP deployments is now Linux-based. SAP S/4HANA runs only on Linux — or rather, will do from 2025. This means that existing customers who run SAP Business Suite on Windows or UNIX will need to transition to a Linux-based platform.

The challenge for IT departments, therefore, becomes how to design a high-performance, high availability, and secure Linux data center. Or, how to source a public cloud-based solution which will happily host the enterprise-level ERP.

While many organizations already have significant Linux experience, for businesses moving from Windows services to Linux, it’s essential to find a version (or distro) that “plays well” with Microsoft.

Of the possibilities, SUSE has an impressively long history of working alongside, and with, Microsoft solutions. Businesses which use Remote Desktop Protocol and/or Active Directory will find the most Windows-centric option to be SUSE.

But the company, recently acquired by growth-investor EQT for 2.5 billion USD, has, in the form of SUSE Enterprise Server, been building SAP-specific features for many years.

SUSE

From zero downtime to resource agents like SAPHana and SAPHana Topology, the company’s optimization tools designed explicitly for SAP make the transition to the new platform faster, safer, and less subject to business interruptions.

“Setting up a system optimized for SAP software used to be tricky. Thanks to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, we can deploy a new SAP system 40 percent faster than before with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.” – Ralf Gerhard, Deputy Head if IT and Group Lead Development, SAGAFLOR AG.

However, whether or not your organization has an SAP legacy, or is considering SAP as a new or adjunct solution, migrating as part of a digital transformation project can be significantly simplified with SUSE.

It is encouraging to learn that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications owns 55 SAP HANA benchmarks. But the infrastructure and systems on offer are not limited to in-house data centers.

All SAP-supporting features are available staged on major cloud service providers’ offerings, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud platform, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

While the company’s technical credentials are clearly market-defining, SUSE offers support for large migration projects across the whole IT stack which is wholly business-oriented, rather than one which comes from a purely technical stance.

Wholesale IT transformation is driven by software and structural changes, of course, but SUSE’s proven management of migration projects is of significantly more interest to other personnel than the enterprise’s System Integrators.

SUSE

SUSE provides business-centric consultation and execution which powers full IT transformation exercises, allowing a safe and impactful transition.

Whether it’s the implementation of a software-defined infrastructure, providing faster access to resources, enabling development, adoption of DevOps methodologies, or delivering new applications while improving application lifecycle management, many enterprises all over the world are turning to SUSE.

SUSE offers solutions to help transform the data center and provide businesses with agility, stability, and reduced costs.

The specific skills on offer from SUSE cover off all aspects of any digital transformation project, not least ones which have, at the forefront, the transition of SAP from Windows to Linux.

To learn more about SUSE’s offerings in enterprise Linux, SAP, and broad-reaching digital transformation project oversight, get in touch with a representative local to you today.