SAP AND THE SUSE EDGE

Transforming your SAP environment with the powerful SUSE solution portfolio

Transforming your SAP environment with the powerful SUSE solution portfolio

Today’s enterprise is a busy place, with lean IT operations and powerful business tools running on an assortment of on-premises and cloud-based systems. The SAP environment is particularly challenging. SAP solutions encompass a broad spectrum of a company’s business activities, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply-chain management (SCM) and business process management (BPM). The IT team that is tasked with keeping your SAP resources up and running are most productive when the workload is predictable and steady, with no sudden spikes for troubleshooting or unexpected configuration mishaps.

The modern enterprise is in a constant state of transformation. As needs change and your organization adapts to a changing business environment, the IT landscape must adapt with it.The way to prepare for the future is to build an infrastructure that accommodates change easily and evolves as you evolve. Navigating through changing times with minimal disruption to the business processes are essential to the livelihood of your organization.

If your company runs on SAP technology, or if you are thinking about implementing an SAP environment within your organization, SUSE delivers the smart solution you will need to navigate change, maximize productivity and reduce your total operating expenses.

Why SUSE?

SUSE has had a close working relationship with SAP for nearly 20 years. SAP HANA was developed from the ground up using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. To this day, 95 percent of SAP HANA customers run the program on SUSE Linux, and more than 25,000 SUSE customers around the world are using SAP software.

SUSE also invests heavily in its close partnership with SAP. SUSE has dedicated resources on site at SAP headquarters and supports SAP’s LinuxLab, which works to extend support for SAP software on Linux. SUSE directly employs more than 80 specially trained SAP Champions and offers seamless 24x7-priority support to SUSE SAP customers.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications fits neatly into our expansive portfolio of applications, services and components for the modern IT landscape. A SUSE based SAP environment supports:• Servers on premise—SUSE offers hardware certification for many enterprise server systems and has

partnerships with the major SAP-certified vendors.• Private cloud—the SUSE SAP environment adapts easily to private cloud scenarios and provides fast,

flexible deployments with SUSE OpenStack Cloud.• Public cloud—SUSE provides cloud solutions for SAP customers on several of the leading cloud

alternatives, including Alibaba, AWS, Azure, Google and IBM.

The support SUSE provides for these three deployment scenarios gives you the freedom to pursue a design that best fits the needs of your organization. A SUSE solution also provides flexibility for your future. For instance, you could deploy your SAP environment on premise now, and if a need arises, seamlessly add additional resources later through a public or private cloud.

In addition to its strong cloud support, SUSE also offers a powerful collection of enterprise management tools that will help you minimize administrative overhead and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). For instance, SUSE Manager lets you deploy, configure, manage, update and audit server systems from a single graphical interface. SAP customers who have a need for enterprise storage can rely on SUSE Enterprise Storage, a powerful Ceph-based storage alternative that delivers scalable data storage at a fraction of the cost of a conventional appliance. Other tools in the SUSE portfolio support high availability, disaster recovery and enhanced security—all tuned and tested for the SAP environment.

“In the cloud, we expect availability for infrastructure of around 99.999 percent, which is very, very high, and SUSE helps us a lot to achieve that.”Martin Heisig | Senior VP | SAP Enterprise Cloud

We Can Help

SUSE specializes in supporting SAP environments. Regardless of the size of your operations or the nature of your business, the experts at SUSE will help you manage your SAP operations in a way that maximizes performance and minimizes downtime. The SUSE team will meet with your IT and business line departments to analyze your needs and find the solution that will work best for your business.

If you are an SAP customer now, SUSE can show you how to preserve your SAP investment as you transition to stay up-to-date and leverage new technologies. If you are new to the SAP environment, SUSE Services experts can help you build a complete solution that will evolve with your needs and scale with your expanding vision.

Following are some real-world stories describing how SAP users are saving time and achieving significant reductions in TCO using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. As you read these case studies, notice how the SAP tools offered by SUSE combined with other elements of the SUSE Linux Enterprise environment to build resilient and robust solutions carefully tailored to the goals of the organization.

Whatever your needs, and whatever your starting place, the SUSE team is ready to help you get the best

return for your IT investment and build a stable and secure SAP solution.

The Future of SAP HANA

SAP’s announcement that it will build the next generation of its software on the SAP HANA database and discontinue support for other databases brings the future into focus for SAP customers who are serious about streamlining operations. The SAP HANA in-memory database provides better performance and a wide range of powerful new features, and it only runs on Linux.

If your company relies on SAP solutions, you need to be aware that the future is Linux. In the next seven years, 180,000 SAP customers will have to migrate to SAP HANA in order to stay current. SUSE is a premier Linux partner for customers who are looking for a versatile SAP infrastructure solution.

ABeam Consulting

ABeam Consulting is a company based in Japan that provides

management, business process consulting, IT consulting and

outsourcing services. ABeam employs 4,350 people and has a

presence in 33 countries.

Challenge

In the last five years, ABeam Consulting has more than

doubled in size with no plans to slow down: By 2020, the

company projects up to a billion dollars in revenue and more

than 10,000 employees.

ABeam knew that as its operations and client base expanded,

so would its data needs. To ensure that it could continue

providing exceptional service to customers, the company

initiated an IT transformation.

ABeam wanted to replace its business application set with

an enterprise-class solution that included strong support.

The company soon settled on the SAP S/4HANA ERP real-

time suite of enterprise resource management tools. ABeam

supported around 300 SAP projects per year through its

own consulting services and the company wanted to use

its own SAP S/4HANA deployment to explore innovations

and develop best practices that would then be available

to its customers. Eager to get started, ABeam seized the

opportunity to become an early adopter of SAP S/4HANA ERP.

Solution

ABeam Consulting selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

as a partner for its transformation.

According to Yoshifumi Ishida, manager of ABeam’s

Information System Group, “The first factor in favor of the

SUSE solution was the long-term roadmap and support.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications has a

product lifecycle of more than 10 years, and it comes with

multi-year service packs and extended support.”

“The strong partnership between SUSE and SAP was the deciding consideration. SAP uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as its standard development environment, and 95 percent of the world’s SAP HANA users have followed suit.”

Yoshifumi Ishida, manager, Information System Group,

ABeam Consulting

ABeam implemented a solution that integrated the SAP

S/4HANA and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server landscape with

legacy systems running on Microsoft Windows and applications

hosted in public clouds, including SAP BusinessObjects Cloud

and SAP Digital Boardroom. The SUSE integrated management

tool, SUSE Manager, provided a single graphical interface

for managing the hybrid environment. With SUSE Manager,

employees who had no previous Linux experience could apply

and manage patches and system updates.

Results

The implementation is still in progress, but according to

Ishida, “ ... everything points to the new core systems

yielding major benefits for our company. The SUSE

solution contributes to our ability to provide stable, high-

performance IT services to our employees, which will enable

them to work more productively.”

As ABeam Consulting looks to the future, it can be confident

it has the foundations in place to help make its growth

strategy a reality.

“Choosing the SUSE solutions gives us a low-risk, future-proof platform on which we can take ABeam Consulting to the next level of success.”

Tomoki Hatakeyama, executive office for IT management,

ABeam Consulting

Read the full case study

Águas de Portugal

Águas de Portugal (AdP Group) is a publicly-owned, limited-

liability holding company. Through its subsidiaries, AdP

manages the urban water cycle in Portugal, operating several

water supply systems and wastewater treatment facilities.

Challenge

AdP Group’s IT systems are crucial to its water supply and

sanitation business, running a host of tasks, including employee

salary tax processing, supplier relationship management, payroll

and human resources operations. However, the company’s

aging infrastructure was struggling to deliver the performance

necessary to support its business-critical SAP applications.

According to António Esteves, SAP and IT Systems Administrator

at AdP Group, “Our existing hardware was 10 years old and had

limited memory capacity, which was slowing down applications.

What is more, our HP-UX operating system was proprietary

software, so we were limited in what we could do with it. In

particular, we were concerned that we were missing out on some

of the outstanding open source solutions that are now available.

And because of the need to run on approved hardware, our old

solution was very costly. Finally, we wanted to take advantage of

new in-memory database technology to accelerate operations.”

Solution

AdP Group decided to invest in new hardware and a more

flexible, cost-effective, open source operating system. With

the help of management services from Portugal Telecom,

AdP migrated its SAP applications to SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server for SAP Applications running on Huawei servers.

The company also transitioned from an Oracle database to

SAP HANA—SAP’s powerful in-memory, column-oriented,

relational database management system.

“It was an easy choice to select SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server for SAP Applications,” Esteves adds. “SAP and SUSE

have a close partnership, so it is purpose-built to support

SAP solutions in a way our previous platform wasn’t, and

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has a first-rate reputation as

the leading Linux distribution for enterprise organizations

running SAP.”

Results

AdP Group’s migration to the new IT environment took

around three months. António Esteves says, “There was

no significant need for training, as our team were already

used to our previous Unix platform, which shares many

features with Linux, so we were soon up and running on

the new OS.” Esteves and the AdP Group team were also

impressed with the performance of the new system.

“The performance is also exceptional, providing the perfect solution for our mission-critical IT applications.”

António Esteves, SAP and IT systems administrator,

AdP Group

Monthly salary processing went from one hour to 20

minutes—a reduction of 67 percent. The whole group energy

consumption operations have also been cut dramatically, from

10 minutes to 1.1 seconds.

The hyper-efficient SAP HANA in-memory database also

provided significant reductions in data storage. By migrating

from Oracle to SAP HANA, the company’s production database

went from 1 TB down to 274 GB in memory, and the space

required for the data warehouse went from 500 GB to 160 GB.

“SUSE and SAP have helped us transform our IT infrastructure—today we have a high-performing, cost-effective and flexible architecture that can keep up with our business.”

António Esteves, SAP and IT systems administrator,

AdP Group

Read the full case study

FIS-ASP

FIS Group is a certified SAP partner and developer of a leading

solution for the technical wholesale industry. The group

serves more than 300 customers with over 35,000 SAP users

worldwide. FIS provides consulting and technical support to

guide the implementation of SAP standard software and also

offers customization and implementation services.

Challenge

FIS Group supports customers of all sizes across a broad

range of industries. The company’s portfolio includes a long

list of SAP offerings, from the traditional ERP applications

to the latest solutions, such as the SAP HANA in-memory

database, the SAP S/4HANA next-generation ERP software,

the SAP Hybris e-commerce solution and the SAP Fiori

platform for mobile apps.

To continue to support a widening array of available solutions,

the group’s hosting specialist, FIS-ASP, needed to find ways to

provide high-quality, scalable services to an increasing number

of customers.

Matthias Braun, head of delivery SAP at FIS-ASP, says,

“Recognizing the future potential of cloud technology to

support more efficient operations, we started to embrace

private cloud platforms early on.”

FIS-ASP needed a solution that could help it manage

its expanding portfolio effectively with a low manual-

administration workload.

.

Solution

FIS-ASP has been running SUSE Linux Enterprise platform

since 2007. Based on this positive experience, FIS-ASP

decided to promote SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP

Applications as its standard platform and to encourage

its customers to migrate its largest and most important

applications from costly proprietary Unix environments to

the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform running on more cost-

efficient commodity x86 hardware.

FIS-ASP determined that OpenStack offered the most

suitable private-cloud environment for its needs.

The company is focusing on gradually standardizing on

SUSE OpenStack Cloud running on an HPE infrastructure.

For virtualization within OpenStack and beyond, FIS-ASP

relies on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as both host and

guest operating system in combination with KVM and

Xen. Running SUSE software in the cloud, as well as on

dedicated servers, lets FIS-ASP easily migrate systems

between the cloud platform and dedicated servers with

little customization.

“We selected SUSE OpenStack Cloud as the foundation for many of our services because the platform is extremely reliable and helps us to establish standardized deployments more strictly and consistently, which helps us reduce the overall administration workload.”

Matthias Braun, head of delivery SAP, FIS-ASP

FIS-ASP is also using SUSE Enterprise Storage, a software-

defined storage solution based on Ceph that integrates

smoothly with SUSE OpenStack Cloud.

Results

Previously it took between 40 and 60 work days to set up

complex SAP landscapes for customers. By taking advantage

of SUSE OpenStack Cloud, FIS-ASP can now complete the

same kinds of deployments in just five to ten days.

FIS-ASP has also found that SAP applications run more

reliably and with better performance on SUSE Linux Enterprise

Server for SAP Applications compared to other operating

system platforms.

The company estimates that infrastructure costs are

between 10 and 40 percent lower using SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server on commodity hardware rather than

with Unix on proprietary hardware. System management

costs have dropped 10 to 20 percent.

“Building on our strong relationship with SUSE and SAP, and knowing that SAP itself trusts SUSE to run its own cloud platforms, we are confident that SUSE OpenStack Cloud will help us to strengthen our competitive advantage and increase customer satisfaction.”

Matthias Braun, head of delivery SAP, FIS-ASP

Read the full case study

Pacific Drilling

With one of the newest and most technologically advanced

fleets in the world, Pacific Drilling has grown into a successful,

premium-drilling contractor, with state-of-the-art, high-

specification drill ships and nearly 1,000 employees around

the world.

Challenge

Recent changes in the energy market caused Pacific

Drilling to look for economies in operational cost to offset

decreasing demand for oil exploration. One of the ways that

Pacific Drilling sought to reduce expenses was to decrease

the cost of its existing IT infrastructure. This infrastructure

included SAP ERP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA;

SAP BusinessObjects; SAP Gateway; SAP Governance, Risk

and Compliance; SAP Mobile Platform; SAP Landscape

Transformation Replication Server; SAP Web Dispatcher;

SAP NetWeaver Process Integration; SAP Business Planning

and Consolidation (BPC); the TREX search engine; BSI

Tax Factory; Microsoft Active Directory; and SailPoint

IdentityNow.

Pacific Drilling realized that SAP tends to be a heavy IT

environment, and the company decided to explore the

possibility of moving its SAP operation to the cloud. The

company selected Protera Technologies to help with

the task of reducing IT operating costs. Protera has a

reputation for deep SAP HANA migration and operation

experience, as well as a longstanding a relationship with

Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Solution

Protera recommended that Pacific Drilling migrate its

entire SAP implementation to SUSE on AWS. SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server for SAP Applications supports a number of

SAP scenarios in production on AWS, including: S/4HANA,

Business Suite, Business Warehouse and BPC on HANA, HANA

Live and SideCar and Business One for SAP HANA.

In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications

on AWS offers:

•Built-in SUSE high availability (HA) across AWS zones

and regions

•Support for SAP HA and disaster recovery standards

for HANA

•Collaborative SUSE, AWS and SAP support

“With the move to AWS, we chose SUSE, and we are now running both the HANA database and the ECC application on the same SUSE instance. This reduces the footprint and allows for additional savings. Yet, our solution is highly resilient.”

Yoram Borodaty, IT director, Pacific Drilling

The final element of Pacific Drilling’s solution is around-

the-clock management through Protera’s AppCare

platform. AppCare is based on SUSE and includes tools

for connecting, operating, monitoring and backing up the

entire SAP landscape.

This innovative solution drew the attention of the 2017

SAP HANA Innovation Awards, which gave Pacific Drilling

an honorable mention.

Results

Pacific Drilling achieved significant cost savings, including

savings on compute, storage and maintenance operations.

Borodaty projects that the entire solution will save Pacific

Drilling roughly $1 million over three years.

“The move [to SUSE on AWS], was straightforward from a financial standpoint. Total cost of owner-ship is half the price with twice the HANA capacity.”

Yoram Borodaty, IT director, Pacific Drilling

Read the full case study

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What’s Next?

Please contact us or visit

www.suse.com/saponlinuxfor more information about SUSE’s

solution for SAP.