7 Reasons the OS matters for Digital Transformation with SAP S/4HANA

There’s a digital transformation going on in the industry to meet consumer demands for instant access to data and services. Change is often disruptive and uncomfortable, but SAP is doing their part to help organizations simplify the business data and analytics landscape. And as usual we at SUSE are working right alongside SAP to drive this digital transformation and meet customer demands for less operational complexity. So in this brave new world of a single operating system for the SAP infrastructure, let me give you 7 reasons why the recently announced SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is ideal for SAP HANA and S/4HANA.

1. S/4HANA is coming. If you’re a fan of Game of Thrones you know that the words “winter is coming” strikes fear in the hearts of the inhabitants of the seven kingdoms. With S/4HANA there is nothing to fear. Life in the datacenter actually gets easier with one user interface (SAP Fiori), one database (SAP HANA) and one operating environment (Linux) for all SAP business operations applications. If you need to start your digital transformation and you’re still running your SAP environment on Windows Server or UNIX, now is the time to start planning when to migrate to Linux. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server continues to be a reference development platform for SAP applications on Linux, and the additional features we add with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications make the transition easier and enterprise-ready.
2. Reliability is built-in. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications includes high-availability fail-over so that your business units can keep working following a system failure, and disaster recovery to minimize downtime after a catastrophic event. We give you 5 different options for automated fail-over of SAP HANA systems supporting scale-up or scale-out, performance- or cost-optimized recovery, plus options for remote standby and multi-tenancy. We also help to reduce downtime by protecting your SAP HANA data with enhanced encryption management for remote storage systems and a firewall for the SAP HANA system. You can also add a subscription for SUSE Live Patching to eliminate downtime when fixing security vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel.
3. Simplicity saves money. There are many ways to reduce costs when transforming your operations to the SAP S/4HANA architecture. First of all, SUSE Linux Enterprise subscription options are often less costly than Windows and UNIX licensing and support. Second, your admins don’t have to be certified to install and maintain multiple operating environments across multiple hardware platforms. And third … well I think one of our customers, Dr. Vineet Bansal the CIO of Greenply Industries Ltd. said it best: “Our SUSE operating system is easy to manage and gives us the freedom to choose the best-value hardware, rather than being tied in to a particular vendor as we were previously. We also have the cost benefits of not needing to license a separate high-availability solution.”
4. Deployment is faster. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications has more wizards than a Harry Potter novel! There’s a wizard that uses an SAP application-specific configuration package call “sapconf” to not only configure the OS, but also to save you hours of reading SAP manuals to optimize the SAP applications. There’s a wizard to configure the SAP HANA firewall, assuming of course that you don’t want go with the automatic configuration. The built-in SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability extension includes a wizard called “HAWK” that makes it faster to set up the HA environment of your choice. Trento automatically reviews your SAP environments and offers insights and best practices to avoid misconfigurations. All of this magic can cut your set-up time from days to hours.
5. Easier Windows migration. If your SAP environment is currently running on UNIX, then learning Linux for S/4HANA landscapes will be pretty easy for your sys admins. But if you’re running SAP NetWeaver apps on Microsoft Windows Server, then Linux will take some getting used to. In addition to training courses, we’ve made it easier for admins who are used to Windows by adding a familiar working environment based on Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol. We even include a “cheat sheet” showing how to perform common Windows Server tasks with SUSE Linux. We added Enhanced Active Directory integration so that login and authentication that already exists for the Windows environment doesn’t have to be re-created for the Linux environment.
6. Cloud deployment options. The need for faster time to market, limited skills and cost savings are just a few reasons why cloud deployment might be a better option for your operations. SUSE supports both public and private cloud options for deploying SAP environments. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications was selected for SAP Cloud solutions like SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP HANA One, SAP HANA Cloud Platform and SAP-certified Amazon EC2 instances. You can also build your own private cloud for SAP deployments using SUSE OpenStack Cloud.
7. 24/7 Priority Support. Last, but certainly not least important is the peace of mind you get knowing that you can quickly resolve your SAP system problems with 24 x 7 Priority Support from SAP and SUSE. Just submit your ticket to SAP as you always do, and if there’s a problem with the SUSE Linux operating system we will work directly with SAP to help you get it fixed.

Whenever you’re ready to start your transformation to a digital business, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications provides an ideal foundation for today’s SAP HANA and NetWeaver landscapes, while easing the transition to S/4HANA.