“Into the Real-Time Age Together with SUSE”

SAP Vice President Chris Hallenbeck at SUSECon 2013: “Into the Real-Time Age Together with SUSE”

“HANA is just the start. We embarked on this journey with SUSE and we’ll continue on it with SUSE.” Chris Hallenbeck, Global Vice President of HANA Solution Management at SAP, used these words in his keynote speech at SUSECon 2013 in Orlando to sum up the latest highlight of this long-standing collaboration. Together with around 550 participants at the annual partner event of the SUSE Enterprise community, I discovered why SUSE is such an important partner for SAP as it enters the real-time age.

Completely New Data Platform

SAP has long since relied on the SUSE Linux operating system to enable its customers to achieve higher levels of availability and improved performance of their business-critical SAP applications – and at a low cost. SAP also works very closely together with Intel, SUSE, and global hardware vendors to develop its in-memory appliance, HANA, which offers much more than just innovative database technology. “HANA is a completely new data platform. It will totally change the way in which we build applications and perform analyses,” predicted Chris at SUSECon.

HANA can be used as an application server to significantly simplify and accelerate the development of business applications. It also enables vast amounts of data to be analyzed in real time, complex economic interrelationships to be predicted, and this knowledge to be used in order to make better decisions. The key term here is predictive analytics. By using HANA, companies are in a position to meet the principal challenges of the future; in other words, to simplify their system landscapes and increase their agility.

Other Top Trends Also Integrated 

For optimal use of HANA and since its official announcement by SAP in May 2010, SUSE Linux is the recommended and supported operating system. This means that SAP’s in-memory applications run on the open source platform provided by SUSE. In addition to its proven benefits, this platform provides the basis for an IT infrastructure that goes far beyond in-memory by also integrating top trends such as cloud computing and mobility and by allowing the seamless connection of products from other manufacturers.

“We will vastly expand our use of open source to enable us to meet the growing requirements for a flexible IT infrastructure in the long term,” assured SAP Vice President, Chris Hallenbeck, to the SUSECon participants. “Since we have been successfully driving developments and innovations forward with SUSE for many years, they are the ideal partner to go down this path with us.”

Access to Chris Hallenbeck keynote at SUSECon 2013 (YouTube)