Woolworths Group is one of the largest retailers in Australia and New Zealand. The Group serves an average of 24.5 million customers in store every week and generates sales over AUD 64.3 billion annually. Woolworths Group employs more than 200,000 people across 1,463 stores, with a collective commitment to creating sustainable value.
At-a-Glance
To help maximize system uptime for its SAP ERP users, reduce development cycle times by approximately 40% and ensure optimal team productivity, Woolworths Group relies on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, SUSE Manager and SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching to underpin its SAP solutions. Through a combination of streamlined processes and reduced IT team workload, Woolworths Group is accelerating its digital transformation, cutting costs, saving hundreds of hours each month and enabling its next phase of business growth. The efficiency and control enabled by SUSE’s solutions and support services are helping Woolworths Group as it embraces the latest SAP S/4HANA technologies.
The journey to SUSE solutions
Woolworths Group faces multiple challenges: intense competition from online retailers, stretched consumer budgets and significant increases in its production costs. To overcome these challenges, the company relies on SAP ERP solutions to manage almost every aspect of its business, from HR to procurement and from facilities management to merchandising.
In addition to developing new offerings for its internal SAP users, the company’s IT team also continuously seeks to maximize the efficiency of its SAP solutions and is preparing to adopt the latest SAP S/4HANA technologies to help drive productivity.
A key element in optimizing service delivery for these mission-critical SAP solutions is ensuring that the underlying operating system (OS) offers sufficient performance, availability and scalability. For Woolworths Group, it is also vital to minimize OS administration time, so as to make more time available for testing and releasing new components.
Alex Khoo, Product Owner for Server Operations at Woolworths Group, comments: “Given the critical importance of our SAP landscape to the smooth running of the business, our goal in IT is to provide the highest standards in stability and performance. The choice of OS plays an important role, as does the quality of support from the vendor.”
“With SLES for SAP Priority Virtual Machines on Azure, we have a stable, secure platform that provides continuity for our internal teams plus all the benefits of a cloud environment, such as automatic scaling and load-balancing.”
Why SUSE?
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications
The Group had been running Oracle Enterprise Linux servers but decided to migrate to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications for deploying its SAP solutions. This initial decision was based on several factors, key among which were:
- The global prevalence of SLES for SAP Applications as a platform for SAP deployments.
- The specific tuning of SLES for SAP Applications for meeting the demands of SAP applications.
- The knowledgeable support available from SUSE.
- The fact that SAP itself uses SLES for SAP Applications as the primary platform for developing its solutions.
When Woolworths Group moved its SAP landscape to the Microsoft Azure cloud, it was able to seamlessly adopt SLES for SAP Priority Virtual Machines for a smooth transition. The Azure Marketplace offers the base SUSE Linux Enterprise Server OS together with all the required packages tested and approved by Microsoft and SAP, saving considerable time for Woolworths.
“With SLES for SAP Priority Virtual Machines on Azure, we have a stable, secure platform that provides continuity for our internal teams plus all the benefits of a cloud environment, such as automatic scaling and load-balancing,” says Khoo.
SUSE Manager and SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching
Woolworths Group improves its operational efficiency by using SUSE Manager to support both SLES for SAP Applications and Oracle Linux from a single user interface, enhancing service delivery in its SAP environment.
By leveraging SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching through SUSE Manager for their SLES systems, administrators can apply patches and critical updates to the Linux kernel without rebooting systems, ensuring continuous operation and minimizing downtime.
For Oracle Linux systems, SUSE Manager facilitates efficient patch management, ensuring systems are up-to-date with minimal disruption. In the company’s mission-critical SAP environment, this helps maximize productive uptime for users.
Khoo comments, “Instead of weeks, SUSE Manager enables us to complete critical security updates within minutes for a wide range of business-critical SAP applications, whether it’s Oracle Linux or SLES for SAP Applications. For our SLES systems, SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching further reduces downtime by eliminating the need for reboots.”
SUSE Premium Support Services
To help keep its large and complex SAP landscape in optimal condition, Woolworths Group has a Premium Support Services contract with SUSE. This partnership provides Woolworths Group with access to a dedicated team of named experts who possess in-depth knowledge of both the company and its SAP environment. With expert support on hand around the clock, Woolworths Group can prepare for new releases and features while staying on top of routine administration.
“The Premium Support Services team from SUSE truly understands our SAP environment and business needs, “ says Chittybabu Venkidusamy, Manager for Cloud Compute Operations at Woolworths Group. “Their support has been a great help in keeping our operations running smoothly.”
The impact of SUSE solutions
Ensuring reliable business services
The retail business is extremely competitive, and margins are slim. To succeed, retailers must ensure that customers are never kept waiting, that the right mix of products is always available in the right locations, and that every inefficiency or delay is eliminated from processes. By running its mission-critical SAP solutions on SLES for SAP Applications, Woolworths Group enjoys exceptional uptime, security and performance, enabling it to focus on delivering exceptional customer service.
Khoo remarks: “With SLES for SAP Applications, it’s really a case of ‘No news is good news.’ It’s a piece of technology that just keeps working and working. We’re so glad our most important business systems are on SLES because it’s just so stable.”
Hundreds of hours of work saved each month
Through the combination of SLES for SAP Applications, SUSE Manager and SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching, Woolworths Group saves hundreds of hours each month. These efficiencies not only cut costs but also reduce development cycle times by 40%, enabling the company to adopt new technologies faster and positioning it well for future growth.
With pre-verified operating system images from the Azure Marketplace that include embedded SAP packages tested and verified by SUSE and SAP, the Woolworths IT team saves significant engineering time by not having to ensure each OS image conforms to the Azure environment.
By using SUSE Manager to support both SLES for SAP Applications and Oracle Linux systems, Woolworths Group significantly reduces its administrative workload. For their SLES systems, leveraging SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching allows administrators to apply kernel patches and critical updates without rebooting, saving an estimated 80 hours of work per OS version. This eliminates the need for monthly reboots of approximately 150 virtual SLES servers hosting the SAP landscape.
As a result, application owners no longer need to perform a monthly two-hour Business Verification Testing process on each SLES server, saving up to 300 hours of work per month. In raw financial terms, these workforce efficiencies mean that Woolworths recovers the annual cost of its SUSE subscriptions within the first few months of each year.
For Oracle Linux systems, SUSE Manager facilitates efficient patch management, ensuring these systems are up-to-date with minimal disruption. The unified management approach streamlines operations across the Group’s Linux environment, enhancing overall efficiency.
Khoo comments, “By removing the need for server reboots and Business Verification Testing in our SLES systems, SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching has cut hundreds of hours of work from our monthly OS patching activities. With the time they save on testing, the applications team can work on optimizing the stack or other strategic tasks.”
The impact of SUSE Premium Support Services
Dedicated expert support from SUSE for the mission-critical SAP landscape enables Woolworths Group to focus on business priorities rather than worrying about underlying technical issues. The contract provides rapid response at all support levels, giving the Woolworths IT team peace of mind that any queries will be resolved quickly and efficiently.
“In practice, the SUSE solutions are bulletproof in terms of their reliability,” says Venkidusamy. “Even so, it’s great to know that SUSE has our back, and we can always call in the experts when we need them.”
What’s next for Woolworths Group?
With its migration to Azure complete, Woolworths Group is now planning to migrate its SAP ERP solutions to the latest SAP S/4HANA technologies. The organization looks forward to continued support from SUSE. “For a large organization like Woolworths, if something doesn’t work, it’s big trouble,” concludes Venkidusamy. “With SUSE, it’s all green lights on the dashboard, which is how you want it to be.”