For just-in-time manufacturing companies (where demand drives production), even a brief delay in logistics can create costly service interruptions and cause reputational damage.
At-a-Glance
A managed cloud service provider set out to ensure seamless logistics processes through fast and reliable access to vital business data. Their solution? A service using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications to support mission-critical SAP systems.
Ensuring 24/7 access to logistics data
In manufacturing, time is money — putting pressure on companies to maintain 24/7 access to mission-critical data. This is especially true in logistics, where a single mistimed delivery of components can halt manufacturing lines and create serious downstream delays.
A global cloud services provider (CSP) in Canada helps mid-sized manufacturers address this challenge through hosted SAP solutions that support complex, just-in-time and just-in-sequence logistics processes.
Its vice president of operations says: “Many of our customers work in integrated supply chains with extremely narrow margins for error. We wanted the highest levels of stability and reliability for our managed services, which is why we chose SUSE technology to support our cloud services for SAP.”
The CSP worked with an experienced system integrator to design, implement and expand its enterprise cloud solution. Within this cloud, customers can choose from a variety of operating systems; more than half opt to deploy their SAP instances on SLES for SAP Applications, for a total of more than 200,000 business users.
The director of infrastructure operations says: “As the leading Linux platform for SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA, and the platform on which SAP develops new releases first, SLES for SAP Applications helps us ensure optimal performance and stability for our customers.”
“We wanted the highest levels of stability and reliability for our managed services, which is why we chose SUSE technology to support our cloud services for SAP.”
Increasing cloud availability
To meet customer requirements for increased system availability, the CSP offers SLES with the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension (SLE HA). “SLE HA enables smooth automatic failover to maximize uptime and minimize disruptions for business users,” says the director of infrastructure operations. “Switching cluster nodes in combination with SAP HANA System Replication works like a charm, increasing reliability and giving us more flexibility — for example, when patching customer systems against emerging security vulnerabilities.”
For clients who request public cloud solutions, the CSP also offers SLE HA on Amazon Web Services (AWS), including Metro Cluster configurations in which a single cluster provides geographic redundancy by stretching across AWS data centers.
“Cluster environments are complex systems,” says the director of infrastructure operations. “The specialists from SUSE Global Services and SUSE Consulting Services organized workshops with us which really helped us find the perfect configurations for our customers’ SAP applications. The in-depth technical knowledge of the SUSE experts has given us confidence and allowed us to understand the solution much better than before.”
Flexible, scalable, future-proof
With many of its customer environments running on SLES for SAP Applications across private and public cloud platforms including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and IBM Power, the CSP is ready to support next-generation services. These innovations include business process automation and IoT capabilities to help customers maximize the value of their data.
“As pressure on margins intensifies, our IoT solutions are in high demand to help raise efficiency and control costs,” notes the vice president of operations. “With this combination of technologies from SUSE and SAP, we have the flexible, scalable platform to bring new solutions to market rapidly.”
Thanks in part to the quality of technology from key partners, the CSP’s enterprise cloud has maintained an unbroken two-year record of 100% availability for customers’ mission-critical SAP solutions.
The vice president of operations concludes: “To support manufacturing customers with their just-in-time processes, we need vendors who can empower us to deliver the highest levels of service without high administrative load. SUSE gives us an optimized platform for hundreds of SAP systems, reducing the time and effort required to keep our customers ready for business at all times.”