A reason to celebrate

It's hard to imagine most companies without open source, and large companies in particular appreciate the benefits of open source software. In the meantime, open source is also preparing to conquer the SAP world, after SAP relied exclusively on Linux as the foundation for Hana. However, SAP's commitment to open source goes back much further, as the company has been running its own Linux Lab for more than 20 years.

In addition, SAP collaborates on numerous open source projects and uses open source software in many frameworks and products. This enables SAP to connect its applications to other systems and creates the basis for company-wide end-to-end processes and more automation - something that is also becoming increasingly important in the SAP world.

Today, more than ever, companies are dependent on openness and integration in order to keep up with the rapid pace of IT development and to be able to react agilely to rapidly changing IT requirements. Linux and open source enable them to do this, because open standards and interfaces are among the basic ideas of open source software.

With open source, companies therefore break down their IT silos and avoid the dreaded vendor lock-in - indeed, they gain enormous strategic flexibility because their applications work seamlessly with other applications and run both in the cloud and on-premises and in modern edge environments. In addition, companies benefit from the enormous innovative power of a huge community that quickly implements new ideas and provides ready-made solutions for many well-known problems and challenges.

The community of developers, contributors and partners fixes bugs in open source quickly and reliably, thus guaranteeing high stability and security of the applications. These are usually maintained for a very long time - even older software versions often receive function, stability and security updates for years to come, something that users of proprietary software can usually only dream of.

Open code also contributes to a high level of security and data protection, as all interested developers and companies can check at any time whether vulnerabilities exist and where data flows to. Proprietary software does not offer this transparency - here, companies must trust the assurances of the providers in this regard.

With Linux being the prerequisite for the switch to S/4 and Hana, this versatile, dynamic and secure open source world is opening up for SAP users. The 30th birthday of the open source operating system in September 2021 should therefore have been a reason for them to celebrate. After all, for three decades, Linux has been successfully proving its enterprise suitability and is the foundation of modern infrastructures and new digital services. 

SAP users need have no fear of contact, even if the open source ecosystem may seem unmanageably large at first or they fear that they will not be able to keep up with the rapid pace of development in the community. Companies such as Red Hat actively support the open source community and accompany customers from the first steps on their journey into the new world, delivering perfectly coordinated applications and platforms for SAP operation and integration with non-SAP systems.

In addition to the Linux base in the form of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there are dozens of other products available today, such as Ansible Automation Platform, a powerful open source solution for automation from the SAP infrastructure level down to the application level. In addition, there are extensive service and support services as well as years of experience in SAP and open source projects that ensure that mission-critical SAP processes always run reliably and optimally - and that the SAP and open source worlds merge seamlessly. With this in mind: Let's go!