Linux acts as a tried and tested bridge builder
It is quite striking how important the topic of Linux has become for SAP users. This can be seen, for example, in the questions from more and more customers that came up at the last SAP TechEd or the DSAG Annual Congress 2018, at which Suse participated.
This may certainly have something to do with the fact that a renewed wave of SAP Hana is swelling up. It may be that the in-memory database Hana is increasingly replacing existing Any-DBs (keyword: Suite-on-Hana); it may be that SAP NetWeaver customers are skipping this kind of intermediate step and are very specifically looking at the Business Suite technology successor SAP S/4 Hana or already have S/4 projects underway.
With Linux as the operating system platform specified by SAP. At the same time, it was obvious that SAP customers are much more intensively concerned with topics such as "IT transformation in the context of digitalization", including cloud use on the basis of open source, than was perhaps the case a year earlier at the SAP community events mentioned above. And in great detail.
The reason for this is obvious: SAP's leading the way in the use of new technologies as well as highlighting technological changes as part of the Smart Enterprise campaign (keywords here: Kubernetes, containers, OpenStack, Cloud Foundry - but also: Hybrid Cloud, Public Cloud, Multi Cloud, provided connectors for non-SAP solutions on SAP Cloud Platform or, or, or).
Striking the nerve of the times
At the various SAP events, however, it also became very clear that with SLES for SAP Applications in the new Version 15, Suse is hitting a kind of necessity nerve among SAP users in order to support their various IT strategies effectively and in line with their needs. And this applies to both current and future-oriented strategies.
The main focus - apart from the unrivaled functionality especially for SAP use - is that SLES for SAP Applications 15 can be used as a "multimodal OS".
Namely, in IT with traditional infrastructures and in IT that is exposed to rapid changes in shorter periods of time. Adaptation in the direction of Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) is also supported as a focal point.
Whereby SLES for SAP Applications 15 combines as well as masters both: new challenges customers are facing, namely how to innovate and be more effective at the same time with their traditional IT infrastructure.
Incidentally, "multimodal" derives from the Gartner term "bimodal IT", a "two-speed IT".
Kubernetes on the rise
Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 15 acts as a bridge builder, if you will, between the traditional data center and cloud/container worlds.
This Suse OS allows deployment in both on-premise and hybrid cloud environments, including public cloud, with the use of Kubernetes for container orchestration. And thus the deployment of modern applications based on microservices on different platforms and environments.
"For those who want, an application development or DevOps team can set up a comprehensive container management solution with a Kubernetes implementation on top of SLES for SAP Applications 15 as a host system in conjunction with the Suse CaaS (Container-as-a-Service) Platform 3."
It stands for straightforward deployment and effective system high-performance operation of container-based applications and services.
It is already clear today that the Kubernetes concept is gaining more and more acceptance - both among smaller and larger SAP customers.
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