Linux: An Evolution
IT innovations appear immediately or not at all: This conventional theory is not always followed in practice. Linux is one example. Although the open operating system did not spark an immediate revolution in the IT world, Linux is now more popular than ever in the B2B and ERP markets – and has even greater growth potential. This is especially true for existing SAP customers. A noticeable trend from UNIX to Linux in SAP data centers has already been recorded in recent years, and this development is set to increase exponentially thanks to the in-memory database SAP HANA, which relies consistently on SUSE Linux. In the future, all SAP products will migrate to Linux and SAP HANA.
No Hype at the Turn of the Millennium
Think back to the turn of the millennium. Although Linux was highly acclaimed by IT experts far and wide at the time, major hype about Linux Torvalds’s operating system failed to materialize. Leading IT manufacturers continued to use proprietary solutions, which were more expensive but offered greater earnings potential. Furthermore, an ever-improving server operating system was available to SAP customers running Windows Server because they could combine it with the revamped and R/3-optimized SQL Server.
When SAP later adapted this combination and offered it as SAP MaxDB on Linux, the first customers took a brave decision to migrate from Oracle and proprietary operating systems to the open-source platform. This resulted in an evolutionary development that has today made Linux the preferred target platform and a mainstream solution in the SAP community. A fundamental role in this development was played by SAP LinuxLab, which SAP founded in 1999 to consolidate all partners needed to develop Linux for SAP.
Higher Performance, Lower Costs
And with great success: As an open operating system that can be customized to meet the most diverse customer requirements, Linux is proving to be increasingly superior to proprietary approaches. With Linux, SAP customers benefit from maximum security of their investments in the future and can leverage the good price-performance ratio of modern x86 platforms – irrespective of the hardware manufacturer.
Cover Story in the E-3 Magazine
Would you like to find out more about the Linux evolution and the special role played by SUSE in the SAP community? Then we suggest you read the cover story in the E-3 magazine. It gives you a deeper insight into Linux and the milestones of a long-standing partnership that has so far culminated in SAP’s commitment to SUSE Linux as its SAP HANA operating system of choice.
https://www.novell.com/docrep/2014/10/linux_an_evolution.pdf
http://www.e3cms.de/index.php?id=5544
