Whether classic ERP applications or new business suite SAP S/4HANA – companies who upgrade their enterprise software to a big data solution can improve their strategic and operational decisions and thus tap new sales potential. This is what more and more companies are discovering, according to a recent IT trend study by Capgemini.1 While in the past year, businesses were still debating rather than realizing such a transformation, 20% of all respondents are now using one or more big data analytics applications – a trend that is rapidly growing.
This development is also evident in the SAP environment, where users are primarily using the in-memory platform SAP HANA. They are reaping the benefits of partners such as NetApp, Cisco, MAPR, and SUSE Linux collaborating closely to offer customers a sustainable architecture and infrastructure for SAP HANA – ranging from NetApp’s FlexPod for Hadoop and HANA, a hardware platform that unites storage, networking, and server technologies, to MAPR, an Apache Hadoop-derived enterprise architecture, and SUSE Linux, the optimal operating system for big data.
Operating System Recommended by SAP
There is good reason for this – SAP itself recommends and supports SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications for use with SAP HANA. It is the optimal platform for meeting the diverse requirements of a big data environment in which large, continuously growing volumes of data need to be handled.
When it comes to performance, SUSE has top-class references that underline its excellence in high-performance computing (HPC). As the first HANA-platform released by SAP, SUSE also offers numerous functions for high availability, while also protecting applications and SAP HANA databases effectively against potential failure. Other plus points are SLES functions that simplify ongoing operation of the Linux platform, including 18-month support for service packs, as well as SUSE Manager, which provides for high automation of infrastructure maintenance. SUSE Linux also enables the acquisition of big data applications from the private, public, or hybrid cloud, and offers mixed hypervisor support, which guarantees the interoperability with different hypervisors such as KVM, VMware, XEN, and HyperV. With SUSE OpenStack Cloud for SAP, a stand-alone OpenStack offering is also available.
Cover Story in E-3 Magazine
Further details on the topic of big data for SAP users can be found in a cover story published by NetApp, together with partners Cisco, SUSE Linux, and MAPR, in E-3, an independent magazine for the SAP community. Read here about the technical possibilities that this innovative working community has established to guarantee SAP customers a non-disruptive big data transformation process. http://www.e-3.de/artikel/non-disruptive-datability/
1 Capgemini: “Studie IT-Trends 2015, 2015
https://www.de.capgemini.com/resource-file-access/resource/pdf/it-trends-studie-2015.pdf
