Converged Infrastructure

Flexibility is necessary in order not to be swept away by the digital tsunami - as the Gartner analysts also call the digital transformation. Converged Infrastructure and Software Defined Datacenter are one answer to the upcoming transformation processes.

IT flexibility concerns the CCC and IT manager in an SAP environment, sometimes perhaps the CIO. Cost reduction pleases the CFO.

Is more flexibility at lower cost a team effort? Who drives? Who executes? Jürgen Renz, General Manager and Executive Director at Dell in Germany:

"In my eyes, more flexibility is a requirement of the business and the functional departments, which bring that to the CCC leader and CIO. These are the key drivers for me.

Working with the CFO, who keeps an eye on costs, it's ultimately the IT director and the CIO who implement these requirements."

And Jens Peter Gotter, Director Global SAP Center of Excellence at Dell, adds:

"Cost reduction is not just the concern of CFOs. Nowadays, CIOs are also given strict budget targets, and they have to reduce TCO.

Flexibility can also be viewed in a differentiated way. Flexibility through a convergent infrastructure is driven by the CIO organization, which leads to cost reductions. Flexibility with regard to the business side is translated into the scalability of the SAP system and is also driven by the CIO organization.

Cost savings from business process reengineering activities are typically executed by the line of business - supported by the IT organization."

In an interview with E-3 Magazine, Jürgen Renz notes:

"However, we are currently also seeing a trend that IT management is definitely very aware of these connections and can also motivate themselves very strongly."

The transformation

However, flexibility cannot be the sole objective of a Converged Infrastructure. Naturally, it is also about improving the quality of the organizational structure and processes.

The business process redesign towards a real-time enterprise - as SAP calls the next ERP evolution - is important. Quality improvement also influences the TCO mentioned above.

Change management of a Converged Infrastructure should bring flexibility and savings. Is it possible to do both or should you first become flexible and then cheap?

"No, you don't have to do one and then the other".

Dell manager Renz says.

"On the contrary, by increasing flexibility - after an initial investment - significant savings can usually be achieved as well."

His colleague Jens Peter Gotter notes:

"Increasing flexibility, increasing quality and reducing costs can be achieved simultaneously. Examples include converged infrastructures and SLA-based support models."

"If we look at the SAP world of ten years ago, almost every SAP system in the German market in particular was running on proprietary architectures."

explains Jens Peter Gotter.

"For this purpose, a large number of isolated solutions existed, each of which enabled partial automation of SAP. However, there was no truly universal concept at the time."

In the meantime, a high level of hardware standardization has been achieved, which now provides the basis for comprehensive software flexibilization. In the future, this will be significantly expanded, especially in terms of flexibility and speed.

"It is also foreseeable that this process can be made much more efficient via templates and application automations"

Gotter is convinced. His Dell colleague Jürgen Renz says:

"Typical deployment scenarios in the SAP environment ten years ago involved a lot of manual intervention on proprietary systems.

The trend toward standardized IT today brings with it profound automation, and with it, of course, deployment processes that used to take weeks and days and are now done in minutes or seconds."

Flexibility for existing SAP customers covers the entire lifecycle:

"When looking at new workloads through our SAP consulting as well as financing through Dell Financial Services, where we enable a pay-as-you-grow model, that flexibility is there."

defines Jürgen Renz.

Of course, Dell also delivers flexible systems at the core of the infrastructure.

"Especially in the area of hyperconverged servers, software-defined storage and open networking, we also offer existing customers very innovative, flexible solutions"

Renz explains the Dell approach.

And Jens Peter Gotter adds that more flexibility can be achieved on two levels: first, through convergent infrastructure. An infrastructure can change over time.

Examples include temporary requirements for development and test environments for short-term projects.

Other examples are mergers and acquisitions, including spin-offs. And finally, the normal growth of the business.

"With the help of converged infrastructure, it will be possible to dynamically adjust the size of the landscape according to current needs"

defines Dell manager Gotter. A side effect is that the costs for the infrastructure are adapted to the actual demand. Flexible adaptation of the landscape can be achieved through hyperconverged servers, software-defined storage, open networks and corresponding Dell services. Secondly, through support services.

Here Gotter explains:

"Support can be provided at the infrastructure component level as well as at the application level, such as end-user support or break-fix support.

Instead of offering support on a fixed FTE basis, Dell's support model is based on SLAs, which makes costs flexible."

Hyperconverged Systems

"Hyperconverged systems are solutions that combine the classic IT stack of storage, server and network, while maintaining a compact design"

Jürgen Renz describes a megatrend from the digital transformation processes. Hyperconverged systems serve as reproducible, largely identical building blocks that enable customers to scale almost linearly.

For an existing SAP customer, there is the opportunity to realize a more homogeneous, stable operation. At the same time, he can consume his workload in portionable sizes and has the security that everything is coordinated.

"Complex certification matrices are thus significantly simplified"

Renz knows from his professional experience.

His colleague Jens Peter Gotter adds that depending on customer size and operating model, hyperconverged systems may be a more optimal option for SAP operations.

"We expect these modern solutions to make up a significant portion of future SAP installations - especially in migration projects from Unix and mainframe solutions.

The reason is that these hyperconverged systems are very easy to administer."

Jürgen Renz summarizes briefly in the meantime:

"In the early days of R/3, our clear Intel-x86 focus meant that the issue of deploying SAP infrastructure was not an issue as systems were rolled out to Unix worlds.

In the course of the x86 evolution, the topic of ECC 6.0 and, of course, S/4 with Hana have come more and more into focus. Especially the unified platform with S/4 helps our customers and us to focus on the essentials."

S/4 is coming

"S/4 is already relevant to Dell"

Jürgen Renz explains,

"as we use our Hana Value Identification services to educate customers about the benefits of moving to S/4."

So far, however, only Simple Finance (S/4 Finance) is available, and Simple Logistics (S/4 Logistics) is to follow by the end of the year.

"We believe this will increase the adoption of S/4"

Renz emphasizes.

Dell manager Gotter emphasizes that S/4 is not just an ECC running on Hana, but the next generation of an ERP system from SAP:

"We believe that in the long run, the majority of improvements will require S/4."

As a result, Dell thinks that over the next ten to 15 years, a high percentage of SAP systems will be brought onto S/4.

"We use an SAP RDS to migrate from BW to Hana, and Dell is also familiar with SAP's Activate methodology to move customers from ECC to S/4"

adds Jens Peter Gotter.

S/4 can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. Dell has in-house data center capacity (currently in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland) and can deliver S/4 via the Dell Cloud.

Cloud - but which one?

"Cloud computing is one possible path to greater IT flexibility, but certainly not the only one"

says Jens Peter Gotter.

"Many customers today increase the flexibility of their IT with an on-premise or private cloud, which they extend as needed. So hybrid clouds are also the logical next step."

And Jürgen Renz refers to the topic of security:

"Of course, there is always the issue of data security to evaluate, which must lead even more to hybrid models.

Consequently, non-critical issues are benchmarked against the market and market offerings are used, whereas for sensitive issues, the on-premise cloud can show its great advantages."

For manager Gotter, however, it is important that Dell gives the customer a choice:

"Together with them, we analyze very thoroughly which path is best for them. In this respect, we naturally lead our customers to the cloud if the highest added value can be achieved there.

But whether that's an off-premise, on-premise or hybrid cloud depends on the customer."

Can there be a Hana Enterprise Cloud (HEC) from Dell?

"Yes, a Dell HEC is part of the SAP Practice plans at Dell."

explains Director Global Center of Excellence Jens Peter Gotter.

"We are currently in the SAP certification process. This solution will take advantage of Dell's existing dedicated cloud offerings."

Jürgen Renz adds in conversation with E-3 Editor-in-Chief Färbinger:

"Hana Enterprise Cloud at Dell will be a holistic cloud-enabled managed service offering that includes all the necessary components to support an enterprise SAP landscape."

But where does Dell locate the Hana platform? In the data center of the existing SAP customer or in the cloud of cloud computing?

"Customers have certainly located SAP in their own data center first in the past, and so in many cases Hana will be deployed there first as well"

Jürgen Renz knows from his discussions with customers and specifies:

"Especially in the case of gradual modernization, it makes sense not to change all parameters at the same time.

On the other hand, Hana has undergone tremendous development and can now be used flexibly. I therefore also see Hana increasingly being used in off-premise cloud solutions."

Hana is ready

How do you evaluate your Hana platform as an existing SAP customer? Sizing for SAP BW and ERP? Dell has developed a roadmap to guide customers from start (evaluation) to finish (design, implementation, support) on their journey into the Hana world.

There are workshops as "education" of the customer what Hana is and what value categories Hana can fulfill. Hana migration is possible with Dell's ZeroImpact methodology for minimized business downtime.

This offering is supplemented, among other things, by support with a wide range of managed services for Hana such as DBA, SAP Basis and security with various, variable pricing models.

"We always want to provide our customers with an excellent service at a fair price"

Jens Peter Gotter summarizes in an E-3 interview.

"This presents us with the challenge of developing an optimal Hana platform each time and optimizing it sustainably for the benefit of our customers.

Furthermore, we have significantly expanded our support and service offering in the Hana environment in recent years."

Open Source & Software Defined

Hana needs Linux, and for cloud computing SAP relies heavily on OpenStack - open source has arrived in the SAP community:

"SAP is run at the heart of IT for our customers, where the mission-critical operations take place"

knows Jürgen Renz.

"As a result, OpenStack adoption by our customers in this space has traditionally been slower than for other workloads.

However, the importance of OpenStack is steadily increasing, and hardly any company today can afford not to look into it. Dell was active in this area very early on."

The Dell Red Hat Cloud Reference Architecture includes infrastructure and related services, as well as other components such as software-defined storage (SDS) and software-defined networking (SDN).

"Especially in SDN technologies, we are very far along in comparison and offer a wide range of different solutions here with partners that are complementary to OpenStack"

explains Jens Peter Gotter.

The topic of software-defined data centers is very relevant for SAP legacy customers:

"The promise of a software-defined data center - greater flexibility at low cost - covers exactly what our customers want here"

knows Jürgen Renz.

Dell covers all areas of software-defined.

"In addition to the classic software-defined server, which has already found its way into many customers in virtualized form, we are also very active in the area of software-defined networking"

is how Dell manager Gotter describes the current situation. In fact, according to Gartner, Dell is one of the companies that is furthest along in this area. And Jens Peter Gotter adds:

"Here we deliver our customers the freedom to deploy any network OS, to abstract the whole network via a control plane as well as to deploy virtualized networks à la NSX."

Recently, the area of software-defined storage has gained enormously in importance. Thus, everything seems to be prepared for a Converged Infrastructure in the SAP scene.