Digital transformation with open source

The approach to digital transformation is a holistic one: The challenge cannot be solved with an ERP release change or by mass distribution of tablets and smartphones in the company. Even installing a Chief Digital Officer will only do partial justice to the digital transformation.

One thing is certain: digital transformation is a business, organizational, financial and technical challenge. Holistic, networked thinking is the order of the day.

"Digital transformation is having a major impact on the IT environments of the future"

predicts Michael Jores, Regional Director Central Europe at Suse.

"Existing siloed, non-cloud-enabled and proprietary environments will be transformed by the requirements of d!conomy into standardized, cloud-enabled and open ones. As only such environments can respond to business requirements in a technically and thus also operationally efficient way."

It is no coincidence that d!conomy - the digital economy - has already been the theme of CeBIT twice.

d!conomy

"Big Data scenarios are inevitable".

Jores explains a phenomenon of d!conomy.

"As data volumes evolve to incredible proportions by 2020.

Likewise, hybrid cloud scenarios enable the flexibility and efficiency I mentioned."

With its strategy based on open source solutions, Suse is doing everything it can to deliver the necessary flexibility, standardization and efficiency in future data centers. Digital transformation and open source are obviously the two sides of the same coin.

"As an open source provider, Suse is virtually predestined to play an active role in this."

emphasizes Jens-Gero Boehm, Director Suse Partner Sales Central Europe.

"In the infrastructure for implementing digital transformation, open standards are a key requirement, and today they are implemented almost exclusively with open source."

The central starting point of current IT projects is based on the requirements resulting from the digital transformation.

"The Software Defined Datacenter, SDDC, describes the future IT architecture paradigm, optimally supported by open standards"

is how Michael Jores describes the trend, and not just in the SAP community.

Another challenge is to shorten the distance between development and operations with the so-called DevOps approach.

"Two basic directions emerge from this".

"Big Data and Cloud. For Big Data, the Hadoop project plays a large and interesting role.

In the cloud, hypervisors such as XEN and KVM, the infrastructure management framework OpenStack and Cloud Foundry come into play for creating a Platform as a Service, PaaS. What they all have in common is that Commuity relies on open standards."

This trend of developing software based on an open source model began and is growing rapidly with the success of Linux.

Software Defined Datacenter

The SAP community has had a busy and interesting journey: consolidation, harmonization, automation, virtualization are the topics successfully worked through.

The next step is based on open source and is a bottom-up approach. Based on the available technology, the S/4 Hana future is built on a Software Defined Datacenter.

The market researchers at IDC have surveyed that the transformation of data centers is in full swing. The companies understand Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) and Datacenter (SDDC) as a solution approach for the implementation of cloud computing, for lower operational costs and for more efficient operation of information technology.

Although SDI is still in an early phase, companies and organizations are ready to run business-critical applications on it. This is the conclusion of the new IDC study "Software Defined Infrastructure in Germany 2016".

The objective of the survey conducted by IDC in March 2016 among 252 IT decision-makers from companies in Germany with more than 250 employees was to gain insights into perceptions, implementation plans and success factors with regard to Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI).

Only those companies were surveyed that are already dealing with the topic of SDI in a well-founded manner. For 85 percent of those surveyed, open source plays an important role in SDI.

Open source is thus in many cases an important enabler for SDI in companies. This illustrates the innovation potential inherent in many open source initiatives.

In many cases, the interest in open source technology is based on the avoidance of vendor lock-in, cost reduction and the requirement to make API integration or automation as efficient as possible.

From the perspective of Suse Linux: Is SAP driving the use of open source products or is the market driving SAP towards open source?

"On the one hand, SAP recognized early on, since 1999, the potential that lies in Linux"

Michael Jores describes the situation.

"Through close development cooperation, SAP has thus recognized the added value of open source, which enables it to quickly implement requirements, such as high availability for Hana, in Linux together with the expertise of Suse.

On the other hand, Hadoop is significantly shaping the Big Data market and provides application scenarios here, to which SAP is responding with Vora. The combination of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry is also very interesting for SAP as a PaaS solution."

Accordingly, IDC's conclusion is: Many companies are working on modernizing their data center to support or improve digital transformation.

They see Software Defined Infrastructure as a way to provide business departments with flexible and agile IT resources at low cost. The various solution components are at different stages in their lifecycle.

While virtualization tools have been in use for many years, containers and OpenStack are still at an early stage of maturity. Enterprises are ready to deploy these solutions and are thus operating in a field of tension between innovation and enterprise readiness of the solutions.

"Software Defined Infrastructure is an interesting solution approach that enables companies to provide IT as a service efficiently, quickly and with high agility by decoupling hardware and software and on the basis of comprehensive automation and orchestration.

SDI is thus becoming a key factor and core element of modern IT infrastructures."

emphasizes Matthias Zacher, Senior Consultant and Project Manager at IDC.

Suse provides innovative technology contributions as a development reference platform for SAP, which can be found in the form of data center readiness topics for SAP NetWeaver and SAP Hana.

"The most exciting developments are the high availability scenarios for Hana in all its manifestations"

Michael Jores explains.

"Furthermore, with the Suse Manager, we deliver infrastructure automation for the SAP base."

Suse OpenStack Cloud with Suse Storage provides an IaaS platform to an SAP data center.

Open Source Paradigm

Why is open source software interesting?

This was the question posed by Joseph Reger, Fujitsu Fellow and Chief Technology Officer of Fujitsu EMEIA:

"I may be using the term open source software somewhat loosely, but I mean the strict definition of free software, free software, from the Free Software Foundation, 1985.

What is important is that the software can be freely used, shared, studied and - very important! - can be modified: freedom to use, share, study and modify. This is practically only possible with open source software.

Here it is secondary whether you have to pay for the software somehow - there are numerous models. The ambiguity of the English language - free, as in freedom, or free, as in free beer - doesn't strike in the German language anyway."

Michael Jores makes a precise distinction between paradigm and technology in his strategic approach. OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Linux, Hadoop, etc. are important IT building blocks, but not the digital transformation itself.

"Digital transformation, as the market understands it, is happening at the business level. The business models are changing"

Jores defines the change.

"The necessary changes also have a corresponding impact on the underlying infrastructures. The optimization here is called DevOps, which means minimizing the distance between development and operation.

Here are new paradigms for building SAP data centers, hyper-converged infrastructures, implementing the Software Defined Data Center."

One example of digital transformation based on open source is BMW in Munich. There, Linux, Hadoop, Hana and OpenStack are used in the SAP environment. By using Linux, the customer gains the openness to select an x86 platform.

Hana and Hadoop provide a powerful Big Data infrastructure for SAP. And OpenStack brings flexibility to the infrastructure for implementing the DevOps model.

OpenStack & Cloud Foundry

Overall, the SAP build blocks are the foundation of the infrastructure for SAP data centers: Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications, Suse OpenStack Cloud together with Cloud Foundry, and Suse Enterprise Storage.

"These layers provide SAP customers with the ability to implement a DevOps model for a PaaS infrastructure for SAP deployment"

Jores explains. Suse, as the first Linux distributor and represented on the Managing Board, and SAP are involved in the OpenStack Foundation and the Cloud Foundry community.

"With Cloud Foundry, the goal exists to provide a cloud service provider interface for SAP hosters to use a Platform as a Service for SAP based on Linux, OpenStack and Cloud Foundry"

argues Suse manager Jores.

And Suse Sales Director Boehm explains:

"The digital transformation is taking place in all industries and sectors. What they all have in common is the importance that IT is gaining, even for companies that have had to deal with IT issues very little in the past.

All of them will rely on an infrastructure - on premise or at the cloud service provider - that is based on a software-defined architecture. To ensure a secure and vendor-independent path into the future, mainstream solutions from the open source world will be used.

In the open source community, SAP and its partner Suse Linux are at the forefront: To support open systems and open source software in the cloud, SAP has released the Hana Cloud Platform (HCP), a starter edition for cloud foundry services.

HCP supports several Cloud Foundry buildpacks and services, including Java, Node.js, HTML5, MongoDB, Redis, PostgreSQL, and RabbitMQ.

These services, made available through the HCP Cockpit, are designed to help developers create new and innovative Cloud Foundry-based applications that run on the Hana Cloud Platform.

What is possible with HCP in practice was demonstrated extremely impressively by SAP EVP Björn Goerke in his keynote at SAP TechEd 2015 in Barcelona and at the DSAG Technology Days 2016 in Hamburg (both keynotes exist on YouTube).

In the Hana Enterprise Cloud and HCP, the topics of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry are closely anchored. Here, these topics will flow in with OpenStack as IaaS and Cloud Foundry as PaaS.

"OpenStack provides an attractive environment for higher layers of the IT stack"

Joseph Reger emphasizes again.

"Everything the cloud heart desires: virtualization with VMs, Docker or Rocket; PaaS with Cloud Foundry; Big Data platform with Hadoop; cluster management with Kubernetes or Mesos; orchestration with Tosca; service catalogs with Murano; application monitoring with Monasca. This can not only be delivered, but also operated.

This also brings us into SAP domains. It is no coincidence that SAP is actively involved in several of these OpenStack projects. Particularly clear deployment opportunities exist for the Hana Cloud Platform and Hana Enterprise Cloud."

Big Data, Hana & Hadoop

One area of digital transformation is Big Data. From Hadoop to Ceph, the open source scene is well positioned here. What does this mean for SAP and other providers such as EMC or Netapp, and what will it ultimately mean for SAP's existing customers?

"Software defined storage, Ceph, will replace traditional storage in the future"

Michael Jores says.

"Disruption is already happening and will bring fundamental change. Companies like Netapp and EMC will respond to this and already have."

The individual layers in the SAP stack are supported by the respective manufacturer and distributor, while SAP takes care of the integration of the individual layers.

"If you want everything from a single source, you can implement this via an outsourcer"

Jores knows from his professional practice.

"It's up to the infrastructure component providers to make the challenge manageable for the user through appropriate automation"

says Jens-Gero Boehm.

"Together with hardware and software partners, and especially with SAP, Suse has always placed great emphasis on this aspect. Because this is the only way to keep the resource commitment for the IT infrastructure manageable and not pull it away from application innovation in IT."

In addition, there is also the option of operating with the service provider, who can provide the user with the infrastructure services with cloud offers "from the socket".

Suse Connect

SAP Sapphire in Orlando, USA, came to a close in mid-May. There have also been joint announcements from SAP and Suse Linux. What is the strategic significance of the App Store, for example?

"The App Store, or Suse Connect, is designed to give SAP customers the ability to see all the offerings that other SAP partners are developing in one place"

is how Michael Jores describes the new initiative.

"For example, Datavard offers a Community Edition in Suse Connect that allows customers to use monitoring for Hana free of charge within a certain scope of services."

Finding SAP-compatible software just got easier. With Suse Connect, companies can find open source solutions for SAP that are tailored to their needs.

The platform provides users of Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications with an overview of available software, web services and consulting services.

Time-consuming searches and annoying compatibility checks are now a thing of the past. In addition, Suse Connect makes it possible to download free test versions of the software on offer.

"Given the speed at which businesses are transforming today, IT managers often don't have time to scour the vast open source world in search of solutions - only to come across something that is either cumbersome or impossible to integrate into their system"

said Dirk Oppenkowski, Global SAP Alliance Director at Suse.

"Suse Connect provides a remedy here. It enables a convenient and practical search for solutions that are compatible and work reliably.

Easier access to a broader range of solutions saves time and money, freeing up capacity for growth in other areas of the business."

And Gregor Stöckler, CEO of Datavard, adds:

"Through Suse Connect, we become part of an expert community that works relentlessly to develop new features and improve the user experience.

Working with Suse has proven to be a great asset for Datavard. Our customers will also benefit."

In conclusion, Michael Jores emphasizes once again:

"Open source provides the infrastructure, know-how for recurring activities should be built up in-house by the respective existing SAP customer, and know-how for special projects and peak workloads can be covered by Suse partners."