Digitization: The technologies are there - why not use them?

At this year's annual congress in Bremen at the end of September, the German-speaking SAP user group (DSAG) once again rightly focused on the topic of digitization.

This was also confirmed by a survey conducted by the user association in the run-up to the congress. According to the survey, over 90 percent of respondents believe that the digital transformation is having a major or very major impact on the IT department.

At the same time, only 31 percent of companies are far or very far along in the digital transformation process. Or, to put it another way: 69 percent are not very far along or have not yet begun their digital transformation. That clearly means: There is a need for action among DSAG members or SAP users!

Coherent platform concept

Modern and beneficial SAP solutions for digital transformation are available - including infrastructure components and technologies that have numerous innovations "in their belly" and effectively support digitalization.

Essentially, these are S/4 Hana, SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) and SAP Leonardo. The Business Suite does play a certain role for SAP users as a result of the above-mentioned survey (44 percent). However, unlike S/4 Hana (70 percent) in conjunction with the SCP (44 percent) and Leonardo (18 percent), it does not represent a coherent platform concept for digital transformation in the true sense of the word, but rather stands for a certain ERP status quo.

DevOps model

The following should also be noted: S/4 Hana as a digital core, SCP as a development and integration platform and the Leonardo framework include a beneficial DevOps model that can be used in SAP landscapes for digitalization projects.

S/4 Hana for operations (for the OPS) and SCP and Leonardo as development environments for new apps and digital business processes (for the DEV) with the use of cloud technologies (Cloud Foundry/PaaS or OpenStack or Container/IaaS) and/or operating concepts (hybrid or multi-cloud).

Technology consistency, uniform standards

As a close SAP partner and open source innovator, Suse ensures the necessary technological consistency or - as requested by DSAG - uniform standards. Regardless of whether on-premise, public cloud, SAP HEC or SCP.

The management of Linux with the Suse Manager, for example, is platform-independent per se and also offers valuable added value in hybrid cloud scenarios.

In addition, the platform independence means that important functions such as Hana HA (High Availability) and DR (Disaster Recovery) are available to protect the digital core against failures. In addition to security guides for hardening the Linux platform and disk encryption or Suse Live Patching to minimize downtimes.

Bottom line:

Unfortunately, too few DSAG members are still dealing with the topics of the future and the innovations in infrastructure or are not using them to meet the digital transformation in a future-proof manner.

Suse helps to develop the innovation and future topics and cordially invites the DSAG community to participate in customized SAP workshop offers.