Open source gives digitization a leg up

Highly interesting results of a survey on digital transformation were published by the German-speaking SAP user group (DSAG) at the end of April.

Two findings from this should be highlighted and evaluated:

On the one hand, it is a little surprising how much importance is now attached to digitization among DSAG members.

According to the survey, more than 80 percent of the respondents attach "very high or high importance" to this. This prompts the DSAG to conclude that "the digital transformation has arrived" at its member companies.

You could also say that digital transformation is a hot topic in the SAP community.

On the other hand, welcome mention was made of current topics that the SAP community is dealing with in digitization. In particular, DSAG members mentioned (the trend-setting use cases): Customer Interface, Manufacturing and Logistics, Human Resources, Collaboration, and Big Data and Analytics. According to DSAG, the participants expect the greatest impact in the areas of business processes, workflows and customer access.

If you would like to see all the results of the survey, please visit www.dsag.de.

Open standards count

In order to adequately implement the numerous and diverse digitization use cases, various adequate IT infrastructure elements or technologies are required. In this context, open source solutions or products for SAP applications are of outstanding importance.

Above all, it is important to be able to use open standards with open interfaces in practically all digitization projects - and not to end up in a vendor lock-in of any kind.

This applies, for example, to cloud use in the context of digitization as well as to IoT applications, for which small and lean operating systems are required.

In terms of cloud and SAP, Openstack (for IaaS) or Cloud Foundry (for PaaS) can be mentioned in connection with open source. And for digitalization, for example in connection with SAP Predictive Maintenance (as an IoT use case), Linux also plays an important role as an embedded system in combination with sensor technologies.

The examples can be continued. With Hadoop as an important Big Data component. Or with Ceph as an intelligent software-defined storage solution. SAP-certified storage appliances with Suse Storage 3, based on the Jewel release of Ceph, will be available soon.

Software Defined Data Center

Suse's open source offerings for SAP applications are designed for software-defined data center (SDDC) use in the enterprise environment and promote digitization projects as well as business changes through technologically sophisticated innovations and new features that the open source community continuously provides.

Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications including the High Availability Extension (HAE), Suse Openstack Cloud, Suse Manager and Suse Enterprise Storage are the offerings from Suse.

No question: Suse and SAP are acting in close lockstep, so to speak. First with SAP Classic, then with Hana and S/4 Hana (cloud, on-premise or hybrid operator models).

And also when using SAP Hana and S/4 Hana as the "Digital Core".

It is also undisputed that the joint developments are of a constant nature, with the speed of innovation remaining high. For example, in order to develop and provide enhanced or new solutions for digitization or to support them advantageously.