But here the calculation was made without the host. Where Suse appears as an open source company, it is in fierce competition with numerous other companies and organizations; where Suse appears as a business platform for the SAP database Hana, Suse has a far-reaching unique selling proposition - only the key figures do not promise anything good.
The Suse business is still growing at a double-digit rate in the SAP community, but the end is already within reach: SAP S/4 and Hana as an on-premises solution is a lucrative business, but the growth prospects are slim.
There are more virtual Suse Linux servers than MS Windows servers in the Microsoft Azure cloud, but Suse has to share revenue with Microsoft here. Increasingly powerful Intel processors are causing the absolute number of Hana database installations to stagnate or fall, which ultimately affects the Linux operating system manufacturer Suse.
From 2020, the IT culture shock: Container technology turns Linux into a microservice including Hana. Here, Suse can only earn a few cents, albeit with a high scaling factor.
Conclusion: In the open source market, Suse has an overpowering opponent in Red Hat and IBM. In the SAP market, business opportunities are disappearing like snow in spring (see above).
If Red Hat now also enters the SAP market through the back door, things will get tight. Of about 200,000 SAP customers, about half are not focused on Hana; of the remainder, a third are SBO customers. That leaves Suse and Red Hat with about 70,000 customers - too few to make growth investor EQT happy.
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