Technology innovations for good reasons

Of course, SAP customers are interested in knowing how the core offerings for digitization, such as S/4 or the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP), are doing - both in overview and in detail.

The focus is primarily on business applications or processes. However, infrastructure and technology topics are almost always included as well. Logically, SAP leads the way.

Increasingly, companies of different sizes around the world are relying on Hana or Hana-based SAP solutions such as S/4, and thus on Linux as the operating system platform defined by SAP.

Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications is the preferred and established operating system platform, which has proven itself in tens of thousands of practical deployments and offers numerous benefits for SAP customers.

In particular due to the fact that it is not a generic operating system platform, but an SAP-specific one for mission-critical SAP use with a wide-ranging special scope of functions. It has its identical validity for both on-premise and cloud deployment.

Open source is preferred

Virtually all SAP customers encounter the SAP Cloud Platform, SAP's PaaS (Platform as a Service) solution, sooner or later in connection with their SAP S/4 Hana usage.

It essentially serves as an integration, development or extension platform, but also provides applications. Sophisticated new modern technologies are used on the infrastructure side. SAP voted in favor of innovative open source solutions for the SCP.

SAP also uses open source solutions from Suse for SCP. Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications plays a supporting role here on the infrastructure side.

In addition, SAP has decided to use further open source solutions as core components from Suse for the SCP. The Suse OpenStack Cloud and Cloud Foundry, which was created through co-development, will be used.

The solution is called Cloud Application Platform and is based on Cloud Foundry. Both solutions include software-defined data center and DevOps functionality and represent state-of-the-art IT infrastructure core components based on the latest technologies.

Suse Cloud Application Platform combines Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes technologies for application delivery. It unifies lifecycle management of traditional and new cloud-native applications.

It also enables DevOps process integration to accelerate innovation, optimize IT responsiveness, and maximize return on investment.

Co-development delivers concrete

OpenStack, on the other hand, represents an important IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) element in the context of the provision and orchestration of cloud infrastructures. Suse OpenStack Cloud 7 is used for the SCP.

An integration (interface) between OpenStack and Cloud Foundry is given. It was developed as part of a co-development agreement between SAP and Suse.

With Suse OpenStack Cloud 8, the next version is now available with numerous new beneficial features, which (for the first time) features OpenStack technologies from HPE. They were taken over by Suse through an acquisition last year.

SAP is integrating the previously outlined Suse solutions/open source technologies into its current cloud strategy in order to implement a DevOps model with a software-defined data center strategy in the SCP - numerous user companies are also following a software-defined data center strategy in order to implement their IT modernization with digitization and cloud in a future-proof manner.