The modernization challenge

Modernization not only affects the SAP core, but in many cases also the peripheral systems and infrastructures. SAP itself provides an example of how the challenges are being met. Internally, the company relies on open source.

The DSAG Technology Days in Mannheim highlighted the areas in which SAP users are struggling. Significantly, the event was held under the motto "Work in Progress. SAP's product strategy and product focus were discussed, as well as aspects such as migration scenarios and integration options, not only with regard to the ERP system, but also with regard to peripheral systems and accompanying applications.

The challenges are far-reaching. And they are by no means limited to the SAP world. In terms of competitiveness and future viability, companies must address new topics and cover them in IT. These include big data, AI/ML and IoT, as well as cloud-native development with containers and microservices. Legacy systems, old solutions, interfaces and integrations that are not cloud-capable and can only be used on-premises, such as backup or monitoring tools or add-ons from the ECC landscape, are often an obstacle.

Companies should seize the opportunity here to embed these old applications in the SAP peripheral landscape into their migration strategy, modernize them in parallel and thus avoid new silos. The link here is open source principles, technologies and solutions such as open hybrid cloud platforms. For the optimization of the process landscape and third-party products, open source can be the key success factor - with the possibility of leveraging many synergies. Go ahead and demand this from your software supplier!

All of this belongs on an enterprise open source platform that is curated, certified, and optimized for SAP users and partners. That's why more and more partners from the SAP ecosystem are turning to open source and Red Hat in particular. SAP itself is also increasingly taking this path. For example, the company is also modernizing its Rise-with-SAP environments in the direction of modern cloud technology. Topics such as customizing and integration are being mapped in the cloud. SAP is increasingly relying on solutions from Red Hat.

The two companies recently announced an intensified partnership. As part of this, SAP is gradually migrating an ever larger part of its internal IT landscape and the SAP Enterprise Cloud Services portfolio to the standard foundation Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This means SAP is also using Red Hat as the underpinning for customer environments. This joint initiative to extend SAP software workloads on Red Hat Enterprise Linux illustrates how SAP customers can also increase business agility, accelerate cloud deployments and drive business innovation by building on Red Hat's scalable, flexible and open hybrid cloud infrastructure. Customers and the SAP ecosystem partners will finally be able to implement their S/4 transformation and also pre-projects more easily and quickly.

The SAP example thus shows that open source solutions can form a common basis for modernization projects. The advantages of an integrated approach that includes both the SAP core and the periphery in the migration are manifold. Inevitably, there are synergy effects in areas such as know-how and training. In addition, a uniform open source approach is now of recognized benefit in the SAP and non-SAP worlds in terms of interoperability and costs.

The SAP partner landscape and the open source ecosystem can adequately support SAP users in such migration and modernization measures. Many best practices are already established, but there is still room for improvement. Fortunately, development is not stagnating; on the contrary, many ecosystem enhancements are still on the horizon this year.