Why not rely on the tried and tested?

Open source technologies that have been tried and tested many times, cloud-native development models and also the open source culture as well as its concepts provide the optimum support for this.

A look back: At the turn of the millennium, there were still reservations about open source from a corporate perspective. But the situation has changed. Enterprise open source solutions and technologies are now standard in most companies, especially in business-critical areas such as banks, insurance companies and the automotive industry.

In modern times, open source is the innovation enabler par excellence: prominent examples are cloud computing, the Internet of Things, autonomous driving, Big Data, artificial intelligence, machine learning or completely new software architectures. The advantages of open source range from flexibility to independence to user control. Open source with its standardized, open interfaces is also the basis for networking companies. Original concerns about security and stability have also been reversed in the meantime. Security gaps are quickly closed with open source through the joint efforts of users, partners and the community. 

But how do the developments surrounding open source specifically affect the SAP world? Here, too, the use of open source has long since ceased to be an experiment and is now a tried-and-tested strategy. In order to integrate innovations and new end-to-end processes with SAP and to migrate Abap in-house developments, open source and the agile use of modern cloud-native development models are important components. With intelligent code modernization and an adequate target architecture for SAP and non-SAP workloads - an open hybrid cloud environment - a company can carry out even complex transformation projects relatively easily, quickly and cost-optimized.

Of course, at first glance at open source, the diversity of projects may seem daunting for potential users, for example with regard to a cloud-native stack with hundreds of frame works. However, a misunderstanding must be cleared up. Open source does not mean that a user has to assemble and maintain everything himself. Particularly with regard to the infrastructure and technology basis, enterprise-ready solutions are available that contain harmonized and hardened software and supplement support and SLAs (service level agreements). For SAP, this includes the Linux operating system and a hybrid multi-cloud architecture for the new SAP Basis on many target platforms. Examples include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat OpenShift enterprise Kubernetes platform.

For sure!

The fact that enterprise open source solutions are becoming increasingly relevant in the SAP environment is also demonstrated by the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. The solution is now used not only for automating the SAP infrastructure - for example, in Hana deployments and configurations - but also in day-to-day administration and maintenance, right down to the SAP application level itself. Since the end of January, an official new open source project has been launched by SAP Linux Lab together with partners such as Red Hat to bundle activities and content. The integration of SAP and non-SAP solutions in hybrid end-to-end processes will be one of the main tasks of SAP organizations in the coming years. And the open source ecosystem will play a crucial role in this, standardized and secure. If you miss the technical aspects of this: They will come in the next column - for sure!