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CEO / CIO Best Practices

SAP on Linux
CIOs can save up to 60% in TCO

Naji Almahmoud, Director,
SAP Global Alliance, Novell

Avoiding Vendor Lock-ins
To avoid vendor lock-ins by strategically moving to an open enterprise platform, and to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their IT environments, more and more SAP users are putting trust in LINUX Enterprise Server as their operating system. The first Linux platform certified for SAP solutions, Novell's SUSE LINUX provides centralized server and network services that result in long-term cost savings.

Companies of any size and from any sector value the wide range of functions and services afforded by LINUX Enterprise Server — all with low license fees and sensible operating and maintenance costs. What’s more, SAP customers can benefit from a system that can cope with even the most exacting data center demands.

Flexibility Is Key
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server offers SAP users unrivaled flexibility when it comes to choosing hardware and software. Siemens Business Services (SBS) GmbH, a leading global IT service provider, rates the flexibility of SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server very highly: “For us, the certification by prominent hardware and software manufacturers was and continues to be decisive,” says Michael Gebauer, project manager in the Application and Hosting Services department at SBS.

The Siemens group uses mySAP ERP Human Capital Management (mySAP ERP HCM) to handle its payroll requirements for 170,000 employees, but wanted to find a new strategic platform for their mySAP ERP HCM installation that would provide better monetary value than conventional reduced instruction set computer (RISC) servers while boosting performance at the same time. After various test runs with different Linux distributions, SBS selected the Novell SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server. The reason: In conjunction with the new Intel servers, the system returned the best performance data and promised easier migration.

A Groundbreaking Solution
The Adaptive Computing infrastructure from SAP is based on the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. It decouples the software components from servers, operating systems, memory solutions, and control instances. As such, almost any application can potentially run at any time on any server. This improves scalability and system performance, significantly increasing the efficiency and flexibility of the IT infrastructure.

"The potential benefits of Novell’s SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server are especially high when based on the Adaptive
Computing infrastructure from SAP. IT operating costs can be cut by over 30 percent compared with customary
Unix systems, and by up to 60 percent compared with mainframes."

A number of users have already deployed SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server successfully as a component in the Adaptive Computing infrastructure from SAP. One such customer is Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., a leading international automotive supplier with close to 23,000 employees in over 20 countries. Increasing globalization prompted Hella to merge its production and trading companies, which were spread around the world’s major automotive industry sites and operated locally. To harmonize its process and system landscape, the company had to extend the use of core SAP applications across the group. Hella met these requirements with the Adaptive Computing infrastructure from SAP, running on a system composed of blade and rack servers from Fujitsu Siemens, storage systems from Network Appliance, and a Novell SUSE LINUX operating system. Among its successes, the project boasts high availability, increased flexibility, simplified administration, and a TCO reduced by more than 30 percent. “We are pursuing an optimal IT strategy with our new infrastructure,” says Hans Sudkamp, head of finances at Hella. “It helps us to respond flexibly to the needs of the automotive industry and to offer top-quality, innovative products at reasonable prices around the globe.”

Major TCO Reduction
T-Systems, one of Europe’s major service providers for information and communication technology, has experienced similar success. As an application service provider, T-Systems provides different SAP solutions for more than 250 customers worldwide. Thanks to Adaptive Computing from SAP and SUSE LINUX, 50 to 60 customers can now be served by a single infrastructure. T-Systems uses the Adaptive Computing Controller tool from SAP as a component of the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. “The Adaptive Computing infrastructure drastically reduces IT operating costs,” says Alfred Leicht, focus solution manager at T-Systems. Together with SAP, T-Systems assessed the cost advantages of Adaptive Computing on SUSE LINUX and concluded that IT operating costs could be cut by approximately 30 percent compared to conventional Unix systems. Compared to mainframe environments, the difference is even greater, with potential savings of up to 60 percent.

About the Author
Naji Almahmoud, Director,
SAP Global Alliance, Novell
For more information on Novell SUSE LINUX, please visit www.novell.com/partners/sap
email: nalmahmoud(at)novell.com