For many enterprises, digital transformation has

already begun. As people get used to anywhere,

anytime data access and personalized services,

your customers and stakeholders start to

demand more from you. Your choice? Make that

transformation or get left behind. Now, with SAP

and SUSE, you can transform your business to meet

evolving demands today while setting yourself up

for even greater success in the future.

Don’t Get Left Behind, Make Your Digital Transformation Today with SAP and SUSE

Are You Ready for Real Change?

There’s a lot of talk about digital

transformation these days, but some

enterprise leaders don’t seem to

realize that they are standing at a

crossroads that will forever change

the way they do business. Turn

right, and you’re using big data,

mobile, cloud and Internet of Things

technologies to reach customers

and grow in new, more profitable

ways; turn left to stick with what’s

always worked before, and you’re,

well, left behind.

Committing to digital

transformation across the

enterprise is the first step, but the

real challenge comes in making it

happen. Fortunately, SAP knows

how complex that transformation

can be, and understands the

question of how to evolve your

business and focus on change

while also managing costs and

simplicity. SAP S/4HANA simplifies

the shift to an agile business

model by streamlining processes

and management. And with SUSE

Linux Enterprise as the underlying

operating system, you can move

forward, confident that your

business is making the right turn

and will be ready for whatever the

future holds.

Digital transformation is about more than new deployment

models—it’s likely one of the most significant industry

shifts that many leaders will see in their careers. It requires

an agile mindset and business culture, one focused

more on the customer journey and experience. It drives

business models that weren’t even possible before now.

Organizations can innovate and roll out new products

and scale much faster today, which means business just

got more competitive. And it means making a lot of

complicated decisions, from deciding how to put big data

to use to selecting the optimal delivery models.

Added to that is the question of how to leverage the cloud.

Because, let’s face it: Every enterprise in existence today

has to ask itself which of its applications and systems

should be in the cloud—and what kind of cloud it should be.

At least for now, most enterprises will likely have a hybrid

landscape that incorporates some software as a service

(SaaS), some public and private cloud deployments, and

some on-premises applications. But these are all decisions

still to be made.

That sounds like a lot to figure out, but going down that

path offers exciting possibilities. The enterprises that are

the most aggressive in adopting the new digital business

models of today will be the competitors to beat tomorrow.

Why You’re Hearing So Much about Digital Transformation

Those are the businesses that will deliver cross-channel

access to products and services 24 hours a day, seven days

a week; attract and retain a loyal customer base with fast,

personalized, always-on services; recognize and jump on

opportunities to develop new revenue streams; and become

truly disruptive in their markets.

Here’s the clincher: It takes a savvy IT team to make it all

happen. The decisions you make now can help empower IT

with the agility and infrastructure that keep them able to

innovate and deliver. Many businesses are moving toward

a DevOps model because it can streamline IT services for

fast delivery. Software-defined infrastructure and the cloud

make deployment quick and efficient. And open source

technologies are offering a greater level of service agility

that proprietary systems can’t always match.

And the best thing? You don’t have to make all of those

decisions in a vacuum. There are companies that have made

digital transformation their business for a long time now,

and they are well versed in how to help businesses make

that massive shift without the complications and hassle.

transactions and analytics results boost productivity. And

reducing infrastructure complexity helps increase agility

while controlling the costs of management

and maintenance.

While SAP has focused on streamlining infrastructure to

reduce complexity, it’s also been broadening its scope,

in a sense, to support cloud-based business models. The

company has worked hard to make it quick and easy to get

SAP S/4HANA and SAP HANA up and running in the cloud.

Not only will you be able to access your infrastructure

through the cloud, SAP is also offering a platform for your

SAP applications in the cloud. Whether you go public,

private or hybrid, cloud deployment gives you flexibility

and can result in faster time to market.

SAP’s digital business framework can result in a lot of

benefits for your business. You can save on hardware

and operational costs, as well as time, by reducing your

One company that has made great strides in simplifying

digital transformation is SAP. Over the past few years, it

has focused primarily on streamlining its own application

infrastructure to make sure that all SAP applications can

run on the same database. This reduces the number of

databases your IT team has to manage, and ensures

that applications and systems are integrated for easy

access to data.

SAP’s digital transformation strategy is built on SAP

S/4HANA, the company’s latest suite of business

applications. SAP S/4HANA delivers multiple simplifications

(of the data model and user experience) to aid customer

adoption, decision making and business processes. It also

uses the latest innovations (Internet of Things, big data,

business networks and mobile first) to help businesses run

more easily in the digital economy.

As of 2025, SAP will end support for its traditional business

warehouse products and only support SAP S/4HANA,

which runs on SAP HANA. SAP HANA is an evolving

platform that converges database, application and in-

memory capabilities to perform transactions, analytics,

and predictive and spatial processing so businesses can

operate in real time. SAP HANA has a comprehensive

feature set that allows you to simultaneously handle real-

time transactions and predictive analytic workloads with

extreme speed. SAP S/4HANA also incorporates SAP Fiori

for a smooth, simple user experience.

The simplified infrastructure empowers your business to

“run live,” which means that instead of having to wait for

data to become available, it’s all accessible in near real time.

Faster access to information keeps you agile, responsive

and better able to make informed decisions. Faster

Driving Digital Transformation with SAP

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is a preferred platform for SAP, which enables us to be among the first companies to test and deploy new SAP functionality.”

—Manfred Bantle, Head of SAP Services, Geberit (Switzerland)

data footprint and working with larger data sets—by

co-deploying enterprise resource planning and customer

relationship management software, for example. Enable

developers to more easily innovate on applications while

protecting existing investments, through the SAP

Cloud Platform. Make systems training fast and easy

while maintaining productivity with simple, role-based user

experiences.

The bottom line is that your digital transformation can go

a lot smoother with SAP solutions. You can get real-time

insights about customers, assets and processes; increase

efficiency by automating routine and repetitive tasks

through machine learning; and gather and analyze data

from products and equipment with Internet of Things

sensors and data.

Build the SAP Data Center of the Future with SUSE Solutions

Why Open Source?

SAP leverages open

source technologies in

many areas because

open source software

is very well tested by

a community of users

and developers. It has

multiple companies and

experts contributing to

its stability and security,

and IT professionals like

to know they’re using a

product that many others

accept and like.

Ultimately, SAP S/4HANA will only run on SAP HANA—and

SAP HANA only runs on Linux. That’s just one way that SAP

has shown its commitment to open source technologies. SUSE

Linux Enterprise Server is the recommended and supported

operating system of choice for SAP HANA. In fact, SAP itself

uses SUSE Linux internally on its own systems. And every new

product from SAP is developed on SUSE Linux Enterprise

before it is tested on any other operating system.

Optimized for SAPSAP’s hardware certification requirements are very

demanding, especially with regard to a system’s performance.

SUSE engineers work alongside hardware vendors at SAP

headquarters through the certification process to handle any

performance issues and to make sure that the system and

hardware both operate at peak performance.

Also, SAP and SUSE engineering teams are continually

interacting to discuss SAP HANA and its roadmap. If SAP has

a requirement to meet for its go-to-market strategy, SUSE

immediately addresses that requirement as well in its

operating system and other products. So SUSE products

are constantly optimized and fine-tuned to work in perfect

partnership with SAP solutions.

Smoother Transitions SUSE products include features that speed and simplify

the move to Linux from other operating systems. For

instance, SUSE solutions integrate with Active Directory,

so Microsoft-based teams can log in using Windows

credentials. SUSE also offers no-charge Linux training, so

you can increase your staff’s skills and certifications and

support your business while limiting new hires.

Increased Agility and ProductivitySUSE can help you smoothly transition to next-generation

S/4HANA environments—whether you choose to deploy it

on-premises or in a public cloud. Your choice is unlimited,

because SUSE is working with all major public cloud

providers to guarantee the same reliable functionality in

your data center or in the cloud.

SUSE can also help you deploy and run your SAP solutions

with greater agility. Automation features get SAP systems

up and running in hours instead of days.

Improved Reliability of SAP ServicesSUSE has solutions designed to help you reduce the impact

of system outages—a live kernel patching solution can even

help you eliminate some types of downtime altogether.

High availability and disaster recovery features also ensure

that your SAP applications are accessible whenever you

need them. And as security threats evolve, you can protect

your SAP solutions with security features from SUSE, such

as remote disk encryption and a firewall solution designed

specifically for the SAP HANA in-memory system.

With SAP solutions, your business can undergo a

digital transformation without all the complexity and

complications. SAP simplifies your infrastructure for real-

time operations, and SUSE solutions are built to perfectly

support that strategy. The year 2025 might seem far away

now, but changes are happening fast in business today. It’s

not too late to test and implement products and services to

aid your transformation, or begin a short pilot. Start now—

it’s easier than you think.

For more information please visitwww.suse.com/saponlinux

or talk to a sales rep at+1-800-796-3700.

The Time to Transition Is Now

The Linux OS market has been growing

steadily and rapidly over the past

decade, and IDC predicts that Linux

will continue to grow substantially

through 2019. Originally popular

because it was affordable or even

free, the OS has gained quality and

reliability and has shifted from running

infrastructure workloads to running

all workloads, including big data and

analytics such as SAP and SAP HANA.

Learn More

Contact your local SUSE solutions provider, or call SUSE at:1-800-796-3700 U.S./Canada

1-801-861-4500 worldwide

SUSE:

Maxfeldstrasse 5

90409 Nuremberg

Germany

000-000000-000

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