Advertorial: Accelerated, Secure Cloud Migrations

Companies are increasingly often turning to cloud technologies and applications to drive business growth while achieving sustainable efficiency and agility benefits. The cloud migration momentum is growing steadily, especially in the SAP community, not least due to cloud initiatives from SAP, such as “RISE with SAP”.

Be it in the context of public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud deployment: Technology isn’t everything when it comes to using cloud services, but without proven cloud technologies, everything is nothing, one could say. That is why it is by no means sufficient, for example, in the case of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) servers for the use of SAP workloads, to simply conclude a subscription contract with a hyperscaler. Rather, various technological complexities or problem-solving issues must be evaluated and tackled. This is the only way to implement a cloud deployment that functions as optimally and securely as possible and meets the individual requirements and expectations of a mission-critical IT deployment.

For some time now, it has been very popular in the SAP community to obtain the aforementioned SAP workloads or HANA server services from a hyperscaler in the form of IaaS. Or, to put it another way, SAP on-premises services are being moved to a public cloud or the operation of entire systems is being migrated there. On the one hand, there are SAP S/4 HANA DEV, TEST or QA systems; on the other hand, there have long been complete S/4 system landscapes, including PROD systems, which perform their services at the various public cloud service providers.

On Azure, Google and AWS

In order for SAP customers to be able to use IaaS cloud services (and possibly others such as PaaS or SaaS) in conjunction with mission-critical SAP enterprise applications quickly, securely and on demand after choosing their hyperscaler, the long-standing and close SAP partner SUSE already set the course years ago together with SAP and the “SAP HANA hyperscalers”.

For example, the SLES for SAP Applications operating system platform from SUSE, which is preferred and recommended for S/4 HANA operation, is available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud as well as on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon’s cloud AWS, with the same technologies as well as extensive functionality and designed for the special needs of SAP deployment as in the on-premises environment. In addition, SLES for SAP Applications includes advantageous dedicated features for the respective public cloud environments Azure, GCP and AWS.  

As in the SAP on-premises environment, SLES for SAP Applications provides customers with several value propositions when deployed in the cloud: One is SUSE’s sustained commitment to a deep, 20-year long understanding of the dedicated needs and concerns of SAP applications such as S/4 HANA to an underlying mission-critical infrastructure, reflected in numerous joint distinctive developments with SAP and in in-house developments and the use of innovative open source technologies. For example, in the SAP HANA High Availability environment with the SLES for SAP High Availability Extension or in the context of SAP IT operations management with various cloud readiness elements.

In the public cloud environment, SUSE ensures that defined infrastructures are reliably executed and implemented by IaaS providers as specified. Furthermore, SUSE takes care of the storage of setups, for example, so that they can be reused at practically any time – even after subsequent adjustments. Various efforts that would otherwise be incurred in provisioning and deployment in connection with cloud use are thus significantly reduced. Or, on the subject of configuration: With Suse and integrated open source solutions, entire software packages can be installed, configured, and deployed automatically.

Add value with cloud

The Walldorf-based software group itself uses SLES for SAP Applications from SUSE, for example in the HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC). SUSE was involved in designing the architecture of the HEC, which also forms the foundation for “RISE with SAP”. Moreover, SUSE Enterprise Linux Server for SAP Applications is the market-leading operating system platform in the SAP environment (SAP Classic with AnyDBs and S/4 HANA as well as HANA-based SAP solutions). Moreover, SAP users can rely on high investment security and further or new developments as well as innovation capability at a high level.

In the context of cloud-for-SAP deployment, SUSE offers SAP customers valuable support, with the best-in-class operating system platform SLES for SAP Applications, but moreover with a kind of blueprint including software deployment for accelerated migration of “SAP S/4 HANA in the public cloud” and best practices procedures.

The step-by-step blueprint specifically describes the technology deployment as well as the necessary cloud operations management. It covers several important cloud operations topics: Provisioning, Deployment, Operate, Optimize and Transform as well as Monitoring and Reporting. On the solution side, SLES for SAP Applications (including integrated open source software and other standard components from Microsoft or SAP, for example) and SUSE Manager (for enterprise management) are used.

Here, too, the many years of cooperation with SAP have been leveraged, as well as the necessary requirements for the use of SAP infrastructures in cloud computing. Consequently, SUSE provides SAP users with solutions and technologies that simplify their chosen SAP cloud concepts and underpin them reliably, efficiently, and cost-effectively – along with a high degree of automation and profitable benefits.