SAPinsider Issue 3 2020

among organizations that are creating value in the experience economy and seeing better financial results than their peers. These traits have been iden- tified by SAP as a means for businesses to get ahead, and include having the ability to: ■ Integrate disconnected data as a whole ■ Combine experience and operational data to advance business goals ■ Automate operations to uncover data insights ■ Remove silos by modernizing IT Creating the best and most unique experience for the customer and the employee by taking an inte- grative approach to data is evolving, requiring busi- nesses to shift their mindset in multiple ways. As a result, companies that are just beginning to invest in intelligent technologies are already behind those that are exploiting these technologies to embrace ini- tiatives around experience management. Totev says that SUSE’s solutions and services can help businesses prepare their IT infrastructures so they can support the intelligent technologies and level of data analysis needed to prevent them from falling behind. A leading wood-based materials manufacturer , for example, needed to modernize its business pro- cesses in order to capture new opportunities based on increased demand. After deploying SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applica- tions and SUSE Manager, the company experienced significant improvement in its analytics performance and insight into its operational data. With a modern- ized infrastructure, the company’s IT team can now take full advantage of its business data, which has allowed for data-driven decision making and growth opportunities. For those companies that have not migrated already, laying the foundation for SAP S/4HANA is one way they can — and should — prepare for the experience economy, according to Totev. For instance, Prague’s public transit company took the first step to laying this foundation by migrating its database to SAP HANA running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. The public transit company now experiences high availabil- ity, optimal performance, and easy management of several mission-critical SAP workloads. Taking a Holistic Approach to Modernizing Your Infrastructure To prepare for the experience economy, businesses need to modernize their entire IT infrastructure — not just the components related to their SAP S/4HANA migration, according to Totev. He says that the move to the cloud will be even more accelerated following the COVID-19 crisis — however, despite this pressure, customers may want to keep some sensitive data on premise for various reasons, such as keeping the information within geographic boundaries. “This means hybrid and multi-cloud environments will be necessary in several cases, and because the cloud/ hybrid challenge will not go away anytime soon (meaning that two or three separate environments will exist and need to be managed accordingly), cus- tomers will need to have a layer of IT infrastructure that makes the on-premise and cloud environments look alike,” he says. “During a migration project to SAP S/4HANA or SAP HANA is a great time to look at your overall IT infrastructure and modernize it.” What are you waiting for? Learn more a bout how running your SAP solutions on SUSE can support your digital transformation journey. “Adopting next-generation solutions, such as SAP S/4HANA and SAP HANA, is critical for businesses to prosper in this age of digital transformation.” — Ivo Totev, Chief Product and Marketing Officer, SUSE 29 SAPinsiderOnline.com