Key Takeaways
What you need to know
Organizations running SAP on proprietary hypervisors can eliminate the "vTax" entirely by switching to SUSE KVM, which is already embedded at zero cost within the SLES for SAP Applications subscription.
SUSE KVM is SAP-certified to support HANA instances up to 8 TiB of RAM on Intel x86-64 hardware with near-bare-metal performance overhead of only 5–10%, making it a technically proven alternative for mission-critical workloads.
A managed service provider facing a $20 million contract renewal saved 90% and eliminated millions in licensing liabilities by migrating hundreds of SAP customers to SUSE KVM.
The Era of “Business as Usual” is Over
The shifting landscape of virtualization has introduced a significant “vTax,” leaving SAP customers with escalating costs and unpredictable renewal cycles. Organizations now face a choice: stay with proprietary complexity or shift to SUSE KVM – a zero-cost, enterprise-grade foundation embedded directly within the SLES for SAP applications subscription.