How to boost operational efficiency across all your SAP landscapes

Avoiding downtime can sometimes feel like a never-ending struggle, as IT teams grapple with planned or unplanned outages. But what if you could identify potential problems automatically — and solve them before they impact your SAP services? In a single move, you could improve availability and operational efficiency dramatically.

What’s the cost of downtime for your organization?  Gartner estimates $5,600 per minute for business-critical systems, as we explored in our recent white paper, Five Days to Value.

But this is an average. The price paid can be far higher in some sectors.

If your e-commerce website goes down, your reputation and future revenue can nosedive, as customers lose trust and shift to competitors. In manufacturing and logistics, downtime can cause disruption and frustration across highly-optimized supply chains. For healthcare providers, access is may be lost to vital patient details at key moments — or critical supplies run short because inventory or forecasting systems are unavailable. The list goes on.

There’s a strategic price to pay too. Fixing issues inevitably distracts IT teams away from essential projects at the heart of digital transformation. Downtime blunts your competitive edge.

So what’s the answer?

In a recent blog, we looked at how conquering downtime is a battle on two fronts — planned and unplanned. As we discussed, live Linux kernel patching from SUSE can be a game-changer.

But here’s another idea: What if you could identify potential problems before planned or unplanned downtime is required to fix critical errors? And what if many patching, configuration, and maintenance tasks could be automated?

Delivering a business advantage
A growing number of IT teams have found a way to maximize SAP services availability, enhance operational efficiency, and protect business revenue.

SUSE Manager lets them manage Linux systems across a variety of hardware architectures, hypervisors as well as container, IoT, and cloud platforms — all with a single tool. They gain precise control over their environments, whether they’re used for development, test, or production.

But SUSE Manager goes further. It enables faster, consistent, and repeatable server deployment which helps to optimize operations and reduce costs. It also automates Linux server and IoT device provisioning, patching, and configuration. 

The result? IT teams can keep their hands free for projects that deliver genuine business advantage.

Freeing up resources
SUSE Manager is transforming operational efficiency. Just take Bosch Group as an example.

The company has 1,000 SAP systems and is doing impressive work around IoT solutions for smart homes, cities, connected mobility, and Industry 4.0. With SUSE Manager, its team has reduced the time spent on routine administration tasks substantially despite doubling the number of instances to 200. This has freed up IT resources to create additional value, instead of just keeping operations running.

SUSE Manager is also helping the multi-billion-dollar EGGER Group, one of the world’s leading wood-based materials manufacturers. With this tool and other SUSE technology, the company has increased administration efficiency across 250 virtual servers with automated patching and faster maintenance, while achieving 100% uptime and ultra-smooth business operations.

SAP hosting services specialist itelligence has a similar story. It has reduced the cost of managing multiple Linux versions across 1,100 virtual machines — and enabled 99.999% availability for clients with high uptime requirements.

“Before SUSE Manager, patch management was a major pain,” says Peter Drengsgaard, the company’s System Administrator. “We depended on two team members with really deep Linux skills to keep our VMs patched correctly. Today, any of our support staff can easily review and apply patches and updates through SUSE Manager: it’s much quicker and there’s much less risk of errors.”

Want zero downtime?
Greater operational efficiency and near-continuous availability for SAP systems can be a reality. Take a look at Say Goodbye to Downtime. You’ll find answers, get insights, and can access resources on how to maintain essential operations and revenues.