Do you want to cut your response time for mission-critical SAP applications by around 40 percent like dm-drogerie markt did?

To innovate faster than its rivals, dm-drogerie markt migrated its SAP environment to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications—a huge advantage, because SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is typically the first supported platform for new SAP offerings. For those who do not know them, dm-drogerie markt is Germany’s most-loved pharmaceutical retailer, offering a selection of approximately 12,500 products to meet its customers’ day-to-day needs.

To further improve the shopping experience, dm-drogerie markt wanted to ensure that customers can always purchase their desired products anywhere—in store and online. Taking its approach to inventory management to the next level, the company deployed the innovative SAP Customer Activity Repository application. This offering combines data from real-time inventory, on-shelf availability, customer purchasing habits and ERP systems to create unified demand forecasts. These forecasts enable dm-drogerie markt to work out precisely which products customers are likely to buy, purchase appropriate stock levels and offer them at the right locations. The new SAP application takes advantage of the cutting-edge SAP HANA database, which features in-memory data processing and a columnar structure, making it easy to report on massive quantities of data at lightning speed. As business users across dm-drogerie markt become increasingly accustomed to the speed of SAP HANA, they are requesting more and more services on the platform, which gives them rapid insight to support smart business decision-making.

Separately, dm-drogerie markt is consolidating its ERP systems for the entire network of high-street branches on the SAP ERP platform. By replacing existing home-grown solutions with standard applications, the company will be able to take advantage of pre-packaged functionality. This will enable the IT team to cut down on development work, release new functionality in days rather than weeks, and save money.

As a result of these new deployments, dm-drogerie markt’s SAP systems are becoming even more central to the business. As such, it became increasingly important for the company to be able to take advantage of new offerings from SAP as soon as they are released. Since SAP typically launches new solutions for Linux before making them available on other platforms, the company recognized that it would be much easier to stay one step ahead of competitors if it migrated the SAP applications to a Linux-based solution.

After evaluating offerings from a range of vendors, dm-drogerie markt decided to migrate its business-critical SAP ERP applications from the IBM z/OS and AIX operating systems to the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications platform. Replacing its existing IBM mainframe and Power Systems servers, the company deployed an x86 infrastructure based on VMware virtualization technology.

Moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has cut response times for the company’s mission-critical SAP applications by around 40 percent on average. In fact, some reports that used to take 3.5 hours now complete in under an hour—a remarkable improvement. In addition, the IT team can deploy SAP support packages around 30 percent faster than before.

dm-drogerie markt regards all of these improvements as clear proof that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications was the right choice for its business. The company is confident that the platform will continue to meet the needs of its evolving business for years to come.

Today, dm-drogerie markt relies on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to support its mission-critical SAP applications. These include SAP for Retail—a sophisticated ERP solution tailored to meet the needs of companies in this industry—and SAP E-Recruiting, which is part of the SAP Human Capital Management solution. In addition, dm-drogerie markt relies on the SAP Solution Manager tool, which acts as a central lifecycle management hub for SAP systems.