Overview
The Challenge
Mohamed Mostafa Ashour, IT Manager at Roshdy Pharmacies, said: “We opened our first pharmacy in 2008, and have already grown to 105 stores—and we’re not looking to slow down any time soon.
“We were using a local business administration system running on Microsoft Windows, but the technology was limited in its performance and scalability. As we grew, these limitations became more obvious. The servers kept going down, risking disruption to our business and to the customer experience.
“We work 24/7 here, so 100% uptime is vital. We decided we needed a new business system running on Linux, which could deliver the stability, flexibility and efficiency we needed to support the further expansion.”
SUSE Solution
“We were attracted by the stability of the SAP solution, and were confident it could support our business processes effectively moving forward,” said Mohamed Mostafa Ashour. “We looked at both SUSE and Red Hat distributions of Linux, and felt that the SUSE offering was more agile and easier to manage, while offering us excellent security, usability and functionality.
“The YaST installation tool was very intuitive, and we made full use of its powerful configuration abilities. We were particularly impressed by the GUI, which was very approachable and easy-to-use, and by SUSE’s in-memory system security hardening. It was also a very economical choice for us, and we built a good relationship with the SUSE team.”
In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has a first-rate reputation as the leading Linux distribution for enterprise organizations running SAP. It is performance optimized and configured to provide the best possible support for SAP applications, and is regularly updated with new optimizations as SAP releases new versions of its software.
Roshdy Pharmacies is running its SAP environment on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) hardware, utilizing VMware virtualization; HPE assisted with the deployment of the new SUSE and SAP technologies.
“It was a challenge to transfer data from our old system, but overall the implementation process was very smooth—we were up and running on the new platform within two months,” said Mohamed Mostafa Ashour.
The Results
“The SUSE platform is very easy to configure and manage, enabling the IT team to concentrate on further innovation rather than maintenance,” said Mohamed Mostafa Ashour. “SUSE’s architecture also makes things easier—we especially like the fact that we can patch the kernel without rebooting.”
The SUSE solution has been an operational success. “It has delivered 100% uptime so far,” said Mohamed Mostafa Ashour. “This has helped reduce the risk of disruption to customers, enabling our business to operate around the clock, and providing a stable foundation for future business growth.
“The cost-effectiveness of the SUSE solution is also a major benefit. The simplified, automated nature of SAP HANA and S/4HANA mean they can easily scale up as the business expands.”
As a player in the healthcare sector, security is a key concern for Roshdy Pharmacies.
“We handle confidential personal and financial data about our customers, so the security offered by the new technology is a huge benefit to our business,” said Mohamed Mostafa Ashour. “Gaining the trust of customers is critical to our success, and the high security provided by the SUSE solution helps us earn that trust.
“Supported by this stable, secure, high performance architecture from SUSE, we’re now on the right track for further expansion, so we can serve even more customers across Egypt.”