G-Star RAW is an international denim brand that has been making waves in the fashion industry since its inception in 1989. G-Star is known for its signature raw denim, which is untreated and unwashed. The brand draws inspiration from vintage workwear apparel worldwide, which is reflected in its designs. Innovation and sustainability are at the core of the G-Star DNA and the brand is committed to lead by example and develop sustainable solutions for the future of fashion. The company has come a long way since its humble beginnings and now has more than 4,500 selling points in 55 countries worldwide. The brand’s flagship stores are in some of the world’s most luxurious shopping streets, including New York City, Paris and Amsterdam’s P.C. Hooftstraat.
At-a-Glance
In pursuit of an operating system robust enough to support its SAP S/4HANA business application, G-Star embraced the capabilities of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and SUSE Manager. The combined solution empowers the company to oversee its server infrastructure effortlessly, maintain a perpetually up-to-date Linux environment, automate intricate configuration tasks, and streamline system update processes. Furthermore, with SUSE Manager’s content lifecycle management features handling critical operations, G-Star’s IT teams can now focus on value-add business operations.
Why SUSE?
G-Star has been using SLES for more than five years, ever since it moved from its previous point-of-sale system to one running on SAP S/4HANA. The team wanted to use the available resources as efficiently as possible to provide sophisticated services while supporting traditional SAP databases and the SAP S/4HANA business application.
The company partners with SUSE, IBM and SAP, crucial strategic suppliers who provide cutting-edge technology to manage many aspects of its business. G-Star’s SAP applications run on SLES on POWER servers, with SUSE Manager streamlining systems management to ensure everything runs smoothly.
According to Marcel Huisman, UNIX administrator at G-Star, compatibility with SAP was one of the main drivers for choosing SLES: “We needed to see which operating system was the best for the SAP solution, so it was an easy choice to pick SUSE for that. It’s a stable product, and the research and development departments of SUSE and SAP are close together, so that was the best solution for us.”
G-Star’s SAP S/4 environment is running on IBM POWER using PowerVM as the hypervisor. The team is confident that SUSE and SAP are working closely together to ensure that it has the best operating system for its SAP solution, which is crucial for the company’s business processes.
The company relies heavily on SAP and SLES, with approximately 25 SLES systems for its retail department, mainly for pointof-sale. To manage its Linux systems, the IT team opted for SUSE Manager, the infrastructure management solution designed to simplify and secure entire mixed Linux environments. “We also have some other Linux systems, and it’s great that SUSE Manager also has the ability to update those,” comments Huisman.
“We needed to see which operating system was the best for the SAP solution, so for me it was an easy choice to pick SUSE for that. It’s a stable product, and the research and development departments of SUSE and SAP are close together, so that was the best solution for us.”
The impact: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Optimizes and improve agility
Moving to SAP S/4HANA on SLES atop IBM POWER10 servers has given G-Star the real-time insights it needs to make faster decisions to optimize its operational processes. With that, the team can reduce the time required to build, test and deploy new services and overall improve agility.
Boosts user satisfaction with consistent application performance
Having SLES as one of its operating systems enables G-Star to provide reliable services without a large team of system administrators. Moreover, the team does not need to worry about downtime and emergencies, which is crucial for maintaining its stores globally.
The impact: SUSE Manager
Simplifies management of diverse systems
With SUSE Manager, G-Star can easily see which servers need updates and which have missing security patches. The team is also excited about the fact that it can push updates out to all of its systems – patching is now simplified and more reliable compared to what it was before.
With SUSE Manager, content lifecycle management is seamlessly integrated, ensuring that no untested elements make their way into production environments. The solution guarantees that each package undergoes central authorization, providing an additional layer of protection. Moreover, the ability to schedule and execute multiple software updates with a single command streamlines the update process, making it more efficient and reliable.
“It’s very important to test patches before moving them into production. I never had an issue with a patch, but you never know. It’s a production system, so it’s inconvenient when it shuts down suddenly,” says Huisman. With SUSE Manager, the team can easily patch up to 30 servers in just 30 minutes.
Increases security with protection against common vulnerabilities and exposures
G-Star has focused on enhancing its mixedenvironment’s security for the past few years. The company relies on SUSE Manager to protect its SLES, CentOS and other Linux distros from common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). The tool enables the IT team to monitor security bulletins that could affect server performance, ensuring each one is updated and secure.
Enterprise support
G-Star has taken advantage of the enterprise support within its SUSE subscriptions to iron out occasional issues. The company is impressed with the level of customer support it receives from SUSE: “I think it’s very nice that if I report an incident or a question and put it on low priority, I still get a response the same day. From my point of view, SUSE is a young company, and SUSE Support is very fast at efficient solutions,” Huisman comments.
What’s next for G-Star RAW?
The IT team plans to migrate most of its servers to the cloud in 2023. After that, the plan is to migrate the sub-environment, currently running on IBM AIX, to SAP S/4HANA, which will run on SLES.
The team is also considering switching other Linux systems to SLES to make maintenance easier. “If I have the opportunity to move from one distribution to another, I will pick SLES to keep it all together and as lean as possible,” concludes Huisman.