Simplifying IT is not impossible – but it's quickly becoming imperative

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

—Hans Hofmann

Allowing the necessary to speak. One version of the truth. The real-time enterprise. However we think of it, the goals of the modern enterprise require a simple, efficient IT infrastructure. As a result, reducing complexity may be the mantra chanted by your IT department, but achieving it can seem impossible. With scores of operating systems, server hardware configurations, databases, and software tools (often siloed throughout the enterprise), infrastructure administration becomes a quagmire that IT professionals must wade through every day.

A simplified IT landscape allows your organization to respond faster to customers and changes in your industry, while unleashing the productivity and creativity of your employees. Simplification also allows your IT department to proactively focus on innovation—rather than just managing a complex, legacy infrastructure.

Red Hat and SAP – Simplicity at Its Best

Our collaboration with SAP is all about simplifying and reducing your IT costs while delivering improved performance. As the SAP HANA platform gained momentum in the market, we saw a business intelligence solution that provided compelling performance gains while reducing data management overhead and speeding application development and delivery. Certifying Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA has now allowed our customers to get the best of both worlds.

Together, Red Hat and SAP offer a clear path to simplified and streamlined IT. Standardizing operating environments on Red Hat Enterprise Linux can drive efficiency, lower operational costs, and provide much-needed agility to your IT environment. SAP HANA’s powerful data management and streamlined architecture allows your organization to manage the big-data needs of today with an eye on tomorrow and provide real-time insight to decision makers.

Less Data Complexity and More Game-Changing Performance

Complex, disk-bound legacy data management systems are expensive to maintain, and they struggle to handle the kind of data volumes that modern enterprises deal with today. SAP HANA converges application, data, and integration services while eliminating the need for administrative tasks such as data preparation, pre-aggregation, and performance tuning. With fewer systems and a simple yet powerful environment, SAP HANA reduces costs across the entire IT landscape.

Forrester Research, among others, took notice: “...SAP HANA changes the cost equation through simplification. It can help save costs on hardware and software, as well as reduce labor required for administration needs. The SAP HANA platform can save an organization 37% across hardware, software, and labor costs [over four years].” (1)

Combining these cost savings with real-time, in-memory performance changes the data analytics game, helping enterprises find the proverbial needle of insight in the big-data haystack. SAP HANA is unique in its ability to process transactional and analytical workloads together in-memory, eliminating the need to load and process transaction data from enterprise systems into both reporting and analytics solutions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA delivers strong reliability, scalability, and security both on-premises and across the open hybrid cloud. The solution supports even the most demanding SAP HANA workloads, offering:

• Performance tuning for SAP HANA workload profiles to provide optimized performance for both transactional and analytic workloads.

• A highly scalable file system (XFS) that accommodates large volumes of data that today’s enterprises collect for analysis.

• Collaborative Red Hat and SAP support through a single point of contact for support issues, from the database to the operating environment to SAP applications.

Greater Agility and Lower TCO Through Standardization

It should come as no surprise that reducing the complexity and overhead that comes with dozens to hundreds of different software stacks can simplify IT operations and reduce costs. Ideally, standardizing your operating environment would include a defined set of components, interfaces, and processes used throughout your entire IT infrastructure. Not all systems have to be the same, but you do want to ensure that all systems have a defined, known foundation that applications and tools are built on.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is just such a foundation. More than 9,000 applications from 1,400+ vendors have been certified for use on the world's leading enterprise Linux platform. What does this mean to you? Simplified management, reduced downtime, greater agility, and higher productivity.

Beyond the robust ecosystem, some of the other benefits of standardizing on Red Hat include:

• Lower TCO—Organizations that base their operations on Red Hat Enterprise Linux have experienced up to a 50 percent higher server-to-administrator ratio than those in mixed Linux environments, reducing staff costs by up to 49 percent—these organizations also experience up to 80 percent less time on server downtime issues. (2)

• Failure tolerance—Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform's distributed architecture can tolerate failures and deliver high levels of service compared to software running on a UNIX server.

• Smooth transition from UNIX—Many of the tools used to manage UNIX are similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a non-disruptive transition.

• Automation through Red Hat Satellite—Red Hat Satellite provides highly efficient deployment, streamlining repetitive tasks and management processes, such as system provisioning, patch rollout, and application deployment.

Simplified, Streamlined and Ready to Drive Business Forward

Red Hat and SAP have been working together for more than a decade toward a shared vision: superior performance and seamless management; Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA is a great example of this collaboration. The solution provides a next-generation data management platform designed to transform your enterprise into an agile, adaptable business—ready to meet the demands of your customers and industry.

(Footnote 1: Projected Cost Analysis of the SAP HANA Platform, Forrester Research, April 2014)

(Footnote 2: Understanding Linux Deployment Strategies: The Business Case for Standardizing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, IDC, April 2011)