Partnerships have become a critical part of the new enterprise landscape. Where once companies stood alone, even long-time competitors are now collaborating on projects and building cross-platform solutions.

Ahead in the cooperation game were technological giant IBM and the developer of SUSE Linux Enterprise, SUSE.

“The focus with SUSE almost from the beginning has been on co-innovation,” said Vicente Moranta (pictured), vice president of offering management, Enterprise Linux Workloads on Power, at IBM. “We’ve been able to accomplish really amazing things together with them and SAP; things that could not have been possible without that very strong collaboration.”

Moranta spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the SUSECON Digital event. They discussed how IBM’s collaboration with SUSE and SAP helps CIOs avoid having to make either/or decisions on cloud infrastructure. (* Disclosure below.)

Collaboration adds Power to the cloud

Back in the early days, customers deploying SAP HANA on X86 platforms had limited flexibility and were unable to adapt to changing environments. When IBM, SAP and SUSE joined forces in August 2015, they linked the three company’s technology into one solution: SUSE Linux for SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems. This partnership was elevated into the cloud in early 2020 with the announcement of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud on IBM Power Systems.

“The balance that a lot of these customers are looking for is flexibility and better returns … without trading out all of the things that they need for an S/4HANA project or an ERP or a BW project,” Moranta said.

One of the benefits of this most recent evolution is a shared processor pool that allows customers to share source in a virtual way across many HANA instances, regardless of location, according to Moranta. “So, completely revolutionizing the [dynamic creative optimization] and the ROI for clients working with HANA without trading out any of the resiliency, any of the performance,” he said.

The collaboration is a win-win solution for all involved — but especially for customers looking to simply the complexity of transitioning to cloud. “You can deploy [HANA] in the cloud; you can deploy it in hybrid; you can deploy it on premises,” Moranta said.

This gives chief information officers a break when it comes to infrastructure decisions. The largest benefit, according to Moranta is that “the CIO doesn’t have to make a choice on trade out. … We’re trying to make it simpler for them to make those choices without infrastructure becoming the sticky point,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the SUSECON Digital event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SUSECON Digital. Neither SUSE, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE