Success Story SAP Solutions Malayala Manorama Malayala Manorama depends on its SAP ERP applications to meet tight publishing deadlines—and with its existing database approaching end-of-support, the company targeted a future-ready data platform based on SAP HANA in-memory technology. To deliver optimal performance for this new database platform, Malayala Manorama deployed a robust server solution based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. Overview timeframes, they must meet rising ex - Based in the state of Kerala, India, Malayala pectation from readers, who want up- Manorama is a morning newspaper and to-the-minute breaking news online and online news site in the Malayalam lan- well-crafted articles accompanied by vi- guage. With a readership of more than 20 brant photography in print each day. In million people, it is the sixth most widely the increasingly crowded news sector, Malayala Manorama at a Glance: circulated newspaper in India. Malayala organisations must stand out from the Established in 1888, Malayala Manorama Manorama keeps readers up-to-date on crowd by delivering unique content fast. Company Limited publishes one of India’s most a wide range of topics including cur- widely circulated morning newspapers. rent affairs, sports, entertainment, life- With an increasingly discerning reader- style, travel and more. First established ship and in the face of growing com- Industry and Location in 1888 as a weekly newspaper, Malayala petition, Malayala Manorama Company Media & Entertainment, Kottayam, India Manorama is published by Malayala Limited must stay on its toes to protect Product and Services Manorama Company Limited. and extend its audience share. Behind the scenes, the organisation keeps complex SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications Challenge processes and numerous teams working For news organisations, tight dead - smoothly to ensure that it tempts readers Results lines are business-as-usual. Within short back time and time again. + Enables a 98 percent increase in end-user SAP application performance At the heart of Malayala Manorama’s + Offers high performance for compute-inten- operations is a suite of SAP business so- sive SAP HANA workloads “As SUSE Linux Enterprise lutions, which it relies on to keep its oper- + Avoids lock-in to proprietary hardware, helping to control costs Server for SAP Applications is ations running with maximum efficiency. so highly optimised, we were V V Jacob, General Manager, Systems at able to configure the new SAP Malayala Manorama Company Limited, environment in a fraction of the says: “Our readers look to us to keep them expected time.” in the loop on everything happening in India and across the world. For more than V V JACOB a decade, we have relied on SAP to run General Manager, Systems our business.” Malayala Manorama Company Limited Case Study Malayala Manorama SAP solutions underpin almost every as- Manorama. Specifically, the organisation Applications as a highly cost-effective so- pect of operations at Malayala Manorama. targeted a migration to the new platform lution. “In every IT project, cost is a cen- This includes, but is not limited to: book- with minimal disruption to operations. tral parameter,” adds V V Jacob. “We felt ing of advertising space in its papers, that the price-performance ratio offered management of its financials, and dis- “We have around 550 concurrent users by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP tribution of 2.5 million copies per day to who depend on the SAP solutions be- Applications was extremely favourable, reach millions of readers. “At every step, ing available whenever they need them giving us confidence that we had made our SAP applications help us to coordi- to do their jobs,” comments V V Jacob. the right choice.” nate our work in an integrated, efficient “We publish a new paper every day and way,” adds V V Jacob. update our website on a continual basis, SUCCEEDING IN A SEAMLESS MIGRATION so unplanned downtime is simply not an Working together with teams from SUSE CHOOSING A NEW PATH option. Our aim was to find the right tech- and HPE, Malayala Manorama deployed In the past, Malayala Manorama used SAP nology and partner to help us refresh our SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP ERP with industry solutions for media, IT infrastructure while maintaining excep- Applications on its new HPE platform, running on x86 servers. The company tional levels of service continuity.” virtualized with VMware vSphere. planned to migrate to the future-ready SAP HANA data platform, and recog- Solution SUSE teamed up with HPE to accurately nised the chance to multiply the benefits To support its new SAP HANA data size the solution for Malayala Manorama. by undertaking a transformation of its IT platform, Malayala Manorama selected By drawing on expertise from SUSE and environment on a wider scale. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) serv- HPE to plan the migration in detail and ers with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for execute it carefully, the organisation kept “We saw an opportunity to refresh our SAP Applications. impact on its operations to a minimum. IT infrastructure—from the physical serv- ers in our data centre all the way through “We felt that SUSE Linux Enterprise was a “We completed our migration to SAP the software stack,” says V V Jacob. “To safe choice of platform,” says V V Jacob. HANA with no unplanned downtime for maximise the value of our investment in “The close technical collaboration be- our business users, which was one of the SAP HANA, we knew that we would need tween SUSE and SAP developers assured key goals for the project,” comments V V high-performance compute resources us that the solution would meet our needs Jacob. “As far as our users were concerned, and a robust server platform. We set out for SAP HANA not just now, but in the they could carry on focusing on bringing to find a new solution by investigating the long term too.” the latest news to readers, while we up- options available in the market.” dated technology behind the scenes.” As well as delivering the levels of perfor- As a business that operates round-the- mance and scalability Malayala Manorama The Malayala Manorama IT team already clock, achieving a smooth implemen- was targeting, the organisation also rated had experience with Linux in other areas tation was a key objective for Malayala the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP of the organisation’s estate, helping them 2 to adapt to the technology very quickly. memory, the solution minimises recovery to the business. Our employees can build “There was practically no learning curve time objective (RTO). SUSE offers a cluster- on this to bring content to readers more with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for ing solution that facilitates seamless failover quickly and effectively, allowing our audi- SAP Applications for our employees, between the two SAP HANA instances. ence to trust that we will always be the which proved an unexpected benefit of place to go for the latest news.” the project.” With cost-optimised HA, users can lever- age the secondary SAP HANA instance In the unlikely event that Malayala Malayala Manorama took advantage of for additional workloads (such as quality Manorama encounters issues with its built-in features to rapidly customise the assurance or development). This enables SUSE solutions, it can call on support platform to its specific requirements, en- them to use business-critical SAP systems from SUSE to enable a fast resolution. abling it to get up to speed fast and start and SAP HANA databases without inter- using the solution to its full potential. ruption and without the overhead of com- “One of the things that impresses us most pute, storage and networking resources is the quality of SUSE support, particularly “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP that are only used occasionally for failover. for our VMware solutions,” explains V V Applications is so highly optimised, we “It is always an advantage to have options,” Jacob. “It gives us great peace of mind to were able to configure the new SAP en- comments V V Jacob. “We may look at know that we have high-quality support re- vironment in a fraction of the expected SAP HANA System Replication and cost- sources on hand whenever we need them.” time,” remarks V V Jacob. “The SUSE solu- optimised HA and what it could do for our tion is designed to automate a lot of tasks. environment in the future.” KEEPING A FINGER ON THE PULSE As a result, we could get back to concen- With SAP HANA, Malayala Manorama is trating on our core focus—enabling the Results driving up performance for its SAP us- business to greater heights—sooner.” Today, more than 550 concurrent busi- ers. The organisation is seeing compute- ness users across Malayala Manorama are intensive tasks completed faster, giving EXPLORING NEW FUNCTIONALITY harnessing the SAP HANA data platform employees the tools that they need for At present, Malayala Manorama replicates to drive their work. With an IT infrastruc- greater productivity. data at the storage level to enable high ture it can depend on, the organisation availability. With SUSE Linux Enterprise can reliably bring timely information to “Reports that used to take three days Server for SAP Applications, the organ- readers in Kerala and further afield, both to run now complete in just 45 minutes, isation has the option of utilising the cost- in print and online, helping to protect its which is a huge improvement that trans- optimised high availability (HA) feature to competitive position. lates into a significant positive impact on slash recovery times. the business,” says V V Jacob. “The con- “We simply can’t afford downtime in our sistently high performance of SAP HANA The SAP HANA System Replication func- SAP environment, comments V V Jacob.