Recently I was interested in getting some info about SAP supporting Linux. On the official SAP Community network site is a list of answers to general FAQ on this matter.
Here are some reasons, why I don’t believe SAP would be able to support this OS:
- Distribution problem – Linux is not one single specified system – it’s a bunch of solutions and every member of this community can choose what best fits his/her needs. Of course there are still some easily identified products like Novell Desktop, Mandriva Professional 2010 or Ubuntu Media Center.
- A matter of trustworthy – SAP users are usually big companies, that like to communicate with other strong companies. They do not want to see a bunch of users all around the world behind their laptops, who are actually behind.
- Service and support problem – in connection what I wrote before – there is NO official support. Thus all support for Linux has to be made by SAP itself. That takes resources. No SAP customer would browse through dozens of discussion boards to find solution – sorry.
- Hardware certification – there is no hardware certification authority behind Linux. How would you like to assure customer using Linux, that his printing machine is going to work correctly. Well, you wouldn’t!
- No documentation – There is no coherent documentation about Linux. At least none that I know of. Microsoft has its MSDN, Linux unfortunately doesn’t. And if it had, it certainly wouldn’t be complete, unified and guaranteed.
What do I imply? That SAP can support Linux only for database and application servers. Front-End support is made only by supporting Java environment (SAPGUI for the Java Environment). So it is pretty much the same support like for other OSs – MacOS, OS/2, Win32, AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, Tru64 and others.
But the question is – can you still call this a real system support? In my opinion you can’t.
