Open source solutions provider Red Hat has announced the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions, an enterprise Linux platform optimised for running SAP software deployments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions aims to provide a smoother path for organisations seeking to integrate or merge their heterogeneous SAP software environments, offering a single, standardised platform for big data analysis and management projects.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions offers an additional open choice for enterprises seeking to deploy SAP technologies via a single offering.

According to SAP, the solution will make it easier for IT organisations to pursue data center standardisation without sacrificing their varied big data initiatives.

Jim Totton, Red Hat vice president and general manager for the platforms business unit says, “There is no single technology stack to solve every enterprise IT challenge, and big data analytics is no different.

Increasingly, we are seeing IT organisations use multiple SAP solutions to tackle the complex challenges of their evolving markets,” he says.

"With Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions, we're now able to provide a single, supported, open platform upon which enterprises can standardise their SAP deployments, all backed by Red Hat's vast expertise in delivering enterprise-grade operating systems.

The solution marks a continuation of Red Hat's existing relationship with SAP and brings forth new capabilities to get the most out SAP's analytics and data management portfolio.

This includes the addition of Red Hat Insights, Red Hat's proactive analytics and real-time intelligence offering, which is designed to help users better understand, assess and optimise their SAP software landscape.

Red Hat says the solution combines Red Hat's existing operating system offerings focused on SAP software, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Applications and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA, into a single, consolidated platform.

In addition to the features and support of the existing offerings, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions includes:

• The High Availability Add-On which addresses the need for reliability of critical SAP applications.

• The Smart Management Add-On for managing and updating large deployments of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions.

• Update Services for SAP Solutions, a four-year Extended Update Support (EUS) service which provides backports of Critical-impact security updates and urgent-priority bug fixes for minor releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions.

• Red Hat Insights to help IT organisations proactively detect problems with their SAP software deployments and to optimise the operating environment to support their business transactions and big data initiatives.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions is available now via the Red Hat customer portal.