SUSE Helps Italian Catering Group CIR Food Cut Costs and Improve Competitiveness

ORLANDO, Fla., May 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SUSE® today announced that CIR Food, a leading Italian food catering group, is using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP® Applications and the SAP HANA® platform to improve its business forecasting and budget planning while lowering its overall IT costs.

Using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SAP HANA, CIR Food has reduced the time it takes to generate business analysis reports from 20 minutes to just seconds. The catering group, which provides services to over 33,000 companies across all industries in both public and private sectors, also has been able to manage large amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively, and generate cost savings of more than 70 percent.

"Investing in SAP HANA has been a tremendous boost to our operational insight," said Giorgio Spaggiari, IT systems director at CIR Food. "The platform allows us to collect historical data on our operations and analyze it quickly to gain a more objective view of our business performance."

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the recommended and supported OS for SAP HANA.

CIR Food's budgeting and forecast areas have been using SAP applications running on UNIX for several years. As CIR Food's customer base expanded and the company considered moving the more complex analysis of information coming from its 1,100 operating centers, CIR Food looked for a more flexible and easily expandable solution that could effectively support its core SAP applications.

"When we expanded our operations and our workload increased, we noticed a high degree of inflexibility within our existing operating system," Spaggiari said. "This prevented us from running proper analyses because the larger data volumes could not be processed as rapidly and reliably as we required."

Working with SUSE Business Partner BS Company, CIR Food chose to migrate its SAP solution-based landscape to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications.

"SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is easy to use, fast to deploy and offers integrated, top-quality support from both SUSE and SAP," said Spaggiari. "What sealed our decision was the fact that SUSE is the recommended OS for SAP HANA. We've centralized all our ERP and business intelligence applications on one single platform -- SUSE Linux Enterprise."

The enhanced analytical capabilities have enabled CIR Food to adjust its business planning on the fly. For example, the company recently noticed that in the month of February there was a significant peak in absent children from schools in Milan due to illness, winter holidays and Carnival-related events.

"Being aware of this enables us now to adjust our resources and operations at that specific time of the year and for that specific customer in order to keep them satisfied without losing time and resources," Spaggiari said.

"World-class operators such as CIR Food need to leverage data to the fullest extent to remain competitive, and they need high-powered platforms to support these programs," said Naji Almahmoud, senior director of the SAP Global Alliance at SUSE. "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server integrates seamlessly with SAP platforms, allowing customers to realize the full value of their implementations."

For more information about CIR Food or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, please visit SUSE in booth 2125 at the SAPPHIRE® NOW conference, being held May 14-16 in Orlando.

About SUSE

SUSE®, a pioneer in open source software, provides reliable, interoperable Linux and cloud infrastructure solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility. More than 20 years of engineering excellence, exceptional service and an unrivaled partner ecosystem power the products and support that help our customers manage complexity, reduce cost, and confidently deliver mission-critical services. The lasting relationships we build allow us to adapt and deliver the smarter innovation they need to succeed—today and tomorrow. For more information, visit us at www.suse.com.      

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