This is a blog where you can find the alternative views on the SAP HANA Solution(s) from the world's leading technology research companies such as Forrester, Gartner, and IDC. Some of the research material is either subscription based or pay-as-you go. At times, the research material is available for consumption through the SAP distribution license and you can access it for free. 

The objective is to equip you with different perspectives that you could incorporate into the context of research within your organizations to assess SAP HANA as a solution for DBMS, Business Intelligence, Predictive Analytics etc. You can also contact us to compile a consolidated report for your consumption. As a value add, we can supplement it with deep analysis and insights.

Forrester

Forrester's Report on SAP Bets Its Future On Hana And SaaS - Hana Will Bolster The Licensed Business, But SAP Needs A More Aggressive SaaS Strategy To Maintain Double-Digit Revenue Growth
By Andrew Bartels, Paul D. Hamerman, China Martens with Christopher Mines, William Band, Boris Evelson, Joanna Clark
October 4, 2013

Forrester's Webinar on SAP Bets Its Future On Hana And SaaS
By Andrew Bartels, Paul D. Hamerman
November 25, 2013

Forrester's Report on The Forrester Wave™: Big Data Predictive Analytics Solutions, Q1 2013
By Mike Gualtieri with Stephen Powers, Vivian Brown
February 4, 2013

Gartner

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems (DBMS) provides a global overview of the main vendors in the space and presents a graphical competitive positioning of these data warehouse DBMS vendors. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is used by organizations looking at implementing or optimizing DBMS Data Warehouse Solutions.

Read the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse DBMS

Read the SAP press release 

IDC

IDC White Paper on Blending Transactions and Analytics into a Single In-Memory Platform: Key To The Real-Time Enterprise
By Carl W. Olofson and Henry D. Morris
February 2013

IDC White Paper on Help Rethinking the Art of the Possible with SAP HANA Services 
By Gard Little and Elaina Stergiades
March 2012

SAP HANA: Next Generation Database + In-Memory Computing + Predictive Analytics

SAP HANA (High Performance ANalytic Appliance) is a next generation database offered by SAP AG (NASDAQ: SAP) that combines database, data processing, and application platform capabilities in-memory. The platform provides libraries for predictive, planning, text processing, spatial, and business analytics.This new architecture enables converged OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) data processing within a single in-memory column-based data store with ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliance, while eliminating data redundancy and latency. By providing advanced capabilities, such as predictive text analytics, spatial processing, data virtualization, on the same architecture, it further simplifies application development and processing across big data sources and structures. This makes SAP HANA the most suitable platform for building and deploying next-generation, real-time applications and analytics.

Can HANA be in the Cloud?

Yes! Apart from the On-Premise SAP HANA delivered on an hardware appliance from Certified hardware partners (IBM, HP, Dell, Cisco, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Lenovo), SAP HANA  is available in the cloud as SAP HANA One via AWS, SAP HANA Infrastructure Subscription via AWS and SAP, and SAP HANA Cloud Platform (PaaS), and SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud via SAP to help customers, independent software vendors (ISVs), and partners rapidly create innovative software applications to succeed in a world increasingly characterized by mobility, social and collaborative networks. 

Dr. Vishal Sikka, Head of Technology and Innovation, Member of the Executive Board, SAP
comments on the official HANA launch. Vishal explains the importance of this new technology and how this breakthrough innovation will change the world of IT.

Source: SAP

HANA Transactional Performance & Scale
(Scenario, 1 single machine, 40 core)
Insert: 770K Records/sec   |   Bulk: 1GB/min   |   Data Services: 2.5TB/hr

HANA Analytical Performance & Scale
(Scenario: 16 Node System)
100 TB Benchmark   |   100B SD Records   |   16 Node IBM X5   |   20x Compression
BW: 300-500 ms   |   Adhoc: 800 ms-2s   |   No Tuning, No Indices, No Caching, No Materialized Views

Source: SAP Keynote - Dr. Vishal Sikka: SAP HANA

Overview of SAP HANA

Real-time Analytics

Operational Analytics
With transactional and analytical data stored together, SAP HANA provides on-the-fly analysis for all combinations of data. Make immediate decisions using real-time operational analytics whether the data comes from your SAP® applications, third-party solutions, or custom applications.

Big Data Warehousing
SAP HANA unleashes the potential of Big Data with its ability to handle large volumes and a variety of structured and unstructured data in real-time. Build a data warehouse integrated with Hadoop or easily migrate your existing SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) to SAP HANA and make decisions within the window of opportunity.

Predictive, Spatial and Text Analytics
SAP HANA provides a powerful suite of predictive, spatial, and text analytics librairies that can run across multiple data sources. Visualize new opportunities and gain deep insights with unified analysis of all of data types.

Real-time Applications

Consumer Engagement
The consumerization of IT is transforming customer interaction to real-time personalized engaging experiences. Deliver innovative new applications with precision targeting and real-time consumer insights.

Sense and Respond
Managing business in connected world requires real-time adjustment to millions of live signals from the devices and machines. Enable preventive and efficient business practices by detecting, analyzing and adjusting to exploding machine data from Internet of Things.

Planning and Optimization
Rapidly changing business environment requires real-time planning and optimization. Enable real-time prescriptive analytics by reducing layers of processing and accelerating complex computations required for scheduling and simulations.

Real-time Platform

Database & Data Processing Services
SAP HANA is a fully ACID compliant, In-memory, columnar, massively parallel processing platform that provides common database for online transactional processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP), eliminating redudancy and latency. It also unifies end-to-end data processing with search, text, geospatial and predictive analytics ontop of the in-memory columnar fundation, further extending the benefit of redundnacy and latency elimination to all data processing workloads.

Application Platform Services
The application platform services contained within SAP HANA, simplifies the development of real-time applications with scalable web server, business rules and user interface library. You can renew existing applications with simple migration or build new smart applications using unified modeling and development environment.

Integration and Data Virtualization Services
Integration and data virtualization services provide high-volume data replication, event stream processing and smart data access from variety of sources. Enable real-time applications with high speed data provisioning for faster response and interactivity.

Mission-critical Deployment Services (Appliance, Cloud)
SAP HANA is deployable as managed services in the cloud or as an optimized on-premise appliance with tailored data center integration. Quickly and cost-effectively leverage the proven, superior performance of real-time business platform.

Intel|SAP's White paper on Analyzing Business as It Happens: SAP In-Memory Appliance Software (SAP HANA®) runs on the Intel® Xeon® processor to generate superior, real-time business intelligence
April 2011

IBM|SAP's White Paper on Prepare for the Quantum Leap in Real-Time Analytics. How in memory analytics is going to change everything about your enterprise
By Don Mettica, Business Analytics Global Partner lead for SAP, IBM Global Business Services
Steve Lucas, Senior Vice President, Business User Sales, SAP North America
June 2011

SAP Keynote – Hasso Plattner: The Relevance of SAP HANA: The Vision Is Here 

Watch Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner, SAP Founder and Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board highlight how SAP HANA is on the path to becoming the unified foundation for all types of enterprise workloads – online analytical and transaction processing (OLAP/OLTP) and text. 

SAP Keynote - Dr. Vishal Sikka: SAP HANA

Watch , Dr. Vishal Sikka, Head of Technology and Innovation, Member of the Executive Board, discuss how SAP HANA is simplifying customer experiences and delivering enterprise scale. He highlights how SAP HANA inspires developers to rethink and renew applications, enabling new frontiers, experiences, and business value.

SAP HANA Use Case in the Professional Services Sector

Deloitte present “live” SAP HANA appliance software use cases, including the unification of multiple disparate data sources into a single data model (accelerating all types of data – SAP and non-SAP – from internal and external data sources) and streamlining the expense report audit process by leveraging full-text search capabilities.

How is SAP HANA priced?

SAP HANA is priced using 2 pricing variables: the volume of data loaded and ‘stored’ in SAP HANA and the number of users who interact with SAP HANA. In addition, SAP HANA is available in 3 ‘Editions’ to provide options and choice to customers based on their specific needs and preferences. 

A few key differences from other DBMS Vendors':

• HANA pricing is inclusive of everything you need - No additional charges for the Database licenses & Storage as well as Grid licensing, Partitioning, OLAP, Diagnostics & Tuning Pack, Grid Control, etc.
• SAP does'nt charges for Non-Productive environments given that SAP landscapes have anywhere from three to nine instances between development, QA, production, etc.. Pre-requisite: Customers can deploy any number of non-productive instances (Test, Dev, QA, Prod copy etc.) as long as the number of units (cores, users, CPU, GB of memory) deployed per  non-productive instance is equal or lower to the number of units licensed on the production system. 

For more details on pricing, please consult you SAP Sales Representative.

What does it mean for the market? 

Focus on the companies that will embrace and adopt the in-memory computing and predictive analytics software such as SAP HANA as it will optimize their business functions of Corporate Strategy and Sustainability, Customer Service, Finance and Controlling, Human Resources, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Marketing, Procurement, R & D and Engineering, Sales, and Supply Chain Management while enhancing their insights in real-time into the behaviors of the buyers of their products, services, and solutions and operational workflow processes to support them, increasing their productivity and enabling them to offer in real-time tailored products or services for a delightful customer experience. The adoption of Big Data and the ability to harness the information from it will result into new business architectures, operating models, and revenue streams for both the public and the private sectors.

What does it mean for you? 

I would love to hear from the blog readers as to what are the opportunities and challenges for the uptake of the Big Data Analytics Solutions such as SAP HANA in their industries, in general, and their enterprises, in particular.?

EXPERIENCE THE VALUE OF SAP NETWEAVER BW BY SAP HANA

There is a 30 day free trial version of BW on HANA available for customers. It is fully configured and even includes SAP BI. Since it is running in the cloud the system will be available after registration in just about 15-20 minutes.

About the Author

About SAP AG

SAP was founded in 1972 and is the world leader in enterprise applications in terms of software and software-related service revenue, and the world’s third-largest independent software manufacturer based on market capitalization. With more than 232,000 customers in over 180 countries, the SAP Group includes subsidiaries in every major country and employs more than 64,000 people. As of December 31, 2012, SAP AG controlled directly or indirectly 267 subsidiaries.

The legal corporate name is SAP AG and is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. Its management reporting breaks the business activities down into two divisions, On-Premise and Cloud, which are further divided into operating segments. The On-Premise division is comprised of two operating segments, On-Premise Products and On-Premise Services. The Cloud division is also comprised of two operating segments, Cloud Applications and Ariba. 

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