Here Comes HANA: SAP In-Memory Processing in Action

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SAP’s “HANA” (High-performance ANalytic Appliance) was a big hit at last week’s TechEd in Las Vegas. Here’s a video that shows in-memory processing in action, with real-time simulation and taking action on the results.

Comments

9 responses to “Here Comes HANA: SAP In-Memory Processing in Action”

  1. Oliver Mainka Avatar
    Oliver Mainka

    @ Rene (sorry, can’t figure out the accent on the e)

    Yes, HANA 1.0 is a data mart.

    With HANA 1.5 customers can use it as the sole data persistence under BW (while customers can still continue to also use on-disk databases and maybe use BWA with that … BWA just got a new release which goes into ramp-up in November). This is also when we see first new application emerge, which are freed of the shackles of a traditional 3-tier client/server architetcure.

    HANA 2.0 is our longer-term vision for replacing on-disk databases with in-memory technology.

    I am not sure that I understand your last question

    regards, Oliver

  2. René Marquenie Avatar
    René Marquenie

    @Oliver Mainka

    Regarding your statement that HANA is a “data mart”, are you talking about HANA 1.0?
    Because when i look at the presentations regarding HANA and the planned evolution (1.0 1.5 2.0) we’ll see a “replacement” of first the BW database and secondly also the ECC database.

    Or is it possible to replace the database in those “versions” but only for specific customer of interest?

    Regards,

    René

  3. Pierre Leroux Avatar

    @OM; I am part of the SAP BI team and I am told that for HANA 1.0 due in just a few months, the supported BI tools will be: SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (pretty obvious one!), SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (aka Xcelsius), and SAP BusninessObjects Analysis. Cheers.

  4. Oliver Mainka Avatar
    Oliver Mainka

    @JJ: HANA is a “data mart”, which means it allows to replicate data from SAP or other systems ino it, and has its own modeling layer to build new views across the data. It can be used with SAP BI clients such as Explorer, Xcelsius, Avanced Analytics, and later (I believe) Webi, or you can use your own clients as long as they can talk SQL or MDX.

    Best, Oliver

  5. Oliver Mainka Avatar
    Oliver Mainka

    @Jeffrey: actually the different kinds of SAP in-memory computing products have been around for some 8-9 years, and include LiveCache (powering APO), Enterprise Search (for finding text in SAP), BWA (some 1000 customers, and btw BWA is just the newer name for BIA) with Explorer Accelerated on top, and customer segmentation in CRM. So there’s more than just BWA. The next generation of in-memory computing is called HANA, an appliance (hardware bundled with software) with expanded capabilities compared to BWA. It will go into ramp-up at the end of November 2010 and approximately go into general availability at the end of the first quarter 2011.

    What I showed in the demo is indeed a prototype which has a fair chance to be productized, but mainly serves as a vehicle for discussing use cases with utility customers.

    Best, Oliver

  6. JJ Avatar
    JJ

    Hi Elliot,

    great blog and intresting video about HANA. Maybe you would like to blog about a comparison between HANA und Microsoft PowerPivot? Consists HANA “only” of a presentation layer for existing sap data or is there also a client for build data models..

    Regards,
    JJ

  7. Jeffrey Hughes Avatar
    Jeffrey Hughes

    Hi Timo,
    SAP has been presenting this stuff for ~4 years now: BIA, BWA, Explorer, HANA. Beside BWA I don’t see anything getting beyond the “demo ware stage”. This looks all nice but, e.g., Explorer doesn’t seem to take off. I hear of ~30 deployments and far less being productive. So: how much fake is in what you present here?
    Regards
    Jeffrey

    1. Timo Elliott Avatar

      It’s due out on November 30th this year, so I guess we’ll see…