In-memory analytics: SAP HANA insights and analyst predictions

Transcription

1 E-Guide In-memory analytics: SAP HANA insights and analyst predictions SAP s launch of their in-memory analytics tool, HANA was gamechanging for the SAP analytics landscape. In this E-Guide, readers will learn how the launch of SAP HANA has allowed for a much more flexible and agile analytical environment as well as gain analyst insight into SAP predictions for the upcoming year. Sponsored By:

2 E-Guide In-memory analytics: SAP HANA insights and analyst predictions Table of Contents SAP HANA in-memory analytics appliance launches Analysts predict SAP trends for 2011 About SAP Sponsored By: Page 2 of 10

3 SAP HANA in-memory analytics appliance launches By Todd Morrison, News & Features Editor Is real, real-time analytics really here for SAP customers? After months of crowing about its benefits at previous conventions, SAP now says it has begun to ship HANA, the in-memory appliance it claims can crunch massive amounts of analytical data in a fraction of the time it usually takes. It s a once-in-a-generation technological shift, said SAP chief technological officer Vishal Sikka, speaking from the TechEd conference in Bangalore, India, where the formal announcement was made. Sikka has said that the appliance would make real, real-time computing possible. SAP said it has also introduced its first application designed to run in conjunction with the device, and more are on the way. SAP HANA is just the latest -- and fastest -- version of the Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA) appliance that SAP has had for a few years, according to Boris Evelson, principal analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc. The only difference, he said, is that while the BWA was mainly used to accelerate the analysis of SAP Business Warehouse (BW) data, HANA can process data from any source. It s part of an overall trend to move analytical data from the computer s disk into memory because it can be analyzed much more rapidly, according to Evelson. Secondly, in-memory computing data can be modeled much faster than on disk, and the model can be changed faster as well. This allows for a much more flexible and agile analytical environment, he said, adding that SAP is not alone in providing in-memory capabilities for customers. Sponsored By: Page 3 of 10

4 Despite the fact that some customers have wondered about the need for that kind of computational power, SAP said the appliance is aimed at businesses of any size needing to tie together large amounts of analytic and transactional data. While HANA doesn t replace BW, the value of the appliance is that it allows SAP s customers who may not have BW -- or may not want it -- a way to still perform high-speed analytics off of SAP modules, according to Rita Sallam, an analyst with Gartner Inc. I think it s a good first step toward the vision, Sallam said. That vision entails moving toward an eventual version of HANA that does away with disk-based databases for both transactional processes and analytics, which SAP has indicated it is moving toward. If they can deliver on that, it will be a game changer, she said. SAP would have to explain how it would move BW customers to HANA in the future, without undue cost or disruption, something SAP says will not be a problem. The mid-term plan is to allow BW to leverage HANA as the successor to BWA and therefore there is no need for customers to change their current deployment of BW. Eventually, the longer term plan is that HANA will provide the in-memory database and technology platform upon which BW systems will run, SAP wrote in an when asked about its plans. Speaking with reporters and other industry watchers by phone on Wednesday, Sikka outlined the first software application to be coupled with HANA, a personnel application called SAP Business Objects Strategic Workforce Planning, which lets companies simulate organizational changes in real time, and then see how the changes will affect that business. At the same time, models and personnel executives would be able to use the software to see how their company s acquisitions and entrance into new markets will affect the organizational structure. SAP said it had created the application in conjunction with other companies, including the Hilti Corp., which manufactures electrical tools used in the construction industry. Sponsored By: Page 4 of 10

5 Using HANA, the company was able to run hundreds of customer contact lists in a matter of seconds, instead of hours like it had in the past, according to Christian Ritter, Hilti s head of PCC HR, finance and reporting. While he said the technology may not be revolutionary, it would save roughly 700 hours a year in time running those reports, which he called very impressive. SAP would not publicly disclose the cost of either HANA, or the software now being coupled with the appliance. Sponsored By: Page 5 of 10

6 Analysts predict SAP trends for 2011 Now that 2011 is here, we called some SAP analysts and asked them what they saw coming for SAP and its customers in the coming year. From acquisitions to the future of HANA and Business ByDesign, here s what they had to say about SAP trends, in their words. Rita Sallam, Research Director and Analyst, Gartner Inc. Continued competition from data discovery tools : This year, the BI [business intelligence] platform market sort of bifurcated into two groups: the traditional BI platform vendors like SAP that have traditional enterprise data platforms, and emerging BI vendors offering what we call data discovery tools: more self-contained platforms that allow the business user to explore data without having to go to IT to model data. All the vendors in this space, particularly the traditional BI vendors, have sort of suffered, to some extent, at the hands of these emerging vendors who appeal to business users in a way that the current platforms don t. A number of organizations, even if they have a standard like Business Objects in place, are increasingly employing these tools as a complement and alongside their enterprise standard. SAP has definitely suffered from that. [Business Objects] XI 4.0 doesn t fully address SAP s challenge from emerging data discovery vendors. Until it does, those vendors will continue to encroach upon SAP s installed base both with the BW [Business Warehouse] and Business Objects installed base. The future of HANA: SAP, with its whole HANA initiative, in combination with Business Explorer, is trying to address the requirements for very fast and intuitive analysis of large data. But I don t expect HANA to gain significant traction in the SAP installed base probably until version 1.5, when it can start to replace existing infrastructure, like BW, and BWA [Business Warehouse Accelerator], and only if it delivers on its promise of great performance, cost-effectively. Sponsored By: Page 6 of 10

7 Jon Reed, SAP Mentor, owner and editor of JonERP.com Sapphire: Sapphire is going to be one of the biggest SAP events of the last several years. That s because SAP will be trying to trot out new customers on new products for things like HANA, as well as shed light on the SAP Sybase roadmap, and show an increase in Business ByDesign partners and customers on the upcoming development kit. This is going to be a really big Sapphire, and I think everyone inside of SAP knows that. In-memory computing and data warehouses: In-memory changes the whole world of databases so the future of data warehouses like BW is going to get really interesting. BW s not going away by the end of the year, and certainly there are customers who are heavily invested in BW Accelerator. HANA will eventually offer a lot of those same things, even though that s not what SAP is focusing on now with HANA. It s focusing on the transactional stack. But that s going to be something to watch by the end of the year -- the future of BW Accelerator for starters, and the future of standalone data warehouses vs. in-memory access to data. Customer support: I feel like the issue of Enterprise Support is going to come up again this year. I don t think it s totally a settled issue. Obviously, it was kind of front page news for SAP for a while there, and it s kind of taken a backseat, and a lot of analysts who criticized SAP have moved on. But when you scratch under the surface of Enterprise Support, Standard Support and the options around them, what you find is a confusing picture. In my view, and from what I ve heard from customers, the distinctions between the two really aren t that clear, or the cost savings are really not that substantial. So, I don t think that issue is totally done. Sophisticated users are also looking for more creative support options from SAP. Sponsored By: Page 7 of 10

8 Josh Greenbaum, principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting Few new initiatives: 2011 is going to be a year where SAP starts fulfilling a whole lot of promises; it s not necessarily going to be a year where we see new strategies as much as we ll see SAP make good on a whole set of strategies and initiatives they ve been talking about for the better part of Business ByDesign: I think Business ByDesign is going to be very significant. What s going to be interesting is how successful SAP is at selling into the installed base of very large enterprise customers. There s an enormous marketplace for subsidiaries and smaller operating entities of these large enterprise customers. If SAP can do that successfully, they re going to gain an enormous amount of credibility for Business ByDesign. Ray Wang, principal analyst & CEO, Constellation Research Acquisitions: It is not inconceivable that SAP will make some acquisitions in the cloud space. For SAP to achieve the (revenue) numbers executives told Wall Street they ll achieve in the cloud, they ll have to make some acquisitions. SAP could do a roll-up of all the vendors that are around, or it could try to take out someone as large as Salesforce. Or it could take out a platform vendor like EMC for VMWare and do something with it. SAP is going to buy someone in social. It s already made the investment in mobile; it s already made the investment in cloud, though it might make some more acquisitions. It has Sponsored By: Page 8 of 10

9 the investment in analytics. What SAP is missing right now is social software, like a Jive or a Lithium Technologies, something that has the social pieces that are very important. Kevin Benedict, CEO and founder, Netcentric Strategies Sybase: I believe [SAP s promise of a unified mobility platform with a software development kit to all SAP ecosystem partners and customers by May 2011] is going to be a huge trigger point. It will mean many additional systems integrators and software companies will want to standardize on the Sybase Unwired Platform. SAP says it has over 90,000 customers and over 70% of the world s gross national product goes through an SAP system. Because of that, you have all of these software development houses that can say, You know what? We could look at other mobility platforms but if we support, and just embed, the Sybase Unwired Platform in our own software, that gives us access to those users. More sophisticated mobile apps: For the last couple of years, you ve had just a huge upswing in the number of mobile application developers. Even at SAP Sapphire last year you had a huge number of little tiny companies nobody s heard about creating what s called instant value apps or mobile micro apps. Those are basically just GUIs [graphical user interfaces] that are able to query and receive data back and forth from an SAP Workflow. You re going to see a lot of that go away. You re going to see a convergence around real value and extending complex business processes out into the world of mobility. Even (SAP co-ceo) Jim Hagemann Snabe said this at the SAP Influencers Summit. He said the first wave of mobility, 1.0, allowed people access to existing SAP processes. Mobility 2.0 is going to be about creating new business processes made possible because of mobility. Sponsored By: Page 9 of 10

10 About SAP SAP's vision is for companies of all sizes to become best-run businesses. Best-run businesses transform rigid value chains into dynamic business networks of customers, partners, and suppliers. They close the loop between strategy and execution, help individuals work more productively, and leverage technology for sustainable, profitable growth. This vision is in keeping with SAP's mission to accelerate business innovation for companies and industries worldwide - contributing to economic development on a grand scale. Sponsored By: Page 10 of 10