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ISBNs:
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T
About the Cover Image
he cover image is a European No Speed Limit sign. If youve ever driven on the
Autobahn in Germany, this sign will immediately bring a smile to your face because you
can step on the accelerator and drive as fast as you want to or as fast as your car can go
(which ever comes rst). In terms of SAP HANA, we selected this image because SAP HANA
allows your company to run at top speed with no articial limit to how fast it can go. If you
ever go visit SAP headquarters in Germany, youll see this sign about 2 miles south of the
Frankfurt airport on the A5 and theres no speed limit on your way to visit SAP.
S
Note from the Author
ince this book is about the shift to real-time business, its tting that weve been
writing this book in real-time and will be delivering it in real-time. Basically, that
means that we cant wait around for everything in the SAP HANA world to settle down and
solidify before writing each chapter and expect everyone to hold their breath until the entire
book is nished and ready to print. And trust me, SAP HANA is moving extremely fast right
now and you could be holding your breath for quite a while waiting for that day.
Just like SAP HANA is disrupting the status quo in the database world and breaking lots of
ossied rules of the game, well be doing much the same with this book. Who says you have to
wait till the whole book is written to release it? Who says you have to charge $$ for an
extremely valuable book? Who says it has to be printed on paper with ink and sold in a
bookstore?
Weve decided to break all those traditional publishing rules and release chapters as they
are nished and then release the remaining chapters as they are completed later. Since this
is a digital-only book, its important that readers keep connected to learn about the release
of new chapters and content updates. Thats pretty easy: Follow the book on twitter
@EpistemyPress and @jeff_word, sign up for the email updates from the saphanabook.com
website when you register to download the ebook and keep watching saphana.com.
Table of Contents
1 SAP HANA Overview
Updated with SP7 details
Updated RDS Information
2 SAP HANA Architecture
3 SAP HANA Business Cases
4 SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA
5 SAP Business Warehouse Powered by SAP HANA
6 Introduction to SAP Big Data Technologies (NEW CHAPTER)
7 Data Modeling with SAP HANA (NEW CHAPTER)
8 Application Development with SAP HANA
9 SAP HANA Administration & Operations
10 SAP HANA Hardware
Updated PAM, Cisco, HP, IBM, HuaWei, VCE, Fujitsu sections
Updated Data Center topics
11 SAP HANA Projects & Implementation
Updated RDS section and new advice section
A
Acknowledgments
lthough were at the beginning of this journey, many people have already been
phenomenally helpful in the scoping, content preparation and reviewing of this book.
Their support has been invaluable and many more people will be involved as the book
progresses.
Many thanks to all of you for your support and collaboration.
Jeff
SAP Colleagues
Margaret Anderson, Puneet Suppal, Uddhav Gupta, Storm Archer, Scott Shepard, Balaji
Krishna, Daniel Rutschman, Ben Gruber, Bhuvan Wadhwa, Lothar Henkes, Adolf Brosig,
Thomas Zureck, Lucas Kiesow, Prasad Ilapani, Wolfram Kleis, Gunther Liebich, Ralf Czekalla,
Michael Erhardt, Roland Kramer, Arne Arnold, Markus Fath, Johannes Beigel, Ron Silberstein,
Kijoon Lee, Oliver Mainka, Si-Mohamed Said, Amit Sinha, Mike Eacrett, Andrea Ne, Jason
Lovinger, Michael Rey, Gigi Read, David Hull, Nadav Helfman, Lori Vanourek, Bill Lawler, Scott
Leatherman, Kathlynn Gallagher, David Jonker, Naren Chawla, David Porter, Steve Thibodeau,
Swen Conrad, John Schitka, David Jonker
SAP Mentors
Thomas Jung (SAP), Harald Reiter (Deloitte), Vitaliy Rudnytskiy (HP), John Appleby (Bluen),
Tammy Powlas (Fairfax Water), Vijay Vijayasankar (IBM), Craig Cmehil (SAP), Alvaro Tejada
(SAP)
SAP Partners
Lane Goode (HP), Tag Robertson (IBM), Rick Speyer (Cisco), Andrea Voigt (Fujitsu), Nathan
Saunders (Dell), KaiGai Kohei (NEC), Chris March (Hitachi), Thorsten Staerk (VCE)
Production
Robert Weiss (Development Editor)
Michele DeFilippo (1106 Design)
Sophie Jasson-Holt & Deb Cameron (Evolved Media)
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How to use this book
May you live in interesting times
his book is designed to provide an introduction to SAP HANA to a wide range of readers,
from C-level executives down to entry-level coders. As such, its content is necessarily
broad and not-too-technical. This book should be the first thing everyone reads about SAP
HANA, but will provide easy links to Level 2 technical content to continue learning about the
various sub-topics in more detail. The content is structured so that everyone can begin with
the introduction chapter and then skip to the subsequent chapters that most interest them.
Business people will likely skip to the applications and business case chapters while techies
will jump ahead to the application development and hardware chapters. In fact, it would
probably be odd if anyone actually read this book from beginning to end (but go ahead if you
want to).
Although a great deal of this book focuses on living in a world without compromises from
a technology and business perspective, weve unfortunately had to make a few compromises
in the scope and depth of the content in order to reach the widest possible audience. If we
hadnt, this would be a 10,000-page encyclopedia that only a few hundred people would ever
read. Weve tried to make this book as easy to read as possible to ensure that every reader
can understand the concepts and get comfortable with the big picture of SAP HANA. Weve
also tried to cover as many of the high-level concepts as possible and provide copious links to
deeper technical resources for easy access. Hopefully, you will enjoy reading the chapters
and nd it quite easy to punch out to additional technical information as you go regardless
of your level of technical knowledge or business focus.
The knowledge you will nd in this book is the rst step on the journey to becoming a real-
time enterprise, but in many ways, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Were working on several
Level 2 technical books on SAP HANA and are committed to providing as much technical and
business content as possible through the saphana.com website and other channels. Please
refer to the last chapter to get a listing of additional free information sources on SAP HANA.
Given the massive strategic impact of SAP HANA on the medium and long-term IT
architectures of its customers, SAP felt that every customer and ecosystem partner should
have free access to the essential information they will need to understand SAP HANA and
evaluate its impact on their future landscape. SAP sponsored the writing of this book and has
funded its publication as a free ebook to ensure that everyone can easily access this
knowledge.
SAP HANA is a rapidly evolving product and its level of importance to SAP customers will
continue to increase exponentially over the next several years. We will attempt to provide
updated editions of this book on a semi-annual basis to ensure that you can easily access the
most up-to-date knowledge on SAP HANA. Please continue to visit the SAP HANA Essentials
website to download updated and revised editions when they are released (typically in May
and November of each year). You can also follow @EpistemyPress on Twitter for updates.
T
Foreword
By Vishal Sikka, Ph.D.
CEO of Infosys & Former Executive
Board Member, SAP AG
ime magazine picked The Protester as its person of the year for 2011, recognition of
individuals who spoke up around the world from the Arab countries to Wall Street,
from India to Greece individuals whose voices were amplied and aggregated by modern
technology and its unprecedented power to connect and empower us. Twitter and Facebook,
now approaching 800 million users (more than 10% of humanity), are often viewed as the
harbinger of social networking. But social networking is not new. A recent issue of the
Economist described Martin Luthers use of social networking, especially the Gutenberg
press, to start the Protestant Reformation. During the American Revolution, Thomas Paine
published his Common Sense manifesto on a derivation of the Gutenberg press. Within a
single year, it reached almost a million of the 1.5 million residents of the 13 American
colonies about two-thirds of the populace, and helped seed democracy and Americas
birth.
I believe that information technologies, especially well-designed, purposeful ones,
empower and renew us and serve to amplify our reach and our abilities. The ensuing
connectedness dissolves away intermediary layers of ineciency and indirection. Some of
the most visible recent examples of this dissolving of layers are the transformations we have
seen in music, movies and books. Physical books and the bookstores they inhabited have
been rapidly disappearing, as have physical compact discs, phonograph records, videotapes
and the stores that housed them. Yet there is more music than ever before, more books and
more movies. Their content got separated from their containers and got housed in more
convenient, more modular vessels, which better tie into our lives, in more consumable ways.
In the process, layers of ineciency got dissolved. By putting 3000 songs in our pockets, the
iPod liberated our music from the housings that conned it. The iPhone has a high-denition
camera within it, along with a bunch of services for sharing, distributing and publishing
pictures, even editing them services that used to be inside darkrooms and studios. 3D
printing is an even more dramatic example of this transformation. The capabilities and
services provided by workshops and factories are now embodied within a printer that can
print things like tools and accessories, food and musical instruments. A remarkable musical
flute was printed recently at MIT, its sound indistinguishable from that produced by factory-
built flutes of yesterday.
I see layers of ineciency dissolving all around us. An empowered populace gets more
connected, and uses this connectivity to bypass the intermediaries and get straight at the
things it seeks, connecting and acting in real-time whether it is to stage uprisings or rent
apartments, plan travel or author books, edit pictures or consume apps by the millions.
And yet enterprises have been far too slow to benet from such renewal and simplication
that is pervading other parts of our lives. The IT industry has focused on too much
repackaging and reassembly of existing layers into new bundles, ostensibly to lower the costs
of integrated systems. In reality, this re-bundling increases the clutter that already exists in
enterprise landscapes. It is time for a rethink.
At SAP, we have been engaged in such rethinking, or intellectual renewal, as our chairman
and co-founder Hasso Plattner challenged me, for the last several years, and our customers
are starting to see its results. This renewal of SAPs architecture, and consequently that of
our customers, is driven by an in-memory product called SAP HANA which, together with
mobility, cloud computing, and our principle of delivering innovation without disruption, is
helping to radically simplify enterprise computing and dramatically improve the performance
of businesses without disruption.
SAP HANA achieves this simplication by taking advantage of tremendous advances in
hardware over the last two decades. Todays machines can bring large amounts of main-
memory, and lots of multi-core CPUs to bear on massively parallel processing of information
very inexpensively. SAP HANA was designed from the ground-up to leverage this, and the
business consequences are radical. At Yodobashi, a large Japanese retailer, the calculation of
incentives for loyalty customers used to take 3 days of data processing, once a month. With
SAP HANA, this happens now in 2 seconds a performance improvement of over 100,000
times. But even more important is the opportunity to rethink business processes. The
incentive for a customer can be calculated on the y, while the customer is in a store, based
on the purchases she is about to make. The empowered store-manager can determine these
at the point of sale, as the transaction unfolds. With SAP HANA, batch processing is
converting to real time, and business processes are being rethought. Customers like Colgate-
Palmolive, the Essar Group, Provimi, Charmer Sunbelt, Nongfu Spring, our own SAP IT and
many others, have seen performance improvements of thousands to tens of thousands times.
SAP HANA brings these benets non-disruptively, without forcing a modication of existing
systems. And in Fall 2011, we delivered SAP Business Warehouse on SAP HANA, a complete
removal of the traditional database underneath, delivering fundamental improvements in
performance and simplification, without disruption.
SAP HANA provides a single in-memory database foundation for managing transactional
as well as analytical data processing. Thus a complex question can be posed to real-time
operational data, instead of asking pre-fabricated questions on pre-aggregated or
summarized data. SAP HANA also integrates text processing with managing structured data,
in a single system. And it scales simply with addition of more processors or more blades.
Thus various types of applications, across a companys lines of businesses, and across
application types, can all be run o a single, elastically-scalable hardware infrastructure: a
grand dissolving of the layers of complexity in enterprise landscapes. SAP HANA hardware is
built by various leading hardware vendors from industry standard commodity components,
and can be delivered as appliances, private or public clouds. While this architecture is vastly
disruptive to a traditional relational database architecture, to our customers it brings
fundamental innovation without disruption.
Looking ahead, I expect that we will see lots of amazing improvements similar to
Yodobashis. Even more exciting, are the unprecedented applications that are now within our
reach. By my estimate, a cloud of approximately 1000 servers of 80-cores and 2 terabytes of
memory each, can enable more than 1 billion people on the planet to interactively explore
their energy consumption based on real-time information from their energy meters and
appliances, and take control of their energy management. The management and optimization
of their nances, healthcare, insurance, communications, entertainment and other activities,
can similarly be made truly dynamic. Banks can manage risks in real-time, oil companies can
better explore energy sources, mining vast amounts of data as needed. Airlines and heavy
machinery makers can do predictive maintenance on their machines, and healthcare
companies can analyze vast amounts of genome data in real time. One of our customers in
Japan is working on using SAP HANA to analyze genome data for hundreds of patients each
day, something that was impossible before SAP HANA. Another customer is using SAP HANA
to determine optimal routes for taxicabs. The possibilities are endless.
Just as the iPod put our entire music libraries in our pockets, SAP HANA, combined with
mobility and cloud-based delivery, enables us to take our entire business with us in our
pocket. Empowering us to take actions in real time, based on our instincts as well as our
analysis. To re-think our solutions to solving existing problems and to help businesses
imagine and deliver solutions for previously unsolved problems. And it is this empowerment
and renewal, driven by purposeful technologies, that continually brings us all forward.
Dr. Vishal Sikka is a the CEO of Infosys and a former member of the Executive Board of
SAP AG who led the development of SAP HANA.
E
Chapter 1
SAP HANA Overview
Signicant shifts in market share and fortunes occur not because
companies try to play the game better than the competition but because
they change the rules of the game
Constantinos Markides
1
very industry has a certain set of rules that govern the way the companies in that
industry operate. The rules might be adjusted from time to time as the industry matures,
but the general rules stay basically the same unless some massive disruption occurs that
changes the rules or even the entire game. SAP HANA is one of those massively disruptive
innovations for the enterprise IT industry.
To understand this point, consider that youre probably reading this book on an e-reader,
which is a massively disruptive innovation for the positively ancient publishing industry. The
book industry has operated under the same basic rules since Gutenberg mechanized the
production of books in 1440. There were a few subsequent innovations within the industry,
primarily in the distribution chain, but the basic processes of writing a book, printing it, and
reading it remained largely unchanged for several hundred years. That is until Amazon and
Apple came along and digitized the production, distribution, and consumption of books. These
companies are also starting to revolutionize the writing of books by providing new authoring
tools that make the entire process digital and paper-free. This technology represents an
overwhelming assault of disruptive innovation on a 500+ year-old industry in less than 5
years.
Today, SAP HANA is disrupting the technology industry in much the same way that
Amazon and Apple have disrupted the publishing industry. Before we discuss how this
happens, we need to consider a few fundamental rules of that industry.
The IT Industry: A History of Technology Constraints
Throughout the history of the IT industry, the capabilities of applications have always been
constrained to a great degree by the capabilities of the hardware that they were designed to
run on. This explains the leapfrogging behavior of software and hardware products, where a
more capable version of an application is released shortly after a newer, more capable
generation of hardware processors, storage, memory, and so on is released. For
example, each version of Adobe Photoshop was designed to maximize the most current
hardware resources available to achieve the optimal performance. Rendering a large image
in Photoshop 10 years ago could take several hours on the most powerful PC. In contrast, the
latest version, when run on current hardware, can perform the same task in just a couple of
seconds, even on a low-end PC.
Enterprise software has operated on a very similar model. In the early days of mainframe
systems, all of the software specically, the applications, operating system, and database
was designed to maximize the hardware resources located inside the mainframe as a
contained system. The transactional data from the application and the data used for
reporting were physically stored in the same system. Consequently, you could either process
transactions or process reports, but you couldnt do both at the same time or youd kill the
system. Basically, the application could use whatever processing power was in the
mainframe, and that was it. If you wanted more power, you had to buy a bigger mainframe.
The Database Problem: Bottlenecks
When SAP R/3 came out in 1992, it was designed to take advantage of a new hardware
architecture client-server where the application could be run on multiple, relatively
cheap application servers connected to a larger central database server. The major
advantage of this architecture was that, as more users performed more activities on the
system, you could just add a few additional application servers to scale out application
performance. Unfortunately, the system still had a single database server, so transmitting
data from that server to all the application servers and back again created a huge
performance bottleneck.
Eventually, the ever-increasing requests for data from so many application servers began
to crush even the largest database servers. The problem wasnt that the servers lacked
sucient processing power. Rather, the requests from the application servers got stuck in
the same input/output (IO) bottleneck trying to get data in and out of the database. To
address this problem, SAP engineered quite a few innovative techniques in their
applications to minimize the number of times applications needed to access the database.
Despite these innovations, however, each additional database operation continued to slow
down the entire system.
This bottleneck was even more pronounced when it came to reporting data. The
transactional data known as online transaction processing, or OLTP from documents
such as purchase orders and production orders were stored in multiple locations within the
database. The application would read a small quantity of data when the purchasing screen
was started up, the user would input more data, the app would read a bit more data from the
database, and so on, until the transaction was completed and the record was updated for the
last time. Each transactional record by itself doesnt contain very much data. When you have
to run a report across every transaction in a process for several months, however, you start
dealing with huge amounts of data that have to be pulled through a very slow pipe from the
database to the application.
To create reports, the system must read multiple tables in the database all at once and
then sort the data into reports. This process requires the system to pull a massive amount of
data from the database, which essentially prevents users from doing anything else in the
system while its generating the report. To resolve this problem, companies began to build
separate OLAP systems such as SAP Business Warehouse to copy the transaction data over
to a separate server and ooad all that reporting activity onto a dedicated reporting
system. This arrangement would free up resources for the transactional system to focus on
processing transactions.
Unfortunately, even though servers were getting faster and more powerful (and cheaper),
the bottleneck associated with obtaining data from the disk wasnt getting better; in fact, it
was actually getting worse. As more processes in the company were being automated in the
transactional system, it was producing more and more data, which would then get dumped
into the reporting system. Because the reporting system contained more, broader data about
the companys operations, more people wanted to use the data, which in turn generated more
requests for reports from the database under the reporting system. Of course, as the number
of requests increased, the quantities of data that had to be pulled correspondingly increased.
You can see how this vicious (or virtuous) cycle can spin out of control quickly.
The Solution: In-Memory Architecture
This is the reality that SAP was seeing at their customers at the beginning of the 2000s. SAP
R/3 had been hugely successful, and customers were generating dramatically increasing
quantities of data. SAP had also just released SAP NetWeaver
2
, which added extensive
internet and integration capabilities to its applications. SAP NetWeaver added many new
users and disparate systems that talked to the applications in the SAP landscape. Again, the
greater the number of users, the greater the number of application servers that ooded the
database with requests. Similarly, as the amount of operational data in the SAP Business
Warehouse database increased exponentially, so did the number of requests for reports.
Looking forward, SAP could see this trend becoming even more widespread and the
bottleneck of the database slowing things down more and more. SAP was concerned that
customers who had invested massive amounts of time and money into acquiring and
implementing these systems to make their businesses more productive and protable would
be unable to get maximum value from them.
Fast forward a few years, and now the acquisitions of Business Objects and Sybase were
generating another exponential increase in demands for data from both the transactional and
analytic databases from increasing numbers of analytics users and mobile users. Both the
volume of data and the volume of users requesting data were now growing thousands of
times faster than the improvements in database I/O.
Having become aware of this issue, in 2004 SAP initiated several projects to innovate the
core architecture of their applications to eliminate this performance bottleneck. The objective
was to enable their customers to leverage the full capabilities of their investment in SAP
while avoiding the data latency issues. The timing couldnt have been better. It was around
this time that two other key factors were becoming more signicant: (1) internet use and the
proliferation of data from outside the enterprise, and (2) the regulatory pressures on
corporations, generated by laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, to be answerable for all of their
nancial transactions. These requirements increased the pressure on already stressed
systems to analyze more data more quickly. The SAP projects resulted in the delivery of SAP
HANA in 2011, the rst step in the transition to a new in-memory architecture for enterprise
applications and databases. SAP HANA ips the old model on its head and converts the
database from the boat anchor that slows everything down into a jet engine that speeds
up every aspect of the companys operations.
SAPs Early In-Memory Projects
SAP has a surprisingly long history of developing in-memory technologies to accelerate its
applications. Because disk I/O has been a performance bottleneck since the beginning of
three-tier architecture, SAP has constantly searched for ways to avoid or minimize the
performance penalty that customers pay when they pull large data sets from disk. So, SAPs
initial in-memory technologies were used for very specic applications that contained
complex algorithms that needed a great deal of readily accessible data.
The Beginnings: LiveCache and SAP BWA
When SAP introduced Advanced Planning Optimizer (APO) as part of its supply chain
management application in the late 1990s, the logistics planning algorithms required a
signicant speed boost to overcome the disk I/O bottleneck. These algorithms some of the
most complex that SAP has ever written needed to crunch massive amounts of product,
production, and logistics data to produce an optimal supply chain plan. SAP solved this
problem in 1999 by taking some of the capabilities of its open-source database, SAP MaxDB
(called SAP DB at the time), and built them into a memory-resident cache system called SAP
LiveCache. Basically, LiveCache keeps a persistent copy of all of the relevant application logic
and master data needed in memory, thus eliminating the need to make multiple trips back
and forth to the disk. LiveCache worked extremely well; in fact, it processed data 600 times
faster than disk-based I/O. Within its narrow focus, it clearly demonstrated that in-memory
caching could solve a major latency issue for SAP customers.
In 2003, a team in SAPs headquarters in Waldorf, Germany, began to productize a
specialized search engine for SAP systems called TREX (Text Retrieval and information
EXtraction). TREX approached enterprise data in much the same way that Google approaches
internet data. That is, TREX scans the tables in a database and then creates an index of the
information contained in the table. Because the index is a tiny fraction of the size of the actual
data, the TREX team came up with the idea of putting the entire index in the RAM memory of
the server to speed up searches of the index. When this technology became operational, their
bosses asked them to apply the same technique to a much more imposing problem: the data
from a SAP BW cube. Thus, Project Euclid was born.
At that time, many of the larger SAP BW customers were having signicant performance
issues with reports that were running on large data cubes. Cubes are the basic mechanism by
which SAP BW stores data in multidimensional structures. Running reports on very large
cubes (>100GB) was taking several hours, sometimes even days. The SAP BW team had
done just about everything possible in the SAP BW application to increase performance, but
had run out of options in the application layer. The only remaining solution was to eliminate
the bottleneck itself. In the best spirit of disruptive innovators, the TREX team devised a
strategy to eliminate the database from the equation entirely by indexing the cubes and
storing the indexes in high-speed RAM.
Initial results for Euclid were mind-blowing: The new technology could execute query
responses for the same reports on the same data thousands of times faster than the old
system. Eventually, the team discovered how to package Euclid into a stand-alone server that
would sit next to the existing SAP BW system and act as a non-disruptive turbocharger for a
customers slow SAP BW reports. At the same time, SAP held some senior-level meetings
with Intel to formulate a joint-engineering project to optimize Intels new dual-core chips to
natively process the SAP operations in parallel, thereby increasing performance
exponentially. Intel immediately sent a team to SAP headquarters to begin the optimization
work. Since that time the two companies have continuously worked together to optimize
every successive generation of chips.
In 2005, SAP launched the product SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence Accelerator, or
BIA. (The company subsequently changed the name to SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse
Accelerator, or BWA) BWA has since evolved into one of SAPs best-selling products, with one
of the highest customer satisfaction ratings. BWA solved a huge pain point for SAP
customers. Even more importantly, however, it represented another successful use of in-
memory. Along with LiveCache, the success of BWA proved to SAP and its customers that in-
memory data processing just might be an architectural solution to database bottlenecks.
The Next Step: The Tracker Project
Once the results for BWA and LiveCache began to attract attention, SAP decided to take the
next big step and determine whether it could run an entire database for an SAP system in
memory. As well see later, this undertaking is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Using
memory as a cache to temporarily store data or storing indexes of data in memory were key
innovations, but eliminating the disk completely from the architecture takes the concept to an
entirely dierent level of complexity and introduces a great deal of unknown technical issues
into the landscape.
Therefore, in 2005, SAP decided to build a skunkworks project to validate and test the
idea. The result was the Tracker Project. Because the new SAP database was in an early
experimental stage and the nal product could seriously disrupt the market, the Tracker
Project was strictly Top Secret, even to SAP employees.
The Tracker team was composed of the TREX/BWA engineers, a few of the key architects
from the SAP MaxDB open-source database team, the key engineers who built LiveCache, the
SAP ERP performance optimization and benchmarking gurus, and several database experts
from outside the company. Basically, the team was an all-star lineup of everyone inside and
outside SAP who could contribute to this big hairy audacious goal of building the rst in-
memory database prototype for SAP (the direct ancestor of SAP HANA).
In the mid-1990s, several researchers at Stanford University had performed the rst
experiments to build an in-memory database for a project at HP Labs. Two of the Stanford
researchers went on to found companies to commercialize their research. One product was a
database query optimization tool known as Callixa, and the other was a native in-memory
database called P*Time. In late 2005, SAP quietly acquired Callixa and P*time (as well as a
couple of other specialist database companies), hired several of the most distinguished
database geniuses on the planet, and put them to work with the Tracker team. The team
completed the porting and verication of the in-memory database on a server with 64gb of
RAM, which was the maximum supported memory at the time.
In early 2006, less than four months after the start of the project, the Tracker team
passed its primary performance and reality check goal: the SAP Standard Application
Benchmark for 1000 user SD two-tier benchmark with more than 6000 SAPs, which
essentially matched the performance of the two leading certied databases at the time. To
put that in perspective, it took Microsoft several years of engineering to port Microsoft SQL to
SAP and pass the benchmark the rst time. Passing the benchmark in such a short time with
a small team in total secrecy was a truly amazing feat. Suddenly, an entirely new world
of possibilities had opened up for SAP to fundamentally change the rules of the game for
database technology.
Shortly after achieving this milestone, SAP began an academic research project to
experiment with the inner workings of in-memory databases with faculty and students at the
Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam in Germany. The researchers examined
the prototypes from the Tracker team now called NewDB and added some valuable
external perspectives on how to mature the technology for enterprise applications.
SAP In-Memory Technology Evolution
However, passing a benchmark and running tests in the labs are far removed from the
level of scalability and reliability needed for a database to become the mission-critical heart
of a Fortune 50 company. So, for the next four years, SAP embarked on a bullet-proong
effort to evolve the project into a product.
In May 2010, Hasso Plattner, SAPs supervisory board chairman and chief software
advisor, announced SAPs vision for delivering an entirely in-memory database layer for its
application portfolio. If you havent seen his keynote speech, its worth watching. If you saw it
when he delivered it, its probably worth watching again. Its Professor Plattner at his best.
Different Game, Different Rules: SAP HANA
One year later, SAP announced the rst live customers on SAP HANA and that SAP HANA was
now generally available. SAP also introduced the rst SAP applications that were being built
natively on top of SAP HANA as an application platform. Not only did these revelations shock
the technology world into the new reality of in-memory databases, but they initiated a
massive shift for both SAP and its partners and customers into the world of real-time
business.
In November 2011, SAP achieved another milestone when it released SAP Business
Warehouse 7.3. SAP had renovated this software so that it could run natively on top of SAP
HANA. This development sent shockwaves throughout the data warehousing world because
almost every SAP Business Warehouse customer could immediately
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replace their old, disk-
based database with SAP HANA. What made this new architecture especially attractive was
the fact that SAP customers did not have to modify their current systems to accommodate it.
To make the transition as painless as possible for its customers, SAP designed Business
Warehouse 7.3 to be a non-disruptive innovation.
Innovation without Disruption
Clay Christensens book The Innovators Dilemma was very popular reading among the
Tracker team during the early days. In addition to all the technical challenges of building a
completely new enterprise-scale database from scratch on a completely new hardware
architecture, SAP also had to be very thoughtful about how its customers would eventually
adopt such a fundamentally different core technology underneath the SAP Business Suite.
To accomplish this dicult balancing act, SAPs senior executives made the teams
primary objective the development of a disruptive technology innovation that could be
introduced into SAPs customers landscapes in a non-disruptive way. They realized that even
the most incredible database would be essentially useless if SAPs customers couldnt make
the business case to adopt it because it was too disruptive to their existing systems. The
team spoke, under NDA, with the senior IT leadership of several of SAPs largest customers
to obtain insights concerning the types of concerns they would have about such a
monumental technology shift at the bottom of their stacks. The customers provided some
valuable guidelines for how SAP should engineer and introduce such a disruptive innovation
into their mission-critical landscapes. Making that business case involved much more than
just the eye-catching speeds and feeds from the raw technology. SAPs customers would
switch databases only if the new database was minimally disruptive to implement and
extremely low risk to operate. In essence, SAP would have to build a hugely disruptive
innovation to the database layer that could be adopted and implemented by its customers in
a non-disruptive way at the business application layer.
The Business Impact of a New Architecture
When viewed from a holistic perspective, the entire stack needed to run a Fortune 50
company is maddeningly complex. So, to engineer a new technology architecture for a
company, you rst have to focus on WHAT the entire system has to do for the business. At its
core, the new SAP database architecture was created to help users run their business
processes more eectively
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. It had to enable them to track their inventory more accurately,
sell their products more eectively, manufacture their products more eciently, and
purchase materials economically. At the same time, however, it also had to reduce the
complexity and costs of managing the landscape for the IT department.
Today, every business process in a company has some amount of latency associated
with it. For example, one public company might require 10 days to complete its quarterly
closing process, while its primary competitor accomplishes this task in 5 days even though
both companies are using the same SAP software to manage the process. Why does it take
one company twice as long as its competitor to complete the same process? What factors
contribute to that additional process latency?
The answers lie in the reality that the software is simply the enabler for the execution of
the business process. The people who have to work together to complete the process, both
inside and outside the company, often have to do a lot of waiting both during and between
the various process steps. Some of that waiting is due to human activities, such as lunch
breaks or meetings. Much of it, however, occurs because people have to wait while their
information systems process the relevant data. The old saying that time is money is still
completely true, and latency is just a nice way of saying money wasted while waiting.
As we discussed earlier, having to wait several minutes or several hours or even several
days to obtain an answer from your SAP system is a primary contributor to process latency.
It also discourages people from using the software frequently or as it was intended. Slow-
performing systems force people to take more time to complete their jobs, and they result in
less eective use of all the systems capabilities. Both of these factors introduce latency into
process execution.
Clearly, latency is a bad thing. Unfortunately, however, theres an even darker side to slow
systems. When businesspeople cant use a system to get a quick response to their questions
or get their job done when they need to, they invent workarounds to avoid the constraint. The
eort and costs spent on inventing workarounds to the performance limitations of the
system waste a substantial amount of institutional energy and creativeness that ideally
should be channeled into business innovation. In addition, workarounds can seriously
compromise data quality and integrity.
As we have discussed, the major benets of in-memory storage are that users no longer
have to wait for the system, and the information they need to make more intelligent decisions
is instantly available at their ngertips. Thus, companies that employ in-memory systems are
operating in real time. Signicantly, once you remove all of the latency from the systems,
users can focus on eliminating the latency in the other areas of the process. Its like shining a
spotlight on all the problem areas of the process now that the system latency is no longer
clouding up business transparency.
The Need for Business Flexibility
In addition to speeding up database I/O throughput and simplifying the enterprise system
architecture, SAP also had to innovate in a third direction: business exibility. Over the years,
SAP had become adept at automating standard business processes for 24 dierent
industries globally. Despite this progress, however, new processes were springing up too fast
to count. Mobile devices, cloud applications, and big data scenarios were creating a whole
new set of business possibilities for customers. SAPs customers needed a huge amount of
exibility to modify, extend, and adapt their core business processes to reect their rapidly
changing business needs. In 2003, SAP released their service-oriented architecture, SAP
NetWeaver, and began to renovate the entire portfolio of SAP apps to become extremely
exible and much easier to modify. However, none of that exibility was going to benet their
customers if the applications and platform that managed those dynamic business processes
were chained to a slow, inflexible, and expensive database.
The only way out of this dilemma was for SAP to innovate around the database problem
entirely. None of the existing database vendors had any incentive to change the status quo
(see The Innovators Dilemma for all the reasons why), and SAP couldnt aord to sit by and
watch these problems continue to get worse for their customers. SAP needed to engineer a
breakthrough innovation in in-memory databases to build the foundations for a future
architecture that was faster, simpler, more exible, and much cheaper to acquire and
operate. It was one of those impossible challenges that engineers and business people
secretly love to tackle, and it couldnt have been more critical to SAPs future success.
Faster, Better, Cheaper
Theres another fundamental law of the technology industry: Faster, Better, Cheaper. That is,
each new generation of product or technology has to be faster, better, and cheaper than the
generation it is replacing, or customers wont purchase it. Georey Moore has some great
thoughts on how game-changing technologies cross the chasm. He maintains, among other
things, that faster, better, and cheaper are fundamental characteristics that must be present
for a successful product introduction.
In-memory computing ts the faster, better, cheaper model perfectly. I/O is thousands to
millions of times faster on RAM than on disks. Theres really no comparison in how rapidly you
can get memory o a database in RAM than o a database on disk. In-memory databases are
a better architecture due to their simplicity, tighter integration with the apps, hybrid
row/column store, and ease of operations. Finally, when you compare the cost of an in-
memory database to that of a disk-based database on the appropriate metric cost per
terabyte per second in-memory is actually cheaper. Also, when you compare the total cost
of ownership (TCO) of in-memory databases, theyre even more economical to operate than
traditional databases due to the reduction of superfluous layers and unnecessary tasks.
But faster, better, cheaper is even more important than just the raw technology. If you
really look at what the switch from an old platform to a new platform can do for overall
usability of the solutions on top of the platform, there are some amazing possibilities.
Take the ubiquitous iPod for example. When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, it
revolutionized the way that people listened to music, even though it wasnt the rst MP3
player on the market. The key innovation was that Apple was able to t a tiny 1.8-inch hard
drive into its small case so you could carry 5gb of music in your pocket, at a time when most
other MP3 players could hold only ~64mb of music in ash memory. (This is a classic
illustration of changing the rules of the game.) I/O speed wasnt a signicant concern for
playing MP3s, so the cost per megabyte per second calculation wasnt terribly relevant. By
that measure, 5gb of disk for roughly the same price as 64mb of RAM was a huge dierence.
It wasnt signicantly faster than its competitors, but it was so phenomenally better and
cheaper per megabyte (even at $399) that it became a category killer.
In hindsight, Apple had to make several architectural compromises to squeeze that hard
drive into the iPod. First, the hard drive took up most of the case, leaving very little room for
anything else. There was a tiny monochrome display, a clunky mechanical click wheel user
interface, a fairly weak processor, and, most importantly, a disappointingly short battery life.
The physics needed to spin a hard disk drained the battery very quickly. Despite these
limitations, however, the iPod was still so much better than anything else out there it soon
took over the market.
Fast-forward six years, and Apple was selling millions of units of its most current version
of the classic iPod, which contained 160gb of storage, 32 times more than the original 5gb
model. Signicantly, the new model sold at the same price as the original. In addition to the
vastly expanded storage capacity, Apple had added a color screen and a pressure-sensitive
click wheel. Otherwise, the newer model was similar to the original in most ways.
By this time, however, the storage capacity of the hard drive was no longer such a big
deal. Hard drives had become so enormous that nobody had enough music to ll them. In
fact, in 2001 people had been thrilled with 5gb of storage, because they could download their
entire CD collection onto the iPod. Meanwhile, Moores law had been in eect for four full
cycles and 16gb of memory cost about the same as a 160gb hard drive. In 2007, Apple could
build an iPod with 16gb of solid-state RAM storage which was only one-tenth of the
capacity of the current hard drive model for the same price as the 2001 model.
It was the shift to solid-state memory as the storage medium for iPods that really
changed the game for Apple. Removing the hard drive and its spinning disks had a huge
impact on Apples design parameters, for several reasons. First, it enabled the company to
shrink the thickness and reduce the weight of the iPod, making it easier to carry and store. In
addition, it created more room for a bigger motherboard and a larger display. In fact, Apple
could now turn the entire front of the device into a display, which it redesigned as a touch-
screen interface (hence the name iPod Touch). Inserting a bigger motherboard in turn
allowed Apple to insert a larger, more powerful processor in the device. Most importantly,
however, eliminating the physical hard drive more than doubled the battery life since there
were no more mechanical disks to spin.
These innovations essentially transformed a simple music player into a miniature
computer that you could carry in your pocket. It had an operating system, long battery life,
audio and video capabilities, and a sucient amount of storage. Going even further, Apple
could also build another model with nearly all of the same parts that could also make phone
calls.
Comparison of Apple iPod Models
Source: Apple Inc.
Once a large number of people began to carry a computer around in their pocket, it only
made sense that developers would build new applications to exploit the capabilities of the
new platform. Although Apple couldnt have predicted the success of games like Angry
Birds, they realized that innovation couldnt be unleashed on their new platform until they
removed the single biggest piece of the architecture that was imposing all the constraints.
Ironically, it was the same piece of technology that made the original iPod so successful.
Think about that for a second: Apple had to eliminate the key technology in the iPod that had
made them so successful in order to move to the next level of success with the iPod Touch
and the iPhone. Although this might seem like an obvious choice in retrospect, at the time it
required a huge leap of faith to take.
In essence, getting rid of the hard drive in the iPods was the most critical technology
decision Apple made to deliver the iPod Touch, iPhone, and, eventually, the iPad. Most of the
other pieces of technology in the architecture improved as expected over the years. But the
real game changer was the switch from disk to memory. That single decision freed Apple to
innovate without constraints and allowed them to change the rules of the game again, back to
the memory-as-storage paradigm that the portable music player market had started with.
SAP is convinced that SAP HANA represents a similar architectural shift for its application
platform. Eliminating the disk-based database will provide future customers with a faster,
better, and cheaper architecture. SAP also believes that this new architecture, like the solid-
state memory in the iPod, will encourage the development of a new breed of business
applications that are built natively to exploit this new platform.
Note: as of late 2013, Apple still makes and sells the classic iPod (160gb/$249), but it is a tiny fraction of their overall iPod
sales. So, somebody must be buying the old iPods and Apple must be making some money o of them, but do you know
anyone whos bought a hard-drive based iPod in the last ve years? Youd have to really need all that storage to give up all the
features of the iPod touch.
SAP thinks that there will also be a small category of its customers who will continue to want the old architecture so
theyll continue to support that option, but theyre predicting a similar adoption trend for migrations to the SAP Business Suite
on SAP HANA. At that point, youll need an overwhelmingly compelling business reason to forego all the goodness of the new
architecture and renovated SAP apps on top of SAP HANA.
In-Memory Basics
Thus far, weve focused on the transition to in-memory computing and its implications for IT.
With this information as background, we next dive into the deep end of SAP HANA. Before
we do so, however, here are a few basic concepts about in-memory computing that youll
need to understand. Some of these concepts might be similar to what you already know about
databases and server technology. There are also some cutting-edge concepts, however, that
merit discussion.
Storing data in memory isnt a new concept. What is new is that now you can store your
whole operational and analytic data entirely in RAM as the primary persistence layer
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.
Historically database systems were designed to perform well on computer systems with
limited RAM. As we have seen, in these systems slow disk I/O was the main bottleneck in
data throughput. Today, multi-core CPUs multiple CPUs located on one chip or in one
package are standard, with fast communication between processor cores enabling parallel
processing. Currently server processors have up to 64 cores, and 128 cores will soon be
available. With the increasing number of cores, CPUs are able to process increased data
volumes in parallel. Main memory is no longer a limited resource. In fact, modern servers can
have 2TB of system memory, which allows them to hold complete databases in RAM.
Signicantly, this arrangement shifts the performance bottleneck from disk I/O to the data
transfer between CPU cache and main memory (which is already blazing fast and getting
faster).
In a disk-based database architecture, there are several levels of caching and temporary
storage to keep data closer to the application and avoid excessive numbers of round-trips to
the database (which slows things down). The key dierence with SAP HANA is that all of
those caches and layers are eliminated because the entire physical database is literally
sitting on the motherboard and is therefore in memory all the time. This arrangement
dramatically simplifies the architecture.
It is important to note that there are quite a few technical dierences between a database
that was designed to be stored on a disk versus one that was built to be entirely resident in
memory. Theres a techie book
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on all those conceptual dierences if you really want to get
down into the details. What follows here is a brief summary of some of the key advantages of
SAP HANA over its aging disk-based cousins.
Pure In-Memory Database
With SAP HANA, all relevant data are available in main memory, which avoids the
performance penalty of disk I/O completely. Either disk or solid-state drives are still required
for permanent persistency in the event of a power failure or some other catastrophe. This
doesnt slow down performance, however, because the required backup operations to disk
can take place asynchronously as a background task.
Parallel Processing
Multiple CPUs can now process parallel requests in order to fully utilize the available
computing resources. So, not only is there a bigger pipe between the processor and
database, but this pipe can send a ood of data to hundreds of processors at the same time
so that they can crunch more data without waiting for anything.
Columnar and Row-Based Data Storage
Conceptually, a database table is a two-dimensional data structure with cells organized in
rows and columns, just like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Computer memory, in contrast, is
organized as a linear structure. To store a table in linear memory, two options exist: row-
based storage and column storage. A row-oriented storage system stores a table as a
sequence of records, each of which contains the elds of one row. Conversely, in column
storage the entries of a column are stored in contiguous memory locations. SAP HANA is a
hybrid database that uses both methods simultaneously to provide an optimal balance
between them.
The SAP HANA database allows the application developer to specify whether a table is to
be stored column-wise or row-wise. It also enables the developer to alter an existing table
from columnar to row-based and vice versa. The decision to use columnar or row-based
tables is typically a determined by how the data will be used and which method is the most
efficient for that type of usage.
Column-based tables have advantages in the following circumstances:
Calculations are typically executed on a single column or a few columns only.
The table is searched based on values of a few columns.
The table has a large number of columns.
The table has a large number of rows, so that columnar operations are required
(aggregate, scan, etc.).
High compression rates can be achieved because the majority of the columns contain
only few distinct values (compared to the number of rows).
Row-based tables have advantages in the following circumstances:
The application needs to only process a single record at one time. (This applies to many
selects and/or updates of single records.)
The application typically needs to access a complete record (or row).
The columns contain primarily distinct values so that the compression rate would be low.
Neither aggregations nor fast searching is required.
The table has a small number of rows (e. g., configuration tables).
Compression
Because of the innovations in hybrid row/column storage in SAP HANA, companies can
typically achieve between 5x and 10x compression ratios on the raw data. This means that
5TB of raw data can optimally fit onto an SAP HANA server that has 1TB of RAM. SAP typically
recommends that companies double the estimated compressed table data to determine the
amount of RAM needed in order to account for real-time calculations, swap space, OS and
other associated programs beyond just the raw table data.
Persistence Layer
The SAP HANA database persistence layer stores data in persistent disk volumes (either
hard disk or solid-state drives). The persistence layer ensures that changes are durable and
that the database can be restored to the most recent committed state after a restart. SAP
HANA uses an advanced delta-insert approach for rapid backup and logging. If power is lost,
the data in RAM is lost. However, because the persistence layer manages restore points and
backup at such high speeds (from RAM to SSD) and recovery from disk to RAM is so much
faster than from regular disk, you actually lose less data and recover much faster than in a
traditional disk-based architecture.
SAP HANA Architectural Overview
Now that weve discussed the key concepts underlying in-memory storage, we can focus
more specically on the SAP HANA architecture. As we noted earlier, conceptually SAP HANA
is very similar to most databases youre familiar with. Applications have to put data in and
take data out of the database, data sources have to interface with it, and it has to store and
manage data reliably. Despite these surface similarities, however, SAP HANA is quite
dierent under the hood than any database in the market. In fact, SAP HANA is much more
than just a database. It includes many tools and capabilities in the box that make it much
more valuable and versatile than a regular database. In reality, its a full-featured database
platform.
In what ways is SAP HANA unique? First, it is delivered as a pre-congured, pre-installed
appliance on certied hardware.
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This eliminates many of the typical activities and problems
you nd in regular databases. Second, it includes all of the standard application interfaces
and libraries so that developers can immediately get to work using it, without re-learning any
proprietary APIs.
SAP HANA in-memory appliance
Finally, SAP HANA comes with several ways to connect easily to nearly any source system
in either real-time or near real-time.
These features are designed to make SAP HANA as close to plug-and-play as it can be
and to make it a non-disruptive addition to your existing landscape. Well spend a few
moments here explaining these capabilities at a basic level. Well discuss them in much more
technical detail in the SAP HANA Architecture chapter.
Programming Interfaces for SAP HANA
SQL
SQL is the main interface for client applications. The SQL implementation of the SAP HANA
database is based on SQL 92 entry-level features and core features of SQL 99. However, it
oers several SQL extensions on top of this standard. These extensions are available for
creating tables as both row-based and column-based tables and for conversion between the
two formats. For most SQL statements it is irrelevant whether the table is column-based or
row-based. However, there are some features for example, time-based queries and
column-store specific parameters that are supported only for columnar tables.
SQLScript
The SAP HANA database has its own scripting language, named SQLScript, that oers
scripting capabilities that allow application-specic calculations to run inside the database.
SQLScript is similar conceptually to stored procedures, but it contains several modern
innovations that make it much more powerful and flexible.
MDX Interface
The SAP HANA database also supports MDX (MultiDimensional eXpressions), the de facto
standard for multidimensional queries. MDX can be used to connect a variety of analytics
applications like SAP Business Objects products and clients such as Microsoft Excel.
Engines
The core of the SAP HANA database contains several engines that are used for specic tasks.
The two primary engines are the planning engine and the calculation engine.
Planning Engine
The SAP HANA database contains a component called the planning engine that allows
financial planning applications to execute basic planning operations in the database layer.
Calculation Engine
What truly makes SAP HANA unique is that, in addition to its being a standard SQL database,
it also natively supports data calculation inside the database itself. By incorporating
procedural language support C++, Python, and ABAP directly into the database kernel
through a dedicated calculation engine, it can achieve exceptional performance because the
data do not need to be moved out of the database, processed, and then written back in.
Libraries
The technical details of communicating with the SAP HANA database are contained in a set of
included client libraries for standard platforms and clients. The following client libraries are
provided for accessing the SAP HANA database via SQL or MDX:
JDBC driver for Java clients
ODBC driver for Windows/Unix/Linux clients, especially for MS Office integration
DBSL (Database Shared Library) for ABAP
Application Function Library
SAP has leveraged its deep application knowledge from the ABAP stack to port specic
functionality as infrastructure components within SAP HANA to be consumed by any
application logic extension. Examples of common business functions are currency
conversion and calendar functionality.
SAP HANA Studio
The SAP HANA Studio is the primary interface for developers, administrators, and data
modelers. It is based on the open-source Eclipse framework, and it consists of three
perspectives: the administration console, the information modeler, and lifecycle
management.
The administration console of the studio allows system administrators to administer and
monitor the database. It includes database status information as well as functions to
start/stop the database, create backups, perform a recovery, change the conguration, and
so on.
The information modeler is used for modeling data. It enables users to create new data
models or modify existing ones.
The lifecycle management perspective provides an automated SAP HANA service pack
(SP) for updates using the SAP Software Update Manager for SAP HANA (SUM for SAP
HANA).
Data Modeling in SAP HANA
Business and IT users can either create on-the-y non-materialized data views or build
reusable ones on top of standard SQL tables via a very intuitive user interface, which utilizes
SQLScript and stored procedures to perform business logic on the data models. Information
models created in SAP HANA can be consumed directly by Business Objects BI clients or
indirectly by using the Universe/Semantic Layer built on top of SAP HANA views.
Information models in SAP HANA are a combination of attributes/dimensions and
measures. SAP HANA provides three types of modeling views:
1. Attribute views are built on dimensions or subject areas used for business analysis.
2. Analytical views are multidimensional views or OLAP cubes, which enable users to
analyze values from single-fact tables related to the dimensions in the attribute views.
3. Calculation views are used to create custom data sets to address complex business
requirement using database tables, attribute views, and analytical views in on-the-y
calculations.
In traditional databases, users experience bottlenecks when changing business
requirements require modications to the existing data model, which requires users to delete
and re-load data into materialized views. In contrast, in SAP HANA, dynamic data modeling
on the lowest granular level is loaded into the system. Raw data is constantly available in
memory for analytical purposes, and it is not pre-loaded in cache, physical aggregate tables,
index tables, or any other redundant data storage.
Data Provisioning for SAP HANA
SAP HANA oers both real-time replication and near real-time/batch replication to move
data from source systems to the SAP HANA database. Replication-based data provisioning
like Sybase Replication Server or SAP SLT (System Landscape Transformation) provide near
real-time synchronization of data sets between the source system and SAP HANA. After the
initial replication of historical records, the changed data are pushed from the source to SAP
HANA based on triggers such as table updates. SAP SLT can also be used to direct write
data back to the source system in scenarios where write back or round trip
synchronization to the SAP source system is needed.
ETL-based data provisioning is primarily accomplished with SAP BusinessObjects Data
Services (DS). DS loads snapshots of data periodically as a batch and is triggered from the
target system. The type of data provisioning tool used is primarily determined by the
business needs of the use case and the characteristics of the source system.
Real-Time Replication Using SLT
SLT replicator provides near-real-time and scheduled data replication from SAP source
systems to SAP HANA. It is based on SAPs proven System Landscape Optimization (SLO)
technology that has been used for many years for Near Zero Down Time upgrade and
migration projects. Trigger-Based Data Replication using SLT is based on capturing database
changes at a high level of abstraction in the source SAP system. It benets from being
database and OS agnostic, and it can parallelize database changes on multiple tables or by
segmenting large table changes. SLT can be installed on an existing SAP source system or as
an additional lightweight SAP system side-by-side with the source system.
Real-Time Replication with Direct Write/Write-back
SAP HANA also supports real-time replication with direct write using database shared library
(DBSL) connection. Using DBSL, the SAP HANA database can be connected as a secondary
database to an SAP ECC system and provide accelerated data processing for existing SAP
applications. Applications can use the DBSL on the application server layer to simultaneously
write to traditional databases and the SAP HANA database.
Extraction (ETL) / Periodic Load
The ETL-based data load scenario uses SAP BusinessObjects DataServices to load the
relevant business data from virtually any source system (SAP and non-SAP) to the SAP HANA
database. SAP BusinessObjects Data Services is a proven ETL tool that supports broad
connectivity to databases, applications, legacy, le formats, and unstructured data. It
provides the modeling environment to model data ows from one or more source systems
along with transformations and data cleansing.
SAP HANA Database Administration
The SAP HANA Studio Administration Console provides an all-in-one environment for System
Monitoring, Back-up & Recovery, and User provisioning.
System Monitoring
The Administration console provides tools to monitor the systems status, its services, and
the consumption of its resources. Administrators are notied by an alert mechanism when
critical situations arise. Analytics and statistics on historical monitoring data are also
provided to enable ecient data center operations and for planning future resource
allocations.
Backup & Recovery
The Administration console in the SAP HANA Studio supports the following scenarios:
Recovery to the last data backup
Recovery to both the last and previous data backups
Recovery to last state before the crash
Point-in-time recovery
Storage snapshots (SP7)
Log replay on storage snapshots (SP7)
Scale-out support (new hosts are backed up automatically, also added in SP7)
In the event of disaster scenarios such as res, power outages, earthquakes or hardware
failures, SAP HANA supports Hot Standby using synchronous mirroring with the redundant
data center concept including a redundant SAP HANA system in addition to Cold
Standby using a standby system within one SAP HANA landscape, where the failover is
triggered automatically.
User Provisioning
SAP HANA supports user provisioning with authentication, role-based security and analysis
authorization using analytic privileges. Analytical privileges provide security to the analytical
objects based on a set of attribute values. These values can be applied to a set of users by
assigning them to user/role.
SAP HANA SP7 Update
Ever since SAP HANA was initially released in 2010, SAP has demonstrated an unwavering
commitment to innovation and continual product improvements. In the previous service
packs (SP5/SP6), SAP added extensive new functionality, such as collapsing the architectural
layers between application and data processing, as well as converging database and
application services into a single, in-memorybased architecture. SAP HANA SP5 also supplied
numerous capabilities such as enhanced security, high availability via data replication, more
sophisticated text analysis, and an array of functionality known as SAP HANA Extended
Application Services to provide developers access to the database via a consumption
model over HTTP. Taken together, these improvements greatly bolstered SAP HANA
proficiency in large-scale data center deployments.
With SAP HANA SP6, SAP builds on this solid legacy by debuting SAP HANA smart data
access technology. This technology helps enterprises dynamically derive real-time insights
across heterogeneous sources such as Hadoop. New in-memory spatial capabilities in SAP
HANA enable organizations to uncover richer and more meaningful signals from business and
geospatial data. And the completion of the integration of Sybase data management with SAP
HANA will further transform customers end-to-end data management landscape.
SAP HANA SP7 improvements can be broken into three primary categories:
1. Enhanced information processing to help customers get the most from their data.
2. Augmented developer and DBA productivity to deliver applications more quickly.
3. Operational improvements to extend performance and reliability.
Enhanced information processing
Managing the massive data volumes that characterize Big Data environments is very costly: it
takes a lot of time, requires additional, often redundant storage and network capacity, and
mandates superuous maintenance activities. It also delivers results more slowly to users.
Thus, avoiding unnecessary large-scale data movements is a core best practice for optimal
Big Data productivity; its simply better and more ecient to bring the computation to the
data, rather than the other way around. This tactic is particularly powerful when combined
with in-memory processing.
By expanding upon the inherently powerful SAP HANA information processing capabilities,
SAP enables application developers to leverage the full strength of the database through
analytics libraries, predictive results exploration, text search, geospatial data, and soon.
Developers are able to process Big Data and combine the results with real-time analytics, in a
single query. This also makes it feasible to access and synthesize enterprise data regardless
of location, size, and representation without needing to move any information.
SAP HANA smart data access
SAP HANA smart data access provides data virtualization capabilities that expedite dynamic
data queries across heterogeneous relational and non-relational database systems such as
Hadoop, SAP

Sybase

Adaptive Server

Enterprise (SAP Sybase ASE), SAP

Sybase

IQ,
Teradata, and SAP HANA itself. In SP7, support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server was
added as well as the ability to use Sybase Event Stream Processor as a data source. Using
the generic adaptor framework, other data sources can be added as well, provided those data
sources support ODBC.
SAP is bringing the complete potential of the SAP HANA platform to provide data
virtualization, which will simplify data queries across heterogeneous sources, while optimizing
response time based on where data is stored and how it is used. SAP HANA smart data
access helps customers construct real-time big data applications with fast and secure query
access to data across their business networks, while minimizing unnecessary data transfers
and data redundancy.
Spatial data processing
SAP has expanded the scope of the SAP HANA platform with the incorporation of new spatial
data processing capabilities that combine geospatial data with business data, resulting in a
new dimension for real-time business applications. Customers and ISVs are able to process
blends of spatial, predictive, and text analysis results within one SQL statement, providing
simplied development of intelligent and intuitive location-based solutions. Additionally, SAP
HANA customers are able to utilize geo-content at no additional charge, making it possible to
seamlessly develop and deploy spatially-based solutions using native in-memory processing,
mapping content, and services.
These new spatial capabilities, content, and services will be exceptionally useful for
industries that require real-time, mission-critical location solutions for planning, monitoring,
and analytics, combined with faster performance, and decreased total cost of ownership
(TCO).
For example, energy infrastructure companies can employ the spatial processing
capabilities in SAP HANA to immediately identify and take action on high-risk pipeline
components based on numerous variables, all in real-time. This newfound agility will help
reduce potential outages, maintenance costs, and the risk of catastrophic failure.
For more information, see the SAP HANA Spatial Reference.
Extended natural language processing
SAP HANA SP6 and SP7 furnish developers with an assortment of new and augmented
techniques for working with natural language via full text and fuzzy searches. In particular,
fuzzy search now incorporates compound words, column conditions, predened columns, and
additional lter conditions. Text analysis has been strengthened with new language
identification intelligence, along with greater fact extraction throughput.
SAP HANA multilingual text mining capabilities have also been enhanced to support
additional languages such as Simplified Chinese.
This makes it much easier to measure and monitor client sentiment instantaneously, and
thus use the voice of the customer to pinpoint sentiments, problems, and requests. The
result: better, more informed decisions.
Extremely large data warehouse with integrated near-line store
Fully exploiting the power of Big Data means gaining insight into the entire range of the
enterprises information. Its now possible to fuse data from SAP HANA and SAP Sybase IQ
into a single logical database thats visible from SAP Business Warehouse. This means that
customers can now achieve real-time, in-memory processing with near-line storage at
petascale data size, along with full visibility across all information siloes.
Integrated stream processing
Complex event processing has proven to be one of the most prolic sources for Big Data. SAP
Sybase Event Stream Processor (ESP) is now integrated with SAP HANA, simplifying
comprehensive integration with machine and event-driven data.
This amalgamation means that customers can now construct queries and applications
that associate structured and unstructured data, including the massive streams of
information captured by SAP Sybase ESP.
Augmented developer and DBA productivity
Enterprises rely on their teams of software developers and DBAs to create the next
generation of applications to properly leverage Big Data. SAP HANA SP6 supports these
critical constituents with a collection of powerful capabilities aimed at increasing their
effectiveness.
Simplified predictive application development
The application function modeler in SAP HANA studio presents model-driven access to native
functions and predictive algorithms, which helps speed the software development process.
Meanwhile, SAP HANA Extended Application Services (SAP HANA XS) provide a faster, more
open, and highly exible application and web server services supporting HTML5 and server-
side JavaScript. This reduces TCO and development times, thanks to the minimized layers
required to deploy applications. It also provides an enhanced architecture with a collection of
essential capabilities such as:
High availability failover.
Expanded OData support.
Authentication.
Increased connectivity options.
New lighter-weight, browser-based IDEs for SAP HANA native development.
SAP HANA SP6 provides an easy integration between SAP HANA studio and SAP HANA
repository. This lets developers browse design-time related objects in the repository, as well
as use context-sensitive menus to perform the most regularly used commands related to the
repository. A command line interface is available, too.
SAP HANA SQL has been expanded, with new statements for access control, data
denition, and system management. There are also many new SQL functions to assist
developers and DBAs. SP7 built on these changes, adding even more SQL statements and
functions. For more information, see the SAP HANA SQL and System Views Reference.
SAP HANA SP6 also expands on the databases SQLScript capabilities, including ARRAY,
APPLY_FILTER, column view parameter binding, and scalar user-dened functions. The SAP
HANA SQLScript Editor has beneted from enrichments such as a wizard to create new
procedures, aids for building templates, and noteworthy new debugging capabilities.
Developers and DBAs are now free to dene the appropriate access techniques for each
deployed application package, including:
Authentication method.
Anonymous SQL connection enablement.
Cache control.
Cross-origin requests.
Default entry.
Integrated data provisioning and modeling
SAP HANA SP6 introduces the Data Provisioning Workbench. This is a new editor inside SAP
HANA Studio that furnishes developers and DBAs with a common unied data model and user
interface for end-to-end replication scenarios. It makes it much easier to create, develop,
administer, and manage data provisioning workows. SAP HANA open unied architecture
supports administration and monitoring API Services for all Data Replication components.
Enhanced data services
SAP HANA SP6 supplies database administrators with a native extract, transform, load (ETL)
solution that boosts performance, and an innovative, guided advisor that proles and
assesses the quality of incoming data. Traditionally, ETL tasks have proven to be some of the
more problematic areas of conguring a comprehensive Big Data environment. Consequently,
by streamlining and simplifying this essential process, SAP lets developers and DBAs focus
on their main responsibilities rather than time-consuming ancillary tasks.
Embedded interactive education
SAP HANA interactive education is a pre-packaged, interactive learning oering consisting of
business applications, data models, sample data and application code, and data generation
tools. It serves as a source of best practice implementation examples, and accelerates
development of quality customer and partner content. This approach augments the
knowledge of developers and DBAs, while furnishing a baseline model for use in SAP
educational materials that customers and partners can tap for self-study.
SAP HANA interactive education contains 17 models across 22 database tables, with
scalable data record sizes via a congurable data generator. Its also aligned with SAP HANA
Academy educational content, and base for openSAP courses.
Enterprise-wide data modeling
SAP HANA, in concert with SAP

Sybase

PowerDesigner

, generates and shares the

necessary metadata to drive end-to-end data modeling, from planning to implementation.
This integration makes it possible for developers and DBAs to close the loop with complete
visibility into the full range of the organizations data. They can then build more
comprehensive, and accurate, applications and reports.
More sophisticated monitoring
DBAs benet from a collection of monitoring improvements to SAP HANA studio, such as
additional visibility into the costs of statement execution, the ability to repeat SQL statement
execution, and supplementary metrics and alerts of critical situations such as:
Savepoint duration.
Column-store unloads.
Status of Python trace.
Operational improvements
Enterprises are increasingly relying on Big Data to drive critical business decisions. This
dependency demands a fresh look at key technology infrastructure, with a particular
emphasis on reliability, security, and high availability.
Streamlined configuration
The new SAP HANA Platform Lifecycle Manager incorporates the major functions of the
Software Update Manager for SAP HANA, and streamlines major administrative tasks such
as:
Integrating the SAP HANA system in the landscape.
Administering SAP HANA systems and hosts.
Managing SAP HANA applications content.
Updating SAP HANA systems with single support packages as well as support package
stacks.
Managing additional components.
Deploying products and transports.
The essential tasks of backup and recovery have also been improved through
enhancements to the backup editor including the Backup Wizard in SAP HANA studio.
Its now possible to view details about the most recent successful backup, along with
information about active backups. Administrators are able to delete old backups, as well as
split data backups into les of limited size. They may also instruct the Recovery Wizard to
ensure that all required log backups are available before starting the recovery process.
Finally, its now possible to copy a database in a scale-out environment by using SAP HANA
backup and recovery capabilities.
Enhanced disaster recovery
SAP HANA SP6 introduces new asynchronous and asymmetrical long-distance remote data
center failover capabilities. This supports maximum data protection performance for disaster
recovery across long geographic distances (>50 km) with enhanced system availability and
recovery capabilities via Asynchronous System Replication (based on transactional sub-
system). Additionally, it expands system availability and business continuity with near-zero
downtime for upgrades, and patches targeted at disaster recovery systems. It also reduces
eort and improves exibility with enhanced system copies, with snapshot support and
asymmetrical disaster recovery support systems. SAP HANA SP6 also extends its data
center replication capabilities for upgraded system availability and business continuity.
Open hardware architecture for tailored data center integration
SAP has introduced an initiative to drive the availability and the openness of the SAP HANA
platform. It includes tailored data center integration to provide customers the choice to
integrate the SAP HANA platform with their existing network storage infrastructure.
Moreover, the new program will also involve the existing certication program for SAP
HANA, which targets third-party tools such as business intelligence (BI), ETL and
backup/recovery products.
In addition, SAP HANA SP6 concludes the pledged integration with Sybase Data
Management technologies such as:
SAP Sybase ASE.
SAP Sybase IQ.
SAP Sybase Event Stream Processor (SAP Sybase ESP).
SAP Data Services.
SAP

Sybase

SQL Anywhere

.
SAP Sybase Replication Server.
SAP Sybase PowerDesigner.
Mobile synchronization
Mobile devices are an increasingly popular method for capturing and working with enterprise
data. The SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere mobile and embedded database now supports bi-
directional synchronization with SAP HANA across wireless networks. This gives authorized
users the ability to securely interact with their data on the device of their choice.
System management
The new and enriched SAP HANA data center management environment provides extended
system management, visibility, and monitoring capabilities for more productive and eective
enterprise system administration. It oers enhanced table distribution and partitioning
management, for both scale out and scale up, along with tracing capabilities for high-
performing, scalable systems. It also delivers a comprehensive collection of security
improvements designed to safeguard information through:
Authentication mechanisms that now include SAML 2.0 and X.509 client certificates.
Encryption via automatic inclusion of the secure store le system (SSFS) in backup and
recovery.
Access authorization that covers validity period, time zone, email address, and locale.
Additional privilege categories.
Password configuration directly through SAP HANA studio.
Supplementary audit logging capabilities for actions such as session disconnects,
dropping tables, repository interaction, and backups/recoveries.
A secure internal credential repository that permits safe storage of credentials for
outbound connections from SAP HANA applications.
Improved authentication and access control options for connections to remote data
sources that will be presented as if they were stored in SAP HANA.
For more information on SP6 features and capabilities, please see the SP6 Release Notes.
SP 7 incorporates additional security features, including
SPNEGO support for SAP HANA XS
SAP Logon Ticket and SAP Assertion Ticket support
Flexibility around password changes
The ability to set a validity period for a user in SAP HANA Studio
The ability to create users by copying existing users
New privileges for repository change management, debugging SQLScript code, and smart
data access
Support for SAPs new cryptographic library, CommonCryptoLib
SSL support for system replication
For more details, see the SP7 Release Notes and the SP7 Security Overview presentation.
SAP HANA Hardware
SAP HANA is delivered as a exible, multipurpose appliance that combines SAP software
components optimized on hardware provided by SAPs leading hardware partners such as
Cisco, Dell, IBM, HP, Hitachi, NEC, and Fujitsu, using the latest Intel Xeon E7 processors. SAP
HANA servers are sold in t-shirt sizes ranging from Extra-Small (128GB RAM) all the way
up to Extra Large (>2TB RAM). Because RAM is the key technology for SAP HANA, SAP uses
the amount of RAM to determine the servers t-shirt size as well as its price. SAPs underlying
philosophy is the more processors (cores), the better, so it does not impose a per-
processor charge for SAP HANA.
With the current certied Scale-Out options from SAP HANA hardware providers,
companies can deploy up to 16 Extra Large server nodes into on logical database instance,
which equates to a maximum of 32TB of RAM and 128 CPUs with 1280 total cores. SAP is
currently testing a 60 node SAP HANA instance in the labs.
The hardware vendor provides factory pre-installation for the hardware, the OS, and the
SAP software. It may also add specic best-practices and conguration. The vendor nalizes
the installation with on-site setup and conguration of the SAP HANA components, including
deployment in the customer data center, connectivity to the network, Solution Manager
setup, SAP router connectivity, and SSL support. The customer then establishes connectivity
to the source systems and clients, including the deployment of additional replication
components on the source system(s) and, potentially, the installation and conguration of
SAP BusinessObjects business analytics client components.
Although the term appliance suggests a black box that plugs into an outlet, in reality
installing SAP HANA requires on-site activities and coordination on a high technical level. The
appliance approach for SAP HANA systems reduces the implementation and maintenance
eort signicantly, but it does not eliminate it completely. Furthermore, as of SP7, SAP HANA
can be deployed in another way, through the SAP HANA tailored data center integration,
which is aimed at large customers with a substantial investment in storage.
SAP HANA Use Cases
Because SAP HANA is both a database (in the traditional sense) and a database platform (in
the modern sense), it can be used in multiple scenarios and deployed in several ways. SAP
HANA performs equally well for analytic and transactional applications. Due to its hybrid table
structure, however, it really shines in scenarios that involve both types of data. Its important
to remember that SAP has developed SAP HANA to be a non-disruptive addition to existing
landscapes. With this point in mind, well discuss the key use cases that are most typical for
SAP HANA deployments today, and well consider some potential future scenarios.
In its current form, SAP HANA can be used for four basic types of use case: agile data
mart, a primary database for the SAP Business Suite, a primary database for SAP Business
Warehouse, and a development platform for new applications. As SAP HANA matures and
SAP renovates its entire portfolio of solutions to take advantage of all the horsepower in SAP
HANA, you can expect to see nearly every product that SAP provides supported natively on
SAP HANA as a primary database, as well as many more new native-HANA applications.
For a listing of hundreds of permutations of these core use cases and details on current
SAP HANA live customers by industry and function, please visit the SAP HANA Use Case
Repository.
Agile Data Mart
The earliest scenarios where SAP HANA has been deployed in production are as a stand-
alone data mart for a specic use case. In this scenario, SAP HANA acts as the central hub to
collect data from a few SAP and non-SAP source systems and then display some fairly simple
and focused analytics in a single-purpose dashboard for users.
This use case has the advantages of (1) being completely non-disruptive to the existing
landscape and (2) providing an immediate, focused solution to an urgent business analytics
problem. These projects are also typically completed very quickly, sometimes in just a few
weeks, because the business problem is well known and the relevant data and source
systems are easily identied. SAP HANA is set up as a stand-alone system in the landscape,
which is then connected to the source systems and displayed to a small number of users in a
simple Web-based or mobile user interface. This process involves zero disruption to the
existing landscape, and companies get instant value because they can now do things that
were impossible before they acquired SAP HANA.
Additionally, the development cycles for these use cases are typically very short, because
most of these scenarios use a standard SAP BusinessObjects front end with self-service
analytics or Microsoft Excel. We label these systems agile data marts because they perform
a few of the same functions as a traditional data mart ETL, data modeling, analytic front
end but they are very fast to set up and flexible to use.
The key advantage of SAP HANA for the agile data mart scenarios is that these scenarios
were either completely impossible to build in a traditional database architecture or they were
so cost prohibitive that companies could not justify building them. The scenarios might be
straightforward, but the deficiencies of the old database world made them unfixable.
You can access the videos listed below to listen to a few highly satised customers talking
enthusiastically about their agile data mart scenarios with SAP HANA.
Nongfu Spring
Medtronic
SAP provides a special licensing bundle to build an agile data mart use case with SAP
HANA that includes the extractors and connectors needed to obtain data from source
systems and the front-end tools needed to build analytical applications on top of the data.
SAP Business Suite
The second major scenario where SAP HANA is being used is to accelerate transactions and
reports inside the SAP Business Suite. As of mid-2013, SAP HANA can now be used as the
primary database under every application in the SAP Business Suite (excl. SAP SRM). SAP
HANA can be set up as either a stand-alone system in the landscape, side-by-side with the
database under the SAP Business Suite applications or as the primary database for the entire
SAP Business Suite. In this scenario, however, SAP HANA is being used to o load some of
the transactions or reports that typically take a long time (hours or days) to run, but it is not
being used as the primary database under the application.
We explained earlier that certain transactions or reports inside the SAP Business Suite
can be very slow, due primarily to the slow I/O of the disk-based database underneath the
system and the huge requests for data generated by these transactions and reports.
Budgeting and planning transactions in SAP require the system to call data from many
dierent tables in order to run its calculations and present a result. Reports are also very
data-intensive, involving vast amounts of data contained in multiple tables. For both
transactions and reports, then, the application must request the data from the database, load
it into a buer table in the SAP application server, run the algorithm or calculation, and then
display the results. Sometimes, that completes the process. Other times, however, the user
needs to make some adjustments to the results and then save the changes back to the
database. Quite often, this process is iterative, meaning that the user must run the report or
transaction, review the results, make some changes, and then run the report or transaction
again to reect the changes. Imagine a scenario where every time the transaction or report
runs, it takes one hour to nish (from when you press Enter until the results are displayed
on the screen). What if it took several hours or even a day or two to run that transaction or
report? Clearly, system latency can seriously slow down the entire company.
Please see the chapter on SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA for many more
details.
Eliminating System Latency: The Case of Hilti
To illustrate severe system latency, lets consider the case of Hilti, the global construction
tools manufacturer. Hilti used to generate a list of 9 million customers from 53 million
database records in its SAP ERP system in about three hours. A salesperson used to hit
Enter and then return three hours later to obtain the results. Signicantly, 99% of the time
the system took to generate that list came from simply retrieving the records o the disk-
based database. Once the data were conveyed to the SAP application, the algorithm only took
a few fractions of a second to calculate. This major and unnecessary delay was the
epitome of latency.
To eliminate this latency problem, Hilti set up an SAP HANA system next to their
production SAP ERP system and then copied the relevant tables into SAP HANA. The results?
Hilti can now run the exact same report in about three seconds. In addition, installing SAP
HANA was totally non-disruptive. It required no changes to the algorithm, no changes to the
production database, and no changes to the user interface. In fact, the users didnt even
realize there had been any change to the system until they ran the report for the rst time.
They expected the process to take several hours as always so they got up from their
desks to do something else. To their complete surprise, the completed report appeared on
their screen before they could get out of their chairs. Watch Hiltis SAP HANA story here.
Technically, there is very little that needs to be done to accelerate a few problematic
transactions or reports in an SAP Business Suite application. Well discuss this topic that in
detail in the chapter on the Accelerated SAP Business Suite. In summary, SAP has already
delivered the content for most of the truly problematic transactions and reports as part of the
latest service packs for the SAP Business Suite for free. Once the relevant tables have
been replicated to the SAP HANA system, there is a quick change in the conguration screen
to redirect the transaction to read from the SAP HANA database instead of the primary
database and thats about it. Users log in as they normally do, execute the transaction or
report, and the results come back incredibly fast. SAP has also set up special xed-price,
xed-scope SAP rapid deployment solutions (RDS) to assist customers in the rapid
implementation of these accelerated transactions and reports.
Accelerated SAP ERP Transactions and Reports
You can expect to see many more problem transactions and reports generated at
previously unimaginable speeds as SAP introduces enhancement pack updates to SAP HANA.
Heres a short listing of some of the SAP ERP transactions and reports that are currently
available:
Sales Reporting
Quickly identify top customers and products by channel with real-time sales reporting.
Improve order fulllment rates and accelerate key sales processes at the same time, with
instant analysis of your credit memo and billing list.
Financial Reporting
Obtain immediate insights across your business into revenue, customers, accounts
payable and receivable, open and overdue items, top general ledger transaction, and days
sales outstanding (DSO). Make the right financial decisions, armed with real-time information.
Shipping Reporting
Rely on real-time shipping reporting for complete stock overview analysis. You can better
plan and monitor outbound delivery and assess and optimize stock levels with accurate
information at your fingertips.
Purchasing Reporting
Gain timely insights into purchase orders, vendors, and the movement of goods with real-
time purchasing reporting. Make better purchasing decisions, based on a complete analysis
of your order history.
Master Data Reporting
Obtain real-time reporting on your main master data including customer, vendor, and
material lists for improved productivity and accuracy.
SAP Solutions for Accelerated Applications
SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10. 0 Powered by SAP HANA
The power of SAP HANA dramatically enhances unied planning, budgeting, forecasting and
consolidation processes. Powered by SAP HANA, SAP BusinessObjects Planning and
Consolidation 10.0, version for SAP NetWeaver aims to increase agility by helping
enterprises harness big data to plan better and act faster with better insight into all relevant
information and rapid write-back. The application is planned to be the rst enterprise
performance management (EPM) application to support the SAP Business Warehouse
component, powered by SAP HANA announced last year. SAP intends to allow customers
running the application that have invested in SAP HANA to leverage the power of in-memory
computing technology to boost performance by accelerating planning and consolidation
processing.
SAP CO-PA Accelerator
SAP CO-PA Accelerator dramatically improves the speed and depth of working with massive
volumes of nancial data in ERP for faster and more ecient protability cycles. The solution
helps nance departments to perform real-time protability reporting on large scale data
volumes and to conduct instant, on-the-y analysis at any level of granularity, aggregation,
and dimension. Furthermore, nance teams can run cost allocations at signicantly faster
processing time and be empowered with easy, self-service access to trusted protability
information.
This solution can also be implemented alongside the wider SAP BusinessObjects
Enterprise Performance Management solutions portfolio to help organizations create a
complete picture of their cost and profit drivers.
You can try the solution on your own with the SAP CO-PA Accelerator TestDrive and visit the
website to discover how organizations are generating signicant business value with the
solution.
SAP Finance and Controlling Accelerator
SAP Finance and Controlling Accelerator supports finance departments with instant access to
vast amounts of ledger, cost and material ledger data in ERP as well as easy exploration of
trusted and detailed data. The solution oers four implementation scenarios Financial
Accounting Controlling Material Ledger and Production Cost Analysis, which can be
implemented individually or in any combination.
The power of SAP HANA combined with SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
empowers nancial professionals to perform faster reporting and analyses, accelerate
period-end closing, and make smarter decisions.
SAP Sales Pipeline Analysis
With SAP Sales Pipeline Analysis powered by SAP HANA, sales departments can get real-time
insight into massive volumes of pipeline data in CRM while performing on the y calculations
and in-depth analysis on any business dimension. Sales managers can now leverage the
power of SAP HANA combined with SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for
complete and instant visibility of accurate and consolidated pipeline data. They can react
more quickly to changing sales conditions with real-time information, and accelerate deals
through the pipeline with powerful and user-driven analytics. As a result, best-run businesses
can unlock hidden revenue opportunities as well as signicantly increase prots and sales
effectiveness.
SAP Customer Segmentation Accelerator
The SAP Customer Segmentation Accelerator helps marketing departments build highly
specic segmentations on high volumes of customer data and at unparalleled speed.
Marketers can now work with large amounts of granular data to better understand customer
demands, behaviors and preferences targeting the precise audience with the right oers
across every customer segments, tactics and channels. The power of SAP HANA combined
with SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) empowers marketers to maximize
prots with highly tailored campaigns, dramatically reduce the cost of marketing by targeting
more easily high margin customers, and react quicker to optimize campaigns and tactics.
You can view a demonstration of the solution and discover how organizations like yours are
generating significant business value by visiting this website.
SAP HANA Rapid Deployment Solutions
A great majority of these solutions powered by SAP HANA can be deployed as rapid-
deployment solutions in order to ensure a quick time to value. The rapid deployment solutions
streamline the implementation process bringing together software, best practices, and
services ensuring maximum predictability with fixed cost and scope editions.
SAP Rapid Deployment solutions leverage an innovative delivery model to accelerate the
implementation times and lower risk. Implementation is supported by a standardized
methodology, accelerators developed uniquely for each oering, and predened best
practices, meeting typical business requirements to address the customers immediate
needs. Even as customers benet from prebuilt functionality, these solutions provide a
platform designed to evolve and extend as the customers business grows.
SAP HANA Rapid Deployment Solutions
A great majority of SAP HANA use cases can be deployed as rapid deployment solutions in
order to ensure a quick time to value. SAP Rapid Deployment solutions combine SAP software
with content based on best practices and an innovative delivery model with a predened
scope and at predictable costs. This helps to accelerate the implementation times and lower
risk.
Background
Rapid-deployment solutions came to exist in response to customers need for simple, ready
to consume solutions, offering integration and responding to business needs.
Organizations that deploy SAP HANA can leverage the innovative SAP Rapid Deployment
solutions delivery model to accelerate the implementation times and lower the deployment
project risks such as scope creep, schedule and budget overages. Implementation is
supported by a standardized methodology and content based on best practices developed
uniquely for each offering.
The best practices provide a solid foundation for SAP Rapid Deployment solutions and
consist of tested conguration and implementation content, methodologies and step-by-step
approaches to run specific key processes with minimal implementation effort.
Even as customers benet from the pre-dened scope and prebuilt functionality, these
solutions do not limit the customers in terms of scope. An SAP HANA rapid-deployment
solution provides the SAP HANA customer with a platform designed to evolve and extend as
the customers business grows. In addition, you get immediate value through prebuilt
analytical content that comes with most of the SAP HANA rapid-deployment solutions.
While rapid-deployment solutions are traditionally available for on-premise deployment,
now they are also available to be deployed in the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.
Rapid-deployment solutions allow customers to evaluate, implement and go live with
HANA-based solutions on the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud in weeks, further simplifying and
helping companies to achieve real-time enterprise faster.
By deploying rapid-deployment solutions in the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, the customer
can be more competitive, by shortening the time-to-value, accelerating the speed of
innovation, reducing the total cost of implementation, and reducing the implementation risks.
As part of the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud oering, rapid-deployment solutions are
available for on-boarding customers to the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, but also pre-
assembled and ready-to-use. This combination of rapid-deployment solutions and a
deployment in the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud helps customers to speed up adoption of new
technologies and processes and to have a fast return on invest.
Availability of SAP HANA rapid-deployment solutions
SAP Rapid Deployment solutions are available through SAP, as well as SAP partners. The
oerings from SAP and partners can be found on SAP Store. The broad portfolio of rapid-
deployment solutions for SAP HANA covers areas like BW on HANA, Suite on HANA, Big Data
and Analytics on HANA, Enterprise Performance Management on HANA, Finance on HANA,
and Analytics on HANA. All of the solutions come to speed up the implementation of SAP
HANA by delivering documentation and content based on best practices. A good example is
the SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment solution. With the SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment
solution, customers get pre-congured content in form of pre-built reports covering a broad
range of operational reporting that oer immediate insight into essential business
operations, are easy to use and can be customized based on specific business needs.
Another example is the SAP Business Intelligence Adoption rapid-deployment solution. It
helps customers make the right choice of the right reporting tool for the right reports. It
provides a complete oering for a successful BI adoption for SAP BW, SAP HANA, and the
SAP ERP application and includes pre-built reports in all relevant ERP areas.
Besides packages that speed up the implementation of business use cases there are
packages that focus on a smooth technical transition from an existing SAP implementation to
HANA like the rapid database migration of SAP BW to SAP HANA or the rapid database
migration of SAP Business Suite to SAP HANA. Those solutions enable you to replace the
actual underlying relational database of SAP BW or SAP Business Suite with SAP HANA as a
database quickly and without disruption.
Customers implementing SAP ERP can benet from a holistic implementation scenario for
SAP Business Suite combined with the newest technologies from SAP the SAP ERP
Foundation rapid-deployment solution. The SAP ERP foundation extension is leveraging SAP
Business Suite powered by SAP HANA by combining it with complementary SAP innovations
from UX, Mobility, Analytics, Cloud and Technology to provide a complete suite of
applications, fully integrated, with consistent master data, enabling real time information,
anywhere and anytime throughout the organization.
To support a fast implementation of the SAP ERP foundation extension at aordable cost,
several rapid-deployment solutions have been pre-assembled that are covering business
application, user experience and real-time analytics.
For customers planning to implement new use cases for Big Data based on SAP HANA
various rapid-deployment solutions are available. Here are two examples:
The new solution SAP HANA Customer Engagement Intelligence can be implemented quickly
with the corresponding SAP HANA Customer Engagement Intelligence rapid-deployment
solution. This rapid-deployment solution delivers additional value with the included content,
like a prebuilt integration into SAP CRM, pre-dened SAP BusinessObject reports, and
detailed configuration documentation.
The SAP Predictive Analytics Content Adoption rapid-deployment solution helps to quickly
implement a predened predictive analysis use case for a variety of lines of business and
industry scenarios. For a smooth and rapid implementation the solution delivers prebuilt SAP
BusinessIntelligence content and precongured content for both SAP and data sources from
non-SAP software.
SAP Business Warehouse Powered by SAP HANA
In this scenario, companies replace the entire database under their SAP BW 7.3 system with
SAP HANA. They simply swap out whatever disk-based database their system is currently
running on with SAP HANA in just a few weeks.
8
Recall from our earlier discussion of early SAP in-memory projects that SAP BW was the
rst SAP application that was renovated and updated to natively run on SAP HANA as its
primary run-time database. Most of these renovations were necessary to more closely tie the
SAP BW application to the SAP HANA database. In a disk-based architecture, SAP BW is
separated from the database by an abstraction layer, essentially making it impossible for the
application to see anything in the database other than bare tables. Once the abstraction
layer is removed, the SAP BW application cannot only see everything in the database, but
the entire database is designed around the needs of that specic application. This opens up a
whole new world of possibilities for SAP customers.
With SAP HANA, SAP BW now generates turbo-charged query responses natively, without
the need for any side-car accelerators or crazy multi-layered third-party architectures.
Because the entire database under the SAP BW system physically sits in memory, every
activity not just queries is executed orders of magnitude faster.
SAP released the 7.3 version of SAP BW in general availability in early 2011 and then
released the SAP HANA-enabled version into general availability in April 2012. SAP NW BW
on SAP HANA is now Generally Available to all customers globally. All of the SAP HANA-
specic enhancements were bundled into the SPS05 update, and customers who had already
upgraded to 7.3 could install the service pack and migrate to SAP HANA in a matter of days
(seriously).
Red Bull was the rst live customer of SAP BW on SAP HANA. They told the world about
their amazing 10-DAY project to get up and running at the Sapphire Now 2011 conference in
Madrid, Spain. The whole eort was incredibly non-disruptive. SAP is seeing similar results
with the other customers in the ramp-up project. All of the changes on the SAP BW side are
delivered under the hood in the service pack, and the database migration can be performed
without any changes to the SAP BW application. All of the customers content and
conguration are completely unchanged. Have a look at the end-to-end migration guide for a
great overview of the SAP BW database migration process. You should also read a great blog
post by John Appleby, a consultant who performed one of the rst SAP BW on SAP HANA
migrations.
The speed and exibility acquired by replacing the old database with SAP HANA reect
two fundamental benets of keeping the entire database in memory: (1) This architecture
eliminates the need to send huge amounts of data between application and DB servers, and
(2) it allows users to execute performance-critical operations directly on the data in the
database itself. Basically, running SAP BW on SAP HANA completely eliminates nearly every
one of the nasty things that historically slowed down the system, from both a user
perspective and an administration perspective. Well explore all of the technical
enhancements in the SAP BW on SAP HANA chapter.
SAP oers a specic run-time only license option to utilize SAP HANA as the primary
persistence layer for SAP BW. If you are already an SAP BW customer, the company oers
several options for license credits based on previous SAP BW and BWA licensing. Consult
your SAP account executive for the details. SAP has also set up a special migration fund to
provide professional services credits to migrate to SAP BW on SAP HANA. If you want to
implement some scenarios based on SAP BW powered by HANA, the available rapid-
deployment solutions will help to migrate your data, make your SAP BW system lean, and to
prot from new reports and use cases. Here is a choice of the available solutions including
SAP BW powered by SAP HANA:
Rapid database migration of SAP BW to SAP HANA supports the migration of an
existing SAP Business Warehouse installation to the SAP HANA database system without
disruption of the existing Business Warehouse content in. Go live in only 810 weeks.
Rapid data migration to SAP BW supports the migration of data from virtually any
existing data warehouse system to SAP BW, optionally running in the SAP HANA
Enterprise Cloud.
SAP BW Near-Line Storage rapid-deployment solution helps reducing the data stored
in the database for SAP BW by leveraging a nearline storage based on SAP Sybase IQ. By
doing this, SAP BW gets easier to maintain and the underlying database gets leaner,
whilst the archived data is still right at your fingertips.
SAP Business Intelligence Adoption rapid-deployment solution provides a complete
oering for a successful BI adoption for SAP BW, SAP HANA (optional), and the SAP ERP
application and helps customers make the right design choices on how to consume
existing and new content. Go live in as little as 310 weeks.
SAP HANA CRM Analytics rapid-deployment solution helps you quickly analyze large
volumes of data in real time, using role-based reports and dashboards to better
understand your customers. Go live in as little as 12 weeks.
SAP HANA Asset Analytics rapid-deployment solution, oers visual simplicity in
analysis. It uses a new BW data model optimized for HANA, and supports the BI platform,
and options for mobility. It leverages operational and planning data from SAP EAM plant
maintenance.
SAP Enterprise Risk Reporting for Banking rapid-deployment solution, provides a risk
data model with precongured data ows, analysis, and reports for risk management
reporting in banks. In addition the solution contains the most important key performance
indicators according to the Basel III regulation.
SAP HANA as an Application Development Platform
Probably the most wide-open innovation opportunity for SAP HANA is as an application
platform. If the speed and simplication that were achieved by porting SAP BW are any
indication, users can realize an unbelievable amount of value not only by renovating existing
applications (SAP and non-SAP) to run natively on SAP HANA, but by also building entirely
new applications that are designed from scratch to maximize SAP HANAs powerful
capabilities. The performance limitations of traditional databases and processing power have
often led organizations to compromise on how to deploy business processes on their
enterprise platforms. Now, these organizations can choose to liberate themselves from these
constraints and optimize business processes in ways that are more natural to the way their
employees actually perform their work. This is where SAP sees a clear parallel to the Apple
App Store evolution. When Apple rst released the App Store, most of the rst apps available
were mobile-ized versions of desktop or Web apps (email, browser, etc.). However, once
developers considered the possibilities of combining the new capabilities of the device and
writing native applications for the iPhone/iPod Touch (Angry Birds, Foursquare), innovation
exploded.
There are three basic types of applications being built on SAP HANA today:
New apps built by SAP,
New and renovated apps built by partners such as independent software vendors (ISVs)
and systems integrators (SIs),
Custom apps built by companies for internal use.
SAP brands applications that leverage SAP HANA as a database as Powered by SAP
HANA. Partners whose applications have been certied by SAP can also add the Powered
by SAP HANA brand to their solution name.
SAP-built Applications for SAP HANA
SAP is delivering a new class of solutions on top of the SAP HANA platform that provide real-
time insights on big data and state-of-the-art analysis capabilities. These innovative
solutions can empower organizations to transform the way they run their businesses by
making smarter and faster decisions, responding more quickly to events, unlocking new
opportunities, and even inventing new data-driven business models and processes that were
simply not possible with disk-based databases. Below are a few examples of native-SAP
HANA applications. Well consider them in greater detail in the SAP HANA Applications
chapter.
SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail powered by SAP HANA
This solution provides retailers with real-time access to critical information and allows nearly
real-time interactive analysis, which is not possible with traditional database technology. It
oers prebuilt data models, key performance indicators (KPIs), role-specic dashboards and
customized reports to provide retailers with a deeper understanding of all factors inuencing
the merchandising life cycle. SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail aims at providing
the integration needed for improved scalability and performance for retailers operating in
separate sales, inventory and promotions systems. The new service provides Point-of-Sale
(POS) analysis allow retailers to assess performance and generate quick responses through
the use of prebuilt dashboards, interactive reports and more than 70 KPIs and inventory
management to provide retailers with the ability to identify critical stock and margin issues
through close inventory alignment.
SAP Smart Meter Analytics
SAP Smart Meter Analytics is a native-HANA application that was designed for utility
companies facing an exponential increase in data volume driven by their deployment of smart
meters. This new application enables utility companies to turn massive volumes of smart
meter data into powerful insights and transform how they engage customers and run their
businesses. With SAP Smart Meter Analytics, utility companies can:
Instantly aggregate time of use blocks and total consumption proles to analyze
their customers energy usage by what neighborhood they are in, the size of their
homes or businesses, building type, and by any other dimension and at any level of
granularity
Segment customers with precision based on energy consumption patterns that are
automatically generated by identifying customers that have similar energy usage
behavior
Provide energy eciency benchmarking based on statistical analysis so that utility
companies can help their customers understand where they stand compared to their
peers and how they can improve their energy efficiency
Empower customers with direct access to energy usage insights via web portals and
mobile devices connected to SAP Smart Meter Analytics via web services
These capabilities delivered by SAP Smart Meter Analytics enable utility companies to
increase adoption of service options such as demand response programs, launch targeted
energy eciency programs, improve fraud detection capabilities, and develop new taris and
more accurate load forecasts.
SAP Sales & Operations Planning
SAP Sales & Operations Planning is a next generation planning application that is powered by
SAP HANA and delivered in the cloud. The solution enables:
Planning and real-time analysis with a unied model of demand, supply chain, and
financial data at any level of granularity and dimension
Rapid, interactive simulation and scenario analysis, using the full S&OP data model
to support demand-supply balancing decisions
Embedded, context-aware social collaboration enables rapid planning and decision-
making across the organization
These capabilities enable companies to align demand and supply protably, reduce supply
chain costs, and drive revenue growth.
SAP Supplier InfoNet
SAP Supplier InfoNet is a cloud-based solution, powered by SAP HANA, that enables
companies to:
Minimize supply chain disruption by proactively monitoring and predicting real-time
supply risks across a multi-tier supplier network
Drive stronger supplier performance by benchmarking supplier performance for your
company against others in the business network and identifying significant shifts and
trends in supplier performance using leading-edge machine learning and statistical
analysis
Manage your supply base by aggregating and transforming supplier data to deliver
instant insights into the operational health of the supply base.
Recalls Plus
Recalls Plus is SAPs rst consumer mobile app that enables parents to proactively monitor
recalls of their kids strollers, cribs, toys, and other items for greater safety and peace of
mind. Features of the app include:
Search recall history by brand or category
Create a personal watch list of items like car seats, cribs, strollers and so on
Track allergen related recalls
Share relevant recalls with others
Read and monitor recalls from all relevant US government agencies: CPSC,
NHTSA, FDA and USDA
Recalls Plus is available for free and can be accessed via an iPhone app or a Facebook app:
iPhone app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/recalls-plus/id499200328
Facebook app: https://apps.facebook.com/recallsplus
Partner-built Applications for SAP HANA
The SAP partner ecosystem provides thousands of SAP-certied software solutions that plug
into SAPs applications to provide a variety of value-added extensions and process
enhancements. From that perspective, anything that speeds up an SAP system will also have
a positive impact on any partner solutions that are integrated with that system. There are
also numerous SAP partner solutions that need to turbocharge themselves to increase
their own performance and to keep up with the turbocharged SAP systems coming on top
of SAP HANA in the future.
Regardless of the programming language these partner apps are written in, they all can
be ported over to SAP HANA in a fairly straightforward way. However, just as SAP is
renovating its existing applications, partners too can approach re-platforming as an
opportunity to rethink some of the design parameters that they employed in the original
solution design and to rebuild their apps to take advantage of SAP HANAs many benets
natively.
Oversight Systems is one of the rst ISVs to renovate their SAP-certied solution along
these lines. Oversight Systems provides solutions that continuously monitor user activities
in real-time inside SAP systems to detect policy violations and potentially fraudulent
transactions, such as travel and expenses, accounting and reporting, and HR and payroll.
Their solution conducts complex, on-the-y calculations that demand a great deal of I/O
performance from databases. Therefore, the addition of SAP HANA underneath their solution
makes perfect sense.
Custom Applications for SAP HANA
As stated earlier, SAP HANA is a full-blown, do-just-about-anything-you-want application
platform. It speaks pure SQL and it includes all of the most common APIs, so you can literally
write any type of application you want on top of it. There are a few rules and guide rails that
are designed to keep things from going wrong, but the sky truly is the limit when it comes to
imagining what to build with SAP HANA.
Although SAP HANA is valuable for all types of activities, it shines particularly well in a
few unique situations. For example, if youre building an enterprise-scale application for a
business scenario that (1) needs to search or aggregate huge volumes of data, (2) requires
detailed/granular data analysis and/or complex algorithmic or statistical calculations, or (3)
suers from latency between transactional recording and reporting, then SAP HANA is a
great choice.
Thats not to say that SAP HANA cant run your standard applications it certainly can
do that (really fast). Nevertheless, the most exciting use cases SAP is seeing for SAP HANA
as the foundation of custom apps are situations where a company has an urgent business
need that is literally impossible to automate today due to the limitations of traditional
databases or the lack of a supercomputer. If youre a business owner who has a killer idea
that ts the above description, then SAP HANA could be the solution that makes the
impossible, possible.
This is where the Angry Birds analogy really starts to make sense. Once the SAP
ecosystem of ISVs, SAP partners, and SAP customers starts to unleash their innovation on
top of SAP HANA, there literally is no limit to the amazing and game-changing applications
they can build. It is incredibly important for SAP to renovate its portfolio and build amazing
new applications to exploit the vast potential of SAP HANA. It is even more important,
however, for the SAP ecosystem to do this, because there are millions of unrealized business
ideas in their companies that SAP HANA can bring to life.
SAP HANA Roadmap
The future roadmap for SAP HANA is actually very simple: Continue to make SAP HANA
faster, better, cheaper plus BIGGER and BROADER.
Moores law doesnt look as though its going to be slowing down anytime soon. It is likely,
then, that were only a few years away from having more than 1000 cores and 10TB of RAM
on a single medium SAP HANA server. With that much processing power and high-speed
RAM available, there really are no limits to how fast SAP can speed up its own apps and
literally any other app on the planet. SAP will continue co-innovating with Intel and other
hardware partners to ensure that SAP HANA is continuously updated and optimized to take
advantage of the latest and greatest technology advances to become even faster than it is
today.
Although the speed boost generated by the hardware is exciting, it is only half of the
equation. Renovating applications to take advantage of the ever-increasing horsepower is
also critical. Theres a great deal of value that can be achieved by doing things better in the
applications. Renovating and re-imagining how applications work and how they deal with data
in the no constraints paradigm represents a fundamental philosophical shift for application
developers. There are enormous opportunities to streamline, optimize, and simplify
application architectures by adding SAP HANA as the database engine underneath them. SAP
will invest an enormous amount of resources to extend SAP HANAs capabilities as an
application platform for both its own applications and non-SAP applications. This investment
will result in an increasingly rich and robust set of developer tools to renovate and re-imagine
any application and to build amazing new applications.
This opportunity for optimization and simplication not only makes things even faster than
just the hardware speed boost, it also results in signicantly lower TCO for companies. SAP
HANA can have a massive impact on reducing TCO and improving business value. Cheaper
isnt achieved only through industry-standard processors, RAM, and servers. Cheaper is a
holistic mindset that starts from application design and then progresses through user
eciency all the way to administration and operations. SAP will continue to invest heavily in
many areas to make SAP HANA the cheapest and most ecient database to operate in
production environments. These eorts include innovating in new landscape congurations
such as native cloud deployments of SAP HANA.
Signicantly, however, SAP isnt satised to only be the fastest, best, and cheapest
database on the planet. SAPs goals also include enabling the BIGGEST data scenarios by
oering integrated solutions with Sybase Big Data products and open-source projects like
Hadoop.
In November of 2012, SAP showed the extreme scalability of SAP HANA by showcasing a
250TB RAM SAP HANA system with 250 nodes.
In addition, with a robust ecosystem of ISVs, system integrators, and SAP customers
building their innovative applications on SAP HANA, SAP intends to become the BROADEST
database platform for new applications. In just the rst year since SAP HANA became
available, over 100 startups have been founded to harness this power to drive their
innovation. Just as Apple provided the platform for App Store developers, SAP will provide
SAP HANA as a platform for thousands of amazing new enterprise applications for the
ecosystem.
SAP customers need to understand that SAP HANA not only is the engine that powers the
current generation of SAP applications, but it will be the growth engine for all kinds of
amazing NEW SAP apps. Over the next few years, SAP HANA will become the primary
database for EVERY enterprise application in the SAP portfolio. Thats true for standard, on-
premise applications like the SAP Business Suite; SME solutions like SAP Business One, SAP
Business ByDesign, and SAP All-in-One; and the emerging portfolio of cloud/on-demand
solutions. In poker terms, SAP is going all in with SAP HANA. SAP has made a passionate
commitment to innovate for the future of its ecosystem, and the benets of this shift for
SAPs customers and partners are too overwhelming for the company to do anything less.
SAP HANA will be the heart and soul of SAPs real-time data platform design philosophy
to renovate all existing applications and build amazing new applications.
The renovation work is moving very quickly inside SAP, so much so that it has surpassed
even the most optimistic timelines. The SAP BW renovation and porting to SAP HANA was the
first major step towards a completely renovated SAP Business Suite. The next major step was
the release of its agship application, SAP Business Suite SAP CRM, SAP SCM, SAP PLM on
SAP HANA. In parallel, SAP is adding SAP HANA to all of the other applications in the
portfolio, and it will release them as they come on line.
Renovating these applications involves much more than simply replacing the database.
Over the years, SAP has had to make many adjustments in its application layer to avoid the
I/O bottleneck associated with the database. Unfortunately, these database avoidance
techniques have resulted in extensive plaque buildup inside the applications, in the forms
of redundant code, tedious data aggregations and transformations, replication of data, and so
on. These problems were necessary evils to work around the constraints of the disk-based
architecture. In an SAP HANA world, however, theyre completely unnecessary and therefore
need to be removed from the system.
Obviously, SAPs renovation eorts will involve a great deal of streamlining and cleanup.
At the same time, however, this renovation also represents a golden opportunity for SAPs
engineers to reimagine all of the things that these applications do from the perspective of
living in a world with no constraints. These experts can question their original assumptions,
invent better ways of doing things, remove latency from the processes, and program their
applications to perform calculations more eciently deep inside the database. All of these
developments will lead to lower TCO and more exibility for customers, which in turn will
make their investment in SAP much more valuable.
This exercise is also having an amazing eect on the SAP culture. Going back into the
code of all of their apps with a fresh eye and ambitious dreams free from constraints has
rekindled a restorm of innovation within the SAP development group. The coee corners in
SAP labs around the world are literally buzzing with new ideas and passionate discussions. In
fact, you can often see code samples from these discussions written on the windows because
the participants ran out of whiteboard space (as in the movie A Beautiful Mind). This is the
intellectual renewal that SAP executives have been talking about, and it is having a
monumental impact on the speed and volume of innovation coming from SAP. SAP HANA has
literally awakened a sleeping giant of innovation inside SAP. Moreover, this enthusiasm
appears to be contagious: People are witnessing the same type of awakening throughout the
SAP ecosystem.
In the long run, once the entire SAP portfolio has been HANA-ed,
9
SAP will be able to
deliver a vastly simplied landscape for its customers. By merging OLAP and OLTP into a
single SAP HANA instance, SAP can provide a massive reduction in layers and TCO in the
landscape while at the same time providing much more exibility and business value through
real-time access to all of the relevant data. It will take SAP several years to engineer and
deliver this vision to its customers. If the past five years of in-memory (r)evolution at SAP are
an indication, however, the next ve years of this journey will be extraordinarily fast and
exciting.
Chapter 2
SAP HANA Architecture
COMING SPRING 2015
Chapter 3
Developing A Business Case for SAP HANA
This chapter was written with the expert assistance of David Porter, Sr.
Director, SAP Value Engineering and Steve Thibodeau, Sr. Principal, SAP
Value Engineering.
Introduction
SAP HANA is really, really fast!
Unless youve missed all the SAP marketing blurbs, analyst reports, and trade articles
over the past year, its pretty likely that you know that SAP HANA is an incredibly fast
database. In fact, SAP HANA is sometimes more than 100,000 times faster than traditional
databases for query response times.
So what???
In general, fast is regarded as a positive attribute for a product. However, that quality
alone is seldom sucient to justify a purchase. If you cant gure out how a super-fast
database can help you run your business better, then how can you justify the expense and
effort required to buy and implement it?
The approach to building a business case presented in this chapter avoids the speeds
and feeds argument that has long plagued the software industry. Instead, it examines how
SAP HANA can enable organizations to execute their business processes more quickly and
eciently. It also focuses on the value of the real-time information that SAP HANA makes
available, as well as the resulting level(s) of business value it delivers. The primary goal of
this chapter is to help you address and answer the So what? question and to provide some
guidelines on how to construct a convincing business case in order to justify an investment in
the SAP HANA platform.
Why Do You Need A Business Case, Anyway?
There are various reasons for building a convincing business case, and the relative
importance of each reason will vary from organization to organization. Some of the most
fundamental reasons are:
To demonstrate overall business value for the project
To provide an initial financial justification for purchase and implementation
To ensure that the project is aligned with the organizations business goals and/or
initiatives
To establish the base-line expectations for subsequent assessment of the projects
success
To provide internal documentation explaining the expected business benets to users
(and possibly to other departments in the organization)
A well-developed business case is not just a collection of data. Rather, it is also a
collection of opinions and views from relevant stakeholders both supporters and
detractors as well as representation from both the business and IT departments.
If the primary goal of a business case project is to calculate total cost of ownership (TCO)
and/or return on investment (ROI) of an investment in new software, then that case will likely
provide an incomplete and potentially unreliable forecast of the quality of that investment. An
eective business case must quantify not only the tangible value proposition of the project
but also the intangible value, because both metrics are components of overall business value.
A strong business case for SAP HANA typically includes multiple use cases or projects
concrete examples of how the organization will utilize the product in the course of business.
The key here is to Think big, start small. The big picture helps shape the long-term value
from the investment, but starting small enables you to build in quick wins that establish
success early and then continue to build business momentum with later projects.
Going further, some uses cases should reect stretch goals ambitious projects that
may span several years. At the same time, they should include projects that not only can be
implemented quickly, but also demonstrate measurable business value. The nal collection of
use cases can then be used to build a roadmap for current and future deployments of SAP
HANA. The roadmap will balance each projects business value against the corresponding
diculty of implementation and/or risk involved. This approach will enable your organization
to prioritize its various projects in a thoughtful and comprehensive manner, thus maximizing
the likelihood that the entire initiative will be approved.
Methodology
For each business case you build, we recommend the following multistep approach:
1. CREATE the storyline
2. ADD the financial dimension
3. TIE it all together
The rst step, creating the storyline, is fundamental to any SAP HANA business case. The
storyline is what makes the business case unique to your organization. The use cases in the
storyline should map to goals and processes that distinguish your organization from the
competition.
After you have created a viable storyline, the next step is to add the nancial dimension.
No matter how impressive the story, by itself it isnt sucient to obtain funding for the
project. Adding the nancial dimension extends the storyline to the expected business value
and provides some quantitative measures that can be used in the evaluation process.
After these two steps have been completed, the nal step is to package up the business
case in a format that is appropriate for the individuals who will evaluate the project.
We will discuss each of these steps in greater detail throughout this chapter. Before we
proceed, however, we need to consider the fundamental concept of business value.
Levels of Value
Weve mentioned business value a couple of times already in this chapter. Exactly what do we
mean by this term?
Business value actually covers a relatively wide range of benets, both quantitative and
qualitative. Moreover, there are dierent levels, or degrees, of business value. The chart
below illustrates a useful model for categorizing these levels. This model identies three
levels: Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Transformation. Lets take a closer look at each one.
1. Efficiency
The rst level of business value, Eciency, is the result of doing things the right way.
Typically this means doing things faster, better, or cheaper or otherwise improving the way
you do things (but not what you do). Of all the levels of business value, the gains from
eciency are the easiest to quantify. There are two basic subcategories of Eciency: IT
Efficiency and Business Efficiency.
IT Efficiency
Organizations are likely to focus heavily on IT Eciency when (1) the software investment
under consideration is part of a broader eort such as creating an analytics center of
excellence or shared analytical services and (2) the main rationale for doing so is to reduce
IT costs. At this level of business value, IT is viewed as a cost center within the organization
an expense or overhead item that needs to be managed and contained. The following list
identifies some common examples of IT Efficiency.
Reducing the annual maintenance costs of older applications and databases
Reducing the internal costs of enhancing or upgrading software
Reducing the IT FTE resources required to manage older applications and databases
Reducing the hardware infrastructure to simplify administration and minimize oor
space/carbon footprint
Business Efficiency
The Business Eciency level extends beyond issues that are purely related to the IT
department. However, business eciency/productivity is only an intermediate step in
assessing the overall value of a project.
Line of Business Examples:
To better identify the most promising sales opportunities
To gain an enhanced perspective on cost drivers
To increase the productivity of knowledge workers
2. Effectiveness
The second level of value Eectiveness redirects the focus from doing things the right
way to doing the right things at the right time. To properly assess this level, we need to
discard many of the prevailing assumptions that underlie current business processes.
Although eciency can deliver a fair amount of business value, eectiveness oers the
promise of much more. In fact, SAP HANA provides organizations with the opportunity to
fundamentally rethink their basic business processes (i. e., what they do and when and how
they do it).
For example, organizations rarely, if ever, depend exclusively upon a total cost of
ownership (TCO) analysis (i.e., Eciency) to justify a business analytics initiative. Although
cost is a concern, the top-performing companies in each industry incorporate analytics into
their infrastructure in order to create and maintain competitive advantage.
At the Eciency level of business value, business performance is improved rst through
visibility and then through insight. Visibility provides the ability to access relevant information
quickly and in context. Then, insight provides a deeper understanding of the underlying
causes of a situation or the likely outcome of a course of action under consideration.
Recall from previous chapters that SAP HANA a disruptive technology. Consequently, the
business benets it delivers extend far beyond improvements in IT operations. The
examination of eectiveness gains makes the assumption that IT is a strategic enabler and
value creator, and not just an organizational cost center.
Although eectiveness gains are usually more dicult to quantify than eciency gains,
their monetary value is frequently greater. Instead of precise estimates, eectiveness gains
can be expressed as ranges of financial value, as illustrated by the following list.
Higher customer value
Improved product mix (margins)
Better sales pipeline conversion ratio
Enhanced customer retention
More accurate demand forecasts
More successful segmentation
Enhanced understanding of real costs
Greater production yields
More efficient order fulfillment
Faster collections
Lower production costs
Reduced risk/impact of risks
More timely anticipation of market changes
More efficient asset utilization
3. Transformation
Business Transformation is the highest level of business value, but also the most dicult to
achieve. Transformation goes well beyond Eectiveness by enabling new business models
and processes. Sometimes called innovation or The Art of the Possible, business
transformation can generate extraordinary nancial gains. However, the potential monetary
value from this level of business value is the most dicult to quantify. By denition,
Transformation involves things that have never been done before. Consequently, there are no
baseline data to use for comparison.
At the Transformation level, the focus is on use cases that involve the invention of new
business models and processes by leveraging innovative solutions and technologies, such as
SAP HANA.
Examples:
Identifying and serving new market segments before your peers can
Providing personalized customer pricing and services
Enabling new products or pricing models
Creating new business models
Improving time to market
Reducing inventory
Increasing market share
Improving P/E ratio
Hopefully you now have a more nuanced understanding of business value. Having covered
this topic, we return to our discussion of the three-step process for building eective
business use cases. We begin with the first step creating the storyline.
Creating the Storyline
Its likely that you already have at least one specic use case in mind for SAP HANA
otherwise, you wouldnt be reading this chapter! However, as we mentioned previously, its
preferable to develop multiple use cases as part of the overall business case. Also, keep in
mind the Levels of Value section of this chapter when youre developing the use cases.
Specifically, try to map to each level of business value with one or more use cases.
The process of creating the storyline should not be conducted exclusively by IT. Rather, it
is critical to involve the business side of the organization up front and throughout the process.
SAP HANA is a disruptive technology, so the typical approach to building a technical
business case does not necessarily apply here.
Here are some questions to get you thinking about potential use cases:
Whats happening at other companies in your industry?
What elements in your organizations strategic plan could benet from high-performance
analytics or process optimization?
Does your organization own any data that no one else has (and can that data be
exploited)?
What mega-trends in the industry represent opportunities for new value?
A. Categorization/Business Attributes
Sometimes its easier to create use cases when you can place each one into a convenient
category, or container. Below we list samples of potentially useful categories. Note that these
categories may not be mutually exclusive. Some of your use cases can cross boundaries,
especially in the case of innovations. Please refer to the SAP HANA Use Case Repository for
the most current list of use cases.
Industry-specific
Consumer Products: (Supplier Risk Mgt., Track and Trace, Product Recall, Product
Lifecycle and Cost Mgt., EPA Standards Compliance, Real-Time Warranty and Defect
Analysis)
Financial: (Fraud Detection, Risk Analysis, Credit Scoring, Program Trading, Customer
Profitability)
Manufacturing: (Supply Chain Optimization, Production Planning, Operational
Performance Mgt., Real-Time Asset Utilization)
Retail: (POS/Fraud Detection, Business Planning, Price and Merchandising Optimization)
Telecom: (Investment Planning, Network Equipment Planning & Optimization)
Utilities: (Smart Metering, Demand Side Management, Balance and Demand Forecasting,
Churn Management, Outage Management, Investment Planning, Grid Management)
Cross-Industry
Finance: (Planning and Budgeting, Consolidation)
HR: (Workforce Analytics)
IT: (Landscape Optimization)
Order Management: (Available to Promise, Price Optimization)
Sales and Marketing: (Marketing Analytics, Customer Segmentation, Trade Promotion
Management)
Supply Chain: (Transportation Planning, Inventory Mgt., Demand and Supply Planning,
Supply Network Planning)
B. Self-Discovery
After reading about the methodology and techniques discussed in this chapter, some
customers may feel comfortable building business cases on their own. The SAP HANA Use
Case Repository and SAP HANA Value Calculator (described below) can provide invaluable
assistance with this task.
C. Assisted Discovery
Many other customers, however, will prefer to leverage the expertise of SAPs Value
Engineering (VE) group in constructing a convincing business case for SAP HANA. One of the
ways in which the VE organization can help you construct an SAP HANA business case is
through a Value Discovery Workshop. Over the course of this workshop, you will have the
opportunity to identify, validate, and prioritize a number of SAP HANA use cases. These use
cases can describe your organizations internal usage, and perhaps also how your
organization interacts with its external customers.
The workshop is intended to address business outcomes as well as technical feasibility.
Therefore, the project sponsor, business unit representatives, domain experts, and IT sta
should all participate. The workshop will provide you with detailed information on data,
processes, roles, modeling, consumption, clients, and security requirements for your
applications. In addition, it will help you identify the degree of match, potential value-add,
and customer interest for each use case.
The gure below reproduces a sample value map created during the rst portion of a
workshop for a customer in the chemical industry.
The next illustration is an example of one of the process analysis outputs created at a
later stage in another workshop.
Finally, after you have completed the workshop, VE resources may be available to assist
you in building a formal business case. Please check with your SAP Account Executive for
further information on this service.
D. SAP HANA Use Case Repository
SAP maintains a centralized SAP HANA website (http://www.saphana.com) that contains an
ever-growing number of example use cases for SAP HANA. In the Resources section of the
site, youll nd sample use cases of SAP HANA that have either been implemented by a
customer or discussed with a prospect.
Perhaps the most obvious way to use this site is to check the category for your industry to
determine which of the existing use cases reect your organizations needs or strategic
direction. You may not nd an exact match, but its extremely likely that youll nd one or
more themes that closely resemble some of your business issues and/or conditions.
A second and perhaps more useful approach is to use the repository as a
brainstorming tool. It can be quite enlightening to study use cases from industries that are
seemingly unrelated to yours. In many instances, you will recognize a common thread that
will encourage you to adopt a broader perspective than if you limited your exploration to use
cases in your industry.
Whichever approach you adopt, a guiding principle is to focus on things that you cant do
today. In addition, always keep in mind that SAP HANAs strengths are in applications that
have never been built before. If youre looking to SAP HANA for competitive advantage, then
you are not likely to find a close match in the repository.
1. SAP HANA Use Case Categories
Currently, the SAP HANA website has SAP HANA Use Cases categorized by industry and
selected process areas:
Aerospace & Defense
Automotive
Banking
Chemical
Consumer Products
Cross-Industry
Customer Service
Finance
Healthcare
High Tech
Industrial Machinery & Components
Insurance
Life Sciences
Manufacturing
Marketing
Media
Mill Products
Mining
Oil & Gas
Professional Services
Public Sector
Retail
Sales
Supply Chain
Telecommunications
Transportation
Utilities
Wholesale Distribution
Adding the Financial Dimension
Now that youve developed a good storyline, its time to map it to the expected business value
for each and every use case. No matter how captivating your storyline, it must be backed up
with hard numbers. Although it is important to have quantitative results, some quantitative
measures are more defficult to obtain and monitor than others.
A. Importance of Benefits Quantification
It is critical to acknowledge the value of IT investments through benets measurement and
post go-live monitoring. An SAP Value Management study determined that organizations that
develop business cases and measure post-go live success are 1.9 times more likely to deliver
projects on time. They are also 1.5 times more likely to deliver on budget and to realize up-
front benefits.
In most current use cases, the business value for SAP HANA is measured in a similar
manner to other business analytics investments. The capabilities of SAP HANA are seen
across many areas of an organization with an increasing number of benet scenarios. The
one fundamental dierence is that analytical use cases for SAP HANA consider how the
availability of real-time data impacts the organizations ability to realize value. The SAP HANA
benets quantication evaluates what the organization can accomplish now that it can better
manage data and interpret the resulting insights at lightning-fast speeds. Data volume is
exploding, resulting inthe need to store and move signicant amounts of data. As a result, it
slows down the ability to analyze data. In addition, data variety is continually expanding with
the usage of Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, the traditional processes that organizations
have used to consolidate and analyze data are no longer sucient in the new environment of
real-time data.
IT research rms have already concluded that investing in business analytics technology
generates tangible benets. Moreover, in 2010, IDC completed a study that concluded that
business intelligence investments delivered the following return on investment:
112 % median ROI
54% process benefit improvement (Business effectiveness measures)
42% productivity gains (Business efficiency)
4% technology gains (IT efficiency)
In February 2011 Aberdeen completed a real-time business study that found that
organizations wanted more accurate operational information. A case study concluded that
manufacturing organizations yielded a 2% increase in production eciencies, returning tens
of millions of dollars in savings. The independent study demonstrates that quantitative
benets are being realized with real-time information. Production yield is an excellent
example of benets quantication. Increased yield reduces the cost of operations. This
section will help you identify these business areas and quantify the benefits.
SAP has come to realize that organizations can struggle with analytics benets
quantication. Organizations utilize various approaches to business case benet
development; however, they may not have the experience to transfer that approach to
business analytics and SAP HANA business cases. To address this problem, SAPs Value
Engineering organization has taken the methodology that has been used for the past eight
years and applied it applied it to SAP HANA benets quantication. We discuss the value
engineering and the value management approach later in the chapter.
B. Types of Quantification
SAP Value Management has created a framework for analyzing benets that also applies to
SAP HANA. This framework, which is illustrated below, places benets in one of four
categories:
Strategy Enablement
Measurable Benefits
Risk and Compliance
Innovation
Financial measurement, known as hard benets, typically falls within the measurable
benet category. However, risk mitigation and compliance can deliver millions of dollars in
savings. Strategy enablement and innovation are usually treated as soft benefits.
It is important to understand that an SAP HANA business case, like an analytics business
case, impacts numerous process areas within an organization. SAP realized that the
underlying transactional systems by themselves release only a percentage of the overall
benefits. Unlocking the remaining benefits requires information insight.
For example, Procuremnt leaders rely on information to understand how an organization
spends money in various categories such as materials, services and IT equipment. The
procurement process controls the ow of money going out of the company for materials and
services. This critical function ensures that an organization manages its spending
strategically. The primary metrics that measure success in this area are overall spending
managed centrally and year-over-year annual savings achieved by the procurement team.
Spend that is not managed centrally does not leverage contracts negotiated with preferred
vendors that include already secured discount levels. Without real-time business insight on
spend, organizations are not fully optimizing savings with consolidated spend. The following
SAP HANA case study illustrates a procurement business case involving a retail grocer.
National Grocery Retailer SAP HANA Business Case:
The retailer had already invested in an ERP system that drove the procurement process with suppliers;
however, it was implemented in a regional format. Thus, the overall spend managed by the organization was
not visible at a national level. Supplier relationships at a regional level ran the risk of not capturing increased
discounts and creating redundancies in process.
Objective:
Deliver national spend visibility and drive procurement savings
Shift from regional vendor relationships and contract terms to a national level
Challenge:
Signicant data volumes residing with four regional data warehouses. Data created from regional
procurement systems
Four regional warehouses housing ERP structured system data
No infrastructure in place to automate the data consolidation for a national view of supplier spend
levels
Approach:
Evaluate the SAP HANA solution as the database and analytics technology to enable a single view of
consolidated supplier data
Develop a benefits case based on the regional grocer spend performance
The four major regions each had consolidated supplier spend
Business Case Development:
The regional procurement spend performance was compared, and the grocer found that certain regions
were outperforming others in year-over-year savings and negotiated discounts
The grocer utilized SAPs global benchmarking data to compare year-over-year savings and spend
managed strategically with retail peers
The grocer determined that additional savings would be possible if the organization better understood
the underlying procurement data
XXX calculated a conservative benefits estimate of $50 million in savings over a multiyear period
Results and Business Benefit:
Begin realizing $50 million in savings on supplier spend with one national view of vendor spend
Remove supplier negotiation and contract administration redundancies with one process, managed by a
national supplier
Signicant supplier data compression with transfer of spend and supplier data from four regional
systems to one single instance of SAP HANA
Real-time and automated data transfer that was previously not possible with four dierent regional
systems
Granular reporting analysis resulting in visibility on optimal supplier discounts and redundant buying
Elimination of vendor spend with contracts that do not offer maximum discount levels.
Renegotiation of national vendor contracts demonstrating higher discount levels on aggregated spend
1. Tangible (Hard) Benefits
A tangible or hard benet is dened as an outcome that increases revenue in for-prot
organizations and reduces cost in all organizations. In addition, hard benets can increase
the cash ow that the organization utilizes to generate additional return on investments. An
example of a cash ow benet is the reduction of aging receivables. Eciency gains can
result in tangible benets if resulting costs are removed from the gain. An example of a hard
benefit efficiency gain is the reduction of people completing a manual reporting task.
As we discussed, quantifying SAP HANA benets follows a similar approach to other
traditional benets quantication. The areas of improvement are derived by identifying areas
of value within major business process areas. Common benet KPIs are broken down within
the process areas. A few of the key business benet KPIs and key metrics are outlined below.
SAPs Value Engineering organization has a full repository of all business benefits.
Demand Generation
Marketing
Benefit: Optimized marketing spend through improved campaign effectiveness
Metrics:
Average cost of a marketing campaign launch
Current time to measure campaign effectiveness
Campaign conversion rate measured in sales or pipeline generated
Outcome:
Reduced marketing spend by minimizing the cost of ineffective campaigns
Increased annual revenue through campaign execution
Sales Execution
Benefit: Increased sales conversion rate, thereby increasing annual revenue
Metrics:
Current pipeline conversion percentage
Current revenue per sales employee
Current sales team eciency measured by time with customer and administrative
time
Outcome:
Increased pipeline conversion rate and sales
Increased total revenue per salesperson
Reduced administrative time
Demand Fulfillment
Procurement
Benefit: Reduced annual spend with increased visibility on supplier metrics
Metrics:
Percent of spend managed strategically by category; direct, indirect and services
Year-over-year annual savings
Evaluation of vendors utilized and product categories
Effort spent currently managing vendor relationships
Outcome:
Reduced annual spend by category
Reduced efforts by buyers to manage and track vendor relationships
Manufacturing Process
Benefit: Reduced inventory levels and enhanced visibility of the short horizon of stock levels
Metrics:
Current inventory levels of finished goods
Current inventory carrying costs
Percentage of inventory obsolescence
Outcome:
Reduced inventory levels of finished goods
Reduced annual inventory carrying costs
Greater annual cash flow
Reduced cost of inventory obsolesce
Information Technology Management
Information Management
Benefit: Improved insight into information and reduced IT effort to prepare data
Metrics:
Cost of data storage
Cost and eort of transferring data from source systems to a centralized data
repository
Effort to prepare data for reporting
Effort to build standard reports
Outcome:
Reduced cost of information management
Improved granular insights delivered in real time
Organizational Performance Management
Profitability Analysis
Benefit: Improved profitability analysis by product, region, and segment
Metrics:
Current profit level by product, region, and segment
Effort required to deliver profitability analysis
Current pricing processes
Outcome:
Increased profit by product, region, and segment
Elimination of unprofitable items
Less effort required to monitor profitability
Workforce Management
Benefit: Improved worker utilization levels and reduce level of overtime
Metrics:
Worker utilization levels
Overtime percentage and cost
Outcome:
Reduced labor costs
Improved worker output measured
Fraud Management
Benefit: Improved fraud detection, thus reducing the costs associated with additional
insurance claims
Metrics:
Current combined ratio (claims and expense measured against premiums collected)
Measured fraud investigations
Outcome:
Reduced cost of fraud investigations
Reduced combined ratio
The metrics and outcomes listed in the table span many major business process areas.
However, they all have a common theme; namely, to manage information from diverse data
sources and to deliver real-time insights for decision making. In each case the results are
measured in revenue, expense, and cash flow impacts.
2. Strategic (Soft) Benefits
Strategic or soft benets are commonly linked to the tangible benets measured above.
The strategic benets impact the organizations overall strategies and can support the
tangible benefits.
In some cases, productivity or eciency metrics do not directly result in reduced costs.
An example is a scenario in which labor costs are not reduced, but the organization utilizes
appropriate metrics to deliver greater throughput with the same sta. The labour budget is
not reduced, but the workforce is able to manage increasing workload. Often, improved
employee engagement and work-life balance is another soft benet outcome. Similarly,
improved decision-making can generate indirect impacts on the organization, such as better
execution of the corporate values for accountability. Many organizations nd it dicult to
drive accountability with poor information. Department leads cant drive improvements if
there is no trust in the data comprising the actual results. In creating and evaluating a
business case, you need carefully consider both tangible and strategic benefits.
3. New KPIs and Breakthrough Innovations
SAP HANA is an innovative technology that oers a fresh approach to information
management. The ability to deliver innovations by managing complex analysis in real time
reduces time to market and generates new revenue streams. These innovations are the most
dicult to quantify because no baseline data exist. However, rst mover advantage may
result in the largest payoffs for a project.
SAP is constantly capturing new innovations delivered with SAP HANA to share the
impact. We have multiple forums to share the benets of SAP HANA; the external website
mentioned earlier in the chapter capturing use cases and the business transformation
studies captured by Value Engineering. A business transformation study is a brief document
published jointly with our customers to capture benets realized along with the story of why
the investment was made. It is critical to continually measure the post-implementation
impact of SAP HANA to capture benets. The best recommendation is to simultaneously
explore innovative SAP HANA scenarios while developing existing process-improvement
scenarios. A simple business case can be developed based on existing processes and then
leveraged to fund breakthrough innovations.
SAP recommends multiple scenarios by which SAP HANA delivers maximum value to the
organization. These scenarios can be incorporated into an analytics roadmap that prioritizes
value and time to value. This strategy will enable IT to jointly manage the implementation
with the relevant business functions.
C. Best Practice Business Case Approach
Before calculating a benet, an organization must identify a baseline metric derived from the
current state process. After it creates this baseline, it can establish a target benefit range.
The simple steps listed below present a framework for calculating a baseline metric. We
illustrate this framework using the example of a profitability report.
Document the current state process (e.g., profitability reporting)
Number of business analysts allocated to monthly reporting
Effort taken in hours taken to build monthly package
Associated IT effort to maintain profitability reporting
Current state profitability level of the associated item tracked on the report
As stated above, an organization needs to establish baseline metrics before it can
calculate the value of a benet. However, baseline metrics in isolation do not allow the owner
of the business case to comfortably develop a target improvement range. These metrics are
simply utilized as a measuring stick of success. The baseline metric allows organizations to
know how much they have improved after the technology has been implemented. In order to
truly dene a benet beyond the current state baseline, SAP Value Engineering performs this
function by providing a triangulated approach to benets quantication. Specically, VE
provides SAP Benchmarking data that indicate average and best-in-class performance, past
examples of measured success by other organizations, and the ability to collect current state
processes to best calculate the benet range. (We discuss the SAP Benchmarking database
in greater detail in Section E.)
After the analysis has been completed, the next step is to identify the associated value
driver outcome(s). The benet as described in the process areas is typically related to its
impact on revenue and expenses. We strongly recommend that when you calculate a benet
you apply a benet range with a conservative and likely metric based on the SAP Value
Engineering approach described above.
One nal point: It is commonplace to link benets to an overall initiative involving process
improvements through technology enablement. Benets are more widely accepted when
linked to key business initiatives such as improving spend management or improving pricing
within a certain product category. As part of the initial business case development,
discussions with the business unit sponsors ensure linkage to strategy and acceptance of the
SAP HANA investment.
D. SAP HANA Calculator
To make it easier for people to build a value-based business case, SAP Value Engineering and
SAP HANA Solution Management released a web-based SAP HANA benets calculator to our
customers. The tool covers the most common benet areas that most organizations would
consider. The calculator provides two or three example benets for each of ve mega-
process areas:
Customer Focus
Procure to Pay
Plan to Produce
Record to Report
Quote to Cash
The benets calculator enables you to customize the revenue include the number of
employees, and key baseline information for your particular organization. The benet ranges
are based on the SAP Value Engineering triangulated methodology we just described. A
summary report aggregates all the benefits to determine the overall financial impact.
SAP designed this tool to be a great launching point for calculating benets. It generates
ideas on how SAP HANA can impact your business, and it demonstrates how you can
calculate these benets. Your organization can then continue to develop benets either in
partnership with SAP VE or on your own.
E. SAP Benchmarking
One of the most valuable resources available to you when building an SAP HANA business
case is the SAP Benchmarking database. SAP Benchmarking is a global program launched in
2004 to deliver empirical metrics, best practices, and high-impact strategies to organizations
that choose to leverage the program.
SAP Benchmarking is managed through a customer portal, SAP Value Management
Center (https://valuemanagement.sap.com). The link takes you right to the portal to sign in
and utlize the surveys to capture baseline information and determine how you are performing
against best in clauss organizations. This is a signicant investment by SAP to allow
organizations to measure performance and build benefit cases.
This portal oers direct access to complete surveys and analysis of results. The data in
the benchmarking resources are collected anonymously from SAP customers who have
participated in the program. These data are incredibly deep and rich, and they enable you to
benchmark your companys current state and potential value against real-world experiences
from other companies in your industry.
SAP Benchmarking program Facts:
Established at the end of 2004
Complimentary service
Available to SAP and non-SAP customers
More than 12,000 participants from more than 3,000 companies
Global in 2010 more than 60% participants of participants were from outside North
America
Partnerships with ASUG and other user groups
Studies available in 12 languages
More than 20 business process assessments including nance, procurement, supply
chain, and sales.
More than 700 KPIs
More than 1,000 best practices
More than 300 peer groups
For SAP HANA, SAP oers the Business Intelligence and Enterprise Information
Management data sets and surveys. In addition, SAP launched a High Performance Analytics
survey to track the importance of complexity and speed in the data management
environment.
As discussed previously, SAP HANA can impact many business process areas spanning
the entire organization. The SAP Benchmarking program allows you to help choose a few key
process areas to determine where SAP HANA best ts as a starting point. The program
provides the exibility to create a customized survey to capture the key metrics and best
practices identied through the SAP HANA business scenario development. This process will
provide the critical peer comparison that establishes the appropriate range of improvement.
An organization can build a realistic benet range improvement by leveraging peer
benchmarking data.
Tying It All Together
We now shift our focus to the fourth and most vital stage in the business case process
packaging the business case in a manner that maximizes the likelihood that it will be funded.
To accomplish this objective, the storyline and nancial impact have to be communicated
eectively to the stakeholders and decision makers. In addition, the presentation needs to be
easily consumable by senior business executives, because senior management buy-in and
commitment and are critical.
A. Internal Deliverables
As mentioned throughout this chapter, SAP HANA is a disruptive technology. Accordingly,
previous rules about internal business cases may not apply to SAP HANA cases.
Fortunately, SAP Value Engineering has signicant experience creating successful business
cases for SAP HANA, and it can assist with your final presentation.
Although there is no set format for nal deliverables, successful presentations generally
contain certain critical components, which we list below.
Use case and business process scenarios
Financial and non-financial benefits
Strategic alignment discussion
Risk assessment
Use case prioritization
B. Ongoing Value Management
Most companies realize that the successful utilization of information technologies is critical to
success in the modern business environment. Despite this realization, however, few
companies actually realize the maximum value of their IT investment. SAP addressed this
problem by introducing Value Engineering, a practice that focuses on driving the customer
value that IT is providing to the business. Over the years, SAP has learned a great deal about
how the best-in-class companies continuously select, execute, and measure successful
business-driven IT projects. Utilizing an ongoing processes called Value Management, SAP
Value Engineering has standardized and packaged these best practices to help organizations
deliver value by aligning IT with business goals and processes, and through maximizing
return on IT investment.
1. Value Management
Value Management is a permanent management process that ensures that investments in
information technology are delivered on time, on budget and on value.
The discipline of Value Management is a proven way to realize the promised value from IT
investments and initiatives. The Value Management methodology is intended to keep
companies focused on choosing the right projects, to clearly dene ownership and
accountability for business results, and to deliver on these agreed-upon commitments. The
SAP Value Engineering team helps identify the appropriate strategic areas to enable
companies to become best-run businesses.
Value Management Drivers and Lifecycle:
Value Discovery: How do you align your business and IT strategies?
Value Realization: How can the business value be captured?
Value Optimization: How can you maximize the value from your investment?
2. Why Is Value Management Important?
Many companies initiate technology projects with a strong focus on their business objectives;
over time, however, they lose this focus. As a result, they never fully realize their expected
results. Research conducted by SAP indicates that 98% of companies can extract more value
from their initiatives, yet only 35% focus on measuring the value of these technologies after
they have been implemented. This virtuous circle of proper planning, execution, and
ongoing value analysis is critical to building a strategic IT function in successful companies.
Failure to realize maximum benet from IT is a common problem that can understandably
discourage executives from making the strategic IT investments needed to compete in
todays unforgiving business environment.
SAPs approach to value management focuses on helping you discover the right projects,
measure progress during implementation, and optimize investments across your IT portfolio.
This end-to-end process helps to ensure the business value of your IT investments.
3. Why Do Customers Like SAPs Value Engineering Process?
Quick turnaround process that delivers a strategic value proposition to customers in
weeks
Minimal disruption to customers ongoing operations using our collaborative approach
Fact-based, structured problem-solving approach that leverages past engagement
experiences
Hands-on participation from SAP experts solution specialists, industry practitioners,
consultants, and centers of excellence professionals
Mature value management methodology based on experience with 25,000+ customers;
leveraging comprehensive knowledge about best practices across industries and
business processes
Scalable, disciplined approach to business value assessments that establishes a
common language between business and IT audiences
4. Role of SAP Value Engineering
Utilizing SAP Value Engineering is not a requirement for building a solid business case for
SAP HANA. However, it certainly can make the process easier and more efficient.
If youve already identied several potential use cases for SAP HANA, VE resources can
help you create a financial justification for the initiative. However, if youre willing to invest the
time in a more immersive process, VE oers a SAP HANA Value Discovery Workshop, which
was described in greater detail earlier in this chapter.
5. Continuous Value Management
At this point, you have completed the Discovery portion of the Value Management Cycle
described earlier in this chapter. The remaining stages in the cycle are Realization and
Optimization. The Discovery phase resulted in the all-important business case, but the other
two phases are no less critical to the process. One strategy to ensure continued success
throughout the implementation of the SAP HANA initiative is to maintain (or establish) a
culture of measurement within the organization.
6. Establish a Culture of Measurement
How serious is your organization about performance measurement? Its nearly impossible to
determine the degree of success of a project unless you have a way to compare the before
and after states. In many organizations, such assessments are mostly subjective opinions
that are not easily validated.
In contrast, objective assessments minimize the element of personal bias and enable
historical comparisons of assessments for dierent projects. This kind of measurement
philosophy needs to be deeply ingrained in the culture of an organization, ideally as a formal
methodology.
Among other things, here are some of the questions that you should consider when
measuring performance:
What are some of your most important KPIs?
What are some of the underlying metrics that you track?
How do you track and communicate metrics and KPIs?
What adjustments does your organization make based on regular reviews of KPIs and
metrics?
Are there any new KPIs that would be relevant to your organization but have not been
adopted by your industry peers?
Recommendations
The purpose of this chapter is to explain why it is critical to build business use cases and to
provide some guidelines to assist you with this process. However, we did not intend this
chapter to be used as a cookbook for building business cases for SAP HANA. Dierent
organizations may follow widely varying approaches when building their internal justications
for SAP HANA.
Whatever your situation, however, we strongly recommend that you keep the following
points in mind during your journey:
1) When identifying use cases, try to go beyond ideas about what you could be doing better.
Consider:
What you cant do today
What you havent even imagined yet
2) Think big, but start small with a quick win to build momentum in business.
Initial success will build credibility internally
The resulting support may be necessary later when you plan and undertake more
ambitious projects
3) Dont view technology or IT as merely an expense or overhead. When leveraged properly,
technology and IT act as a:
Strategic enabler
Value creator
4) Track both hard and soft benefits during the financial analysis of use cases.
Hard benefits are easier to calculate precisely
Soft benefits may outweigh hard benefits
5) Ensure senior executive buy-in and sponsorship from Day 1.
This is a business case, not a technical justification
I
Chapter 4
SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA
This chapter was written with the expert assistance of Puneet Suppal
(@puneetsuppal), Simo Said and Amr El-Meleegy (@Meleegy). SAP
Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA Solution Marketing Team
n early 2006, when the project that would result in SAP HANA was in its infancy, the team
proposed several ambitious goals (dreams, really) for the eventual capabilities of an
enterprise-scale in-memory database. The most audacious goal was that this new database
architecture would eventually be able to power the largest, most mission-critical enterprise
systems in the world. In many ways, this was SAPs moon shot declaration.
On January 10th, 2013, less than two years after the rst shipment of SAP HANA, SAP
realized the completion of this dream with the announcement of the availability of the SAP
Business Suite powered by SAP HANA (SoH). SAP thus became the rst software company to
provide its customers with an integrated, real-time business process platform that unies
both analytic and transactional data into a single architecture.
It might appear that with the delivery of SoH in 2013, SAP had reached the end of its
journey. But, just as NASA didnt stop innovating and exploring after the rst moon landing
more than 40 years ago, SAP is simply transitioning into its next phase of innovation and
renovation. For the rst time ever, SAP has created an exceptionally performant database
platform that was engineered to its exact specications and that provides a myriad of
incredible new capabilities that previously were unavailable to its 20,000 programmers.
Having created this modern platform to power its agship applications such as ERP, SAP has
begun a multiyear eort to achieve three basic objectives: (1) Become an innovation-driven
enterprise: SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA will help organizations become an
innovation-driven enterprise by allowing you to rethink business processes as and when
needed and invent new business models SMARTER. (2) Become a data-driven enterprise:
SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA will help organizations become a data-driven
enterprise by allowing you to collect, consolidate and consume real-time data FASTER. (3)
Become a people-driven enterprise: SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA will help
organizations become a people-driven enterprise by providing your business users with
actionable insights on any device to decide and act SIMPLER. In a nutshell, SAP
Business Suite powered by SAP HANA enables its customers to drive their business smarter,
faster and simpler and do amazing new things that could never be done in a disk-based
architecture.
In this chapter, well
1. examine the architectural implications of running a mission-critical SAP Business Suite
landscape on SAP HANA,
2. discuss several scenarios for adding SAP HANA to SAP Business Suite landscapes,
3. review some technical and operational aspects of this switch, and
4. provide some details on several of the enhanced business processes/scenarios that will
immediately benefit from the power of SAP HANA.
Overview
SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA (SoH) delivers a modern, integrated suite of
business-critical applications that unify analytics and transactions into a single in-memory,
real-time data platform. The SAP Business Suite can now provide real-time planning,
execution, reporting, and analysis across end-to-end business processes. It can also provide
business users with unied, 360-degree views of real-time information, such as machine
sensor data and social media feeds, on many devices, across SAP applications as well as
non-SAP systems.
*
SAP SRM is not included in the scope of applications powered by SAP HANA yet.
Because SAP HANA provides a unique ability to deal eectively with both transactional
(OLTP) and analytical workloads (OLAP), companies can rapidly simplify their IT
infrastructures and reduce the total costs of ownership by consolidating analytics and
transactions into a single database. In this integrated scenario, companies can utilize SAP
HANA as their primary database for SAP Business Suite applications and provide real-time
analytics on live transactional data. Employing the same database to address a companys
analytical and transactional needs eliminates the necessity to replicate data and/or integrate
additional reporting/analytics landscapes.
The SAP HANA platform provides the foundation for companies both to dramatically
increase the performance of their existing SAP Business Suite applications and to continue to
innovate without disrupting their current systems by leveraging a new generation of real-time
applications natively built on the platform. It is the perfect starting point to begin taking
advantage of a true real-time data platform.
Architectural Implications of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP
HANA
Over the years, technical limitations in the database layer have forced companies to build two
separate software/hardware landscapes to provide both OLTP and OLAP systems to address
two dierent business needs: transaction processing and reporting/analysis. It was simply
impossible for disk-based databases to eciently handle both row-based transactional
writes and column-based analytical reads at the same time. As a result of this
performance dichotomy, database management systems currently on the market are
typically optimized for either transactional workloads or analytical workloads, but not both.
Compounding this problem is the fact that data have to be copied between the two systems.
This ineciency not only generates signicant costs, but it forces organizations to adopt
measures to ensure data integrity and usability between multiple systems. A nal issue is the
inevitable lag time that occurs when transactional data are exported to analytical systems on
a daily or weekly basis.
SAP HANA is the rst commercial database system that successfully eliminates this false
performance dichotomy as well as the resulting need to develop and maintain separate OLTP
and OLAP systems. Because SAP HANA can process transactional and analytical workloads
fully in-memory, it combines the best of both worlds. You dont need to take the time to load
data from your transactional database into your reporting database, or even to build
traditional tuning structures to enable that reporting. As transactions are happening, you can
report against them live, from the same database tables. By consolidating two landscapes
(OLAP and OLTP) into a single database, SAP HANA provides companies with massively lower
TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) in addition to mind-blowing speed. With all the relevant
transactional and analytical data integrated in a single system that is updated in real time,
companies can truly become real-time businesses.
Beyond the architectural simplication and cost savings that SAP HANA can bring to
enterprise architectures, another, more transformational shift is underway. Nearly every
application in operation today was constructed in a programming approach where data are
transmitted from the database to the application, where they are then transformed for
calculation by the application logic or algorithm. This bring the data to the algorithm
approach was necessary because a disk-based DBMS has very limited capability to do
anything more complex than rudimentary calculations.
In contrast, SAP HANA enables application developers to completely ip that model on its
head (see Chapter 8) and begin to leverage the systems incredibly powerful engines inside
the database. Developers can now extract data-intensive operations and algorithms from the
application layer and insert them into the database layer for execution. Applications thus
become much leaner, and they focus on business logic. In essence, the database becomes
a data engine that spits out the answers whenever they are needed, rather than simply
serving up chunks of data to the apps. This new bring the algorithm to the data approach is
much more elegant than the old way of programming, and it signicantly reduces the amount
of data being moved in and out of the database. Not only do these new apps increase
performance by having fast access to data in memory, they also gain additional exponential
speed by executing core application logic and algorithms inside the database, on the raw
data. This is when companies begin to realize process performance increases of 50,000 to
200,000 times.
Going forward, SAP will deliver HANA-ed versions of multiple transactions in the SAP
Business Suite through regular Enhancement Packs. Not every transaction will receive this
treatment because not every transaction will be able to take advantage of these new
database capabilities or the value of renovating the transaction wont be justied by the
performance improvements. Signicantly, SAP has made the migration to SAP HANA as
painless as possible. All HANA-ed reports and transactions can be activated via the switch
framework, so they will not modify the existing business logic when a company adopts the
new system. Going further, all of these switches are reversible and can be activated
independently. These features ensure maximum exibility in the consumption of these
optimizations while minimizing business disruptions for the companies that implement them.
Here are a few of the benets this new architecture provides to existing SAP Business
Suite customers:
Applications
You no longer have to run dialog processes in batch (i.e., Batch is dead).
Remaining batch processes run faster, essentially turning them into on demand jobs.
For details on SAP HANA optimized ABAP programs, please see the latest release notes
for SAP SAP HANA Live Operational Reports
Operational reports now run in real time inside the SAP Business Suite.
The new architecture removes the need for Operational Data Stores.
It eliminates the necessity to transfer (ETL) for performance reasons.
It eliminates the need to reconcile source data with copies.
Interactive reports allow users to trigger OLTP transactions from the report.
Next-generation Applications
Embedded Analytics can now be performed on a single system.
Custom ABAP code
Existing core code modication limitations apply (i.e., bad code is still bad code, it just
runs faster).
Regression tests for custom code are recommended after SAP HANA migration.
A lot more information on this topic is available in the Application Development with SAP
HANA chapter.
Operational Topics with SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA
By now it should be obvious that adding SAP HANA to an SAP Business Suite landscape
provides several major benets, ranging from increased performance to reductions in cost
and complexity. You might be asking yourself, however, OK, but whats the downside? More
specically, what do I have to change in my current SAP Business Suite system to get all this
goodness? You might be surprised that the answer to that question is very little. In
simplistic terms, there really isnt much more involved in migrating to this landscape than
copying the data from your old database into SAP HANA and then turning on the new system.
SAP has invested a huge amount of eort and resources to ensure that the migration process
is as painless and risk-free as possible. The company has even provided a one-step migration
wizard and an RDS package to manage the entire process (check the RDS site for more
details).
The new deployment approach, provided within the Rapid Database Migration of SAP
Business Suite to SAP HANA package, leverages out-of-the-box accelerators and predened
scope that will help accelerate your adoption of SAP HANA to supercharge the SAP Business
Suite.
The simplied process eliminates any migration guesswork and uncertainties regarding
realization timeline, due to automation of steps as well as planning security due to
standardization of the approach.
One-St ep-Migret ion via SAP HANA Migret ion Wizard (HMW)
Several of the features of your existing system remain the same:
Configuration IMG stays the same.
Customization Stays the same.
ABAP Workbench Stays the same.
Modification Same upgrade requirements as with any new release. BADIs still supported.
Connectivity Stays the same.
Security Stays the same, with enhancements.
SAP HANA Enhancements
Dynamic analytical privileges
Reuse of same analytic privilege for several users with different restrictions
Support for complex logic and situational security derived at runtime
Roles as design time objects
Offering full lifecycle management capabilities
New Support Role
Secure and enhance compliance process for productive systems.
Audit logging improvements
New audit events (e.g., ALTER USER)
Data access logging
Audit configuration in SAP HANA Studio
Transports CTS stays the same
Delivery via standard transport tools, SAP HANA specics as TLOGO objects (ABAP
based)
CTS+ transport integration ready for custom SAP HANA code
Monitoring DBACockpit and Solution Manager stay the same
SAP Solution Manager offers complete solution for operations
SAP HANA monitoring and alerting integrated into SAP Solution Manager 7.1,
Support Package 4, see note 1747682
End-to-end workload analysis for SAP HANA planned for Support Package 8 in
Solution Manager 7.1
High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) scenarios
HA and DR scenarios are supported
Introduction to High Availability for SAP HANA: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2775
SP7 includes new features supporting high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR)
deployment, such as replaying logs on snapshots as well as cascading system replication for
up to three locations. New unied install/patching tools and enhanced monitoring of
operations continue to simplify the administrative experience.
Flexible appliance platform
Third-party tools (e.g., agents for monitoring and scheduling, antivirus) allowed to
run on appliance
Third-party backup tools supported with SAP HANA (ongoing)
Migrating to SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA
Another question you might be asking yourself is, How do I get to SoH from where Im at
today? SAP will continue to provide customers with choice of database platforms, as it
always has. Customers who choose to migrate to SAP HANA must take three steps to
incorporate their existing SAP Business Suite on top of SAP HANA:
1. Update to the latest non-SAP HANA enhancement package and the latest version of the
SAP NetWeaver technology platform
2. Update to the latest enhancement package version for SAP HANA
3. Migrate from any database to SAP HANA
These requirements notwithstanding, however, SAP remains committed to supporting its
customers choice of database technologies and vendors. The company will continue to oer
the SAP Business Suite on all currently certied databases and to collaborate with its
database partners to support continuous innovation of its applications on a variety of
databases. The major downside to staying on an old database on your new SAP Business
Suite besides the costs and complexity inherent in disk-based databases is that the
HANA-ed transactions that SAP delivers with each enhancement package wont work with
your old database. Youll continue to receive new transactions and industry functionality,
but they will run much more slowly than they would on the new system. In addition, you wont
be able to use any of the HANA-fied transactions that SAP delivers.
That said, migrating to SoH isnt an all or nothing proposition. Companies can add SAP
HANA to their SAP Business Suite systems in several ways. However, a few caveats apply,
because not all of the enhanced functions that were designed for SoH are compatible with
non-HANA databases due to their disk-based architecture and lack of in-memory capabilities.
Current restrictions:
SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA SAP Note 1774566
General Requirements
Optimizations for SAP HANA require all relevant systems to run on SAP HANA (i.e.,
Development, Quality Assurance, and Production).
Implementing an SAP HANA-based ABAP correction requires an SAP HANA-based
correction system.
Testing an SAP HANA-based ABAP correction requires an SAP HANA-based test system.
SAP HANA-based systems interact with non-SAP HANA-based systems.
In mixed ERP landscapes (several ERPs) transports from non-HANA systems into HANA-
based systems are supported.
Non-SAP HANA-based development can be transported to SAP HANA-based systems
SAP HANA-based development can be transported into non-SAP HANA-based systems, if the
development is activated only after the system is manually activated.
All optimizations specic to SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA require a
dedicated Business Function activation to be enabled.
During upgrade, all code pertaining to SAP Business Suite, powered by SAP HANA is
deactivated and is running smoothly on non SAP HANA-databases.
Dual-Stack Systems
SAP Business Suite, powered by SAP HANA is based on SAP NetWeaver 7.40, and it does
not currently support dual-stack (ABAP/JAVA) installations.
Dual-stack systems have to be split prior to an SAP HANA migration.
Java stack stays on the current database, because Java is not yet supported to run on
SAP HANA (in a Business Suite app server).
Minimizing Downtime
Near-zero downtime approach: Use additional shadow database to keep DB downtime to
a minimum (available on request; see SAP Note 1680769)
Several parallel processes for data export and data import, table split for parallelized
export of large tables
Combined Unicode conversion and database migration
Reduced downtime for system copy (e.g., relevant for Unicode conversion):
Find more details on system copy and migration: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-14257.
Unicode
SAP HANA runs natively on Unicode only.
Unicode conversion can technically be performed during the database migration, but
certain preparatory steps are required.
SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA: Resources
http://help.sap.com/soh
Enhancement Pack Info (SAP Note 1774566)
SAP enhancement package 6 for SAP ERP 6.0, version for SAP HANA
SAP enhancement package 2 for SAP CRM 7.0, version for SAP HANA
SAP enhancement package 2 for SAP SCM 7.0, version for SAP HANA
SAP ERP powered by SAP HANA
Release Notes for SAP EHP 6 version for HANA, please subscribe for the latest
updates:
https://websmp202.sap-ag.de/~form/sapnet?
_SHORTKEY=01100035870000755177
SP0: Release Notes SAP EHP6, version for SAP HANA
SP1: Release notes SAP EHP6, version for SAP HANA, SP01
EHP 6 for HANA Optimizations by transactions and ABAP programs please see
attachment in this SAP Note: 1761546
Current Restrictions SAP EHP 6 for SAP ERP 6.0,version for SAP HANA
1768031
Release Restrictions for SAP Netweaver AS ABAP 7.40 1789659
Overview Suite on HANA Restrictions: 1774566
SAP CRM Customer Relationship powered by SAP HANA
http://help.sap.com/crmhana
Release Notes for SAP EhP 2 for SAP CRM 7.0, version for SAP HANA
Optimizations and current restrictions, please see SAP Note: 1768032
SAP SCM Supply Chain Management
http://help.sap.com/scm_hana
Current restrictions:
SAP EhP 2 for SAP SCM 7.0, version for SAP HANA 1768043
Scenarios for Adding SAP HANA to SAP Business Suite Landscapes
Companies can utilize several methods to integrate the power of SAP HANA into their existing
SAP Business Suite environments. These methods can range from simply adding a SAP HANA
Live deployment in side-car mode to fully migrating their entire landscape to SAP HANA as
the primary data store.
New SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite
The new SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite provides an open environment that enables
business users to perform operational analytics and reporting on real-time SAP Business
Suite transactional data. Based on analytical views in a virtual data model (VDM), SAP HANA
Live provides users with new strategies to analyze operational data to build their own reports
and documents. The current oering contains predened analytical content for SAP Business
Suite applications (e.g., SAP ERP, SAP CRM). SAP HANA Live also serves as the foundation for
a new class of analytic applications including SAP Working Capital Analytics, DSO scope; SAP
Invoice and Goods Receipt Reconciliation; SAP Supply Chain Info Center; and SAP Access
Control Role Analytics. Please note: SAP HANA Live is available as a separate package for
SAP Business Suite.
SAP HANA Live provides the following benefits:
Views for easy analysis of SAP Business Suite data with SAP HANA
Open for a wide variety of reporting frontends
Maintained by SAP
Operational reporting based on real-time Business Suite data
Foundation for a new class of analytics applications
The SAP Live enables you to very eciently build operational reporting on SAP Business
Suite data. Going further, in spite of all these great capabilities, it does not make SAP BW
obsolete, which remains SAPs core enterprise datawarehouse for consolidating data from
SAP and Non-SAP sources. Think of this new capability more as an upgrade or a real-time
evolution of standard ABAP and ALV reports. It is basically a pipeline directly into the
transactional tables under an SAP Business Suite system that allows you to display real-time
operational data in a very flexible and user-friendly format.
The SAP Business Suite application data models enhanced for real-time data
throughput and top performance in transactional scenarios are optimized for analytic
purposes using views in the SAP HANA database. These views form a virtual data model that
customers and partners can reuse. Not only does this model benet current users, but it
serves as a foundation for future SAP analytic development.
Data provided by the virtual data model can be presented through multipurpose analytical
UIs such as SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite UIs and domain-specific Web applications.
SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite provides the following advantages compared to
regular reporting solutions:
Open
Any access to the reporting framework is based on standard mechanisms such as
SQL or MDX. No BW modeling or ABAP programming is required.
Uniform
A single approach is chosen for all Suite applications, enabling a common
reporting across application boundaries.
Intuitive
The virtual data model will hide the complexity and customizing dependencies of
our Suite data model to make data available without requiring users to possess a
deep understanding of the various SAP models.
Fast
The suite features SAP HANA as the underlying computing engine, enabling fast
analytics on high data volumes and high levels of data.
Real-time
Because all reporting is based on primary data (or a real-time replication of it),
there is no need to wait for data warehousing loading jobs to finish. Thus, the cycle
time from recording to reporting is dramatically reduced.
The SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment solution enables real-time reporting on operational
data from SAP Business Suite software.
The rapid-deployment solution provides prebuilt BI reports in the areas of nance,
controlling, sales and distribution, governance, risk, and compliance, global trade services,
customer relationship management, insurance, and more on SAP HANA.
SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment solution can be deployed on SAP Business Suite running
directly on SAP HANA, but it is also possible to deploy it on a Business Suite system running
on your existing database with data being replicated into a side by side HANA Appliance.
Additionally, customers and SAP partners can extend the solution through exible HANA
models and business intelligence reports
More Details:
http://www.sap.com/solution/rapid-deployment/software/hana-live-business-
suitereporting/index.html
SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite
English SAP HANA Live Browser Last Update: February 2013
SAP HANA Live for SAP CRM
English SAP HANA Live for SAP CRM Last Update: February 2013
SAP HANA Live for SAP ERP
English SAP HANA Live for SAP ERP Last Update: February 2013
English SAP Invoice and Goods Receipt Reconciliation Last Update: February 2013
SAP HANA Live for SAP solutions for GRC
English SAP HANA Live for SAP solutions for GRC Last Update: February 2013
English SAP Access Control Role Analytics Last Update: February 2013
SAP HANA Live for SAP GTS
English SAP HANA Live for SAP GTS Last Update: February 2013
SAP HANA Live for SAP SCM
English SAP HANA Live for SAP SCM Last Update: February 2013
English SAP Supply Chain Info Center Last Update: February 2013
Real-Time Solutions powered by SAP HANA
SAP and its partners are delivering a new class of solutions on top of the SAP HANA platform
that provide real-time insights on Big Data as well as state-of-the-art analysis such as
machine learning, pattern recognition, and predictive capabilities. These solutions can help
transform the way you run your business, from enabling rapid, sense-and-respond processes
and targeted actions, to even rethinking business models in your industry. Furthermore, you
can continue to utilize the SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) component also powered by
SAP HANA as your enterprise data warehouse.
SAP HANA apps can also help customers extend their SAP Business Suite powered by SAP
HANA investments by providing them with a wide array of complementary use cases beyond
their traditional business processes. They also provide a low risk low cost opportunity for
customers to test the SAP HANA Platform with tried and tested applications that solve
specific industry business problems.
From a business value perspective there are 3 broad categories of In memory based
application that are available today from SAP.
1. Customer Engagement Applications
First and foremost there are the Customer Engagement Applications categories. These are
applications that help our customers build personalized 1-on-1 sales and marketing
engagements with their customers and do things like run targeted and personalized
marketing campaigns and deliver automated selling recommendations to their Sales Force.
These Customer Engagement applications can also help you understand the present and
future value of your customers and be able to segment and stratify them into core,
opportunistic, marginal and service drain customers and develop distinct and targeted sales
and marketing strategies for each of them. This was not possible in the past because
customers could only rely on Revenue and Margin numbers to analyze their customers. But
with SAP HANA you can now look into the full picture and bring in other factors like cost to
serve, order frequency, loyalty, and buying power into the equation all based on real time
information.
SAP Customer Value Intelligence
SAP Account Intelligence
2. Sense and Response Applications
The second category is Sense and Response Applications. These are apps that are built
around helping customers capture and analyze large amounts of both external and internal
data to help them detect hidden trends and capture deviations and respond to market
changes in real time.
One example in this category of applications is SAP Demand Signal Management which
helps Manufacturing companies in Consumer Products, High Tech, and Automotive industries
enterprise their downstream market and demand data-like Point of Sale data, syndicated
data and social media data to develop a consolidated view of market demand information
that they can then leverage across their organization whether that is in Sales, Marketing or
Supply Chain to optimize trade promotions, and inventory planning and launch new products.
So if you are a Consumer Product company for example running a trade promotion instead
of waiting for weeks after the trade promotion is over to understand how it performed in the
market you can do that today in near real time by accessing and analyzing Point of Sale data
directly from your retailers and understanding how your products are performing on the retail
shelves, which retailers are complying with your promotions and detecting critical issues like
out of stock to reduce lost sales.
SAP Demand Signal Management powered by SAP HANA
3. Planning and Business Optimization Apps
Finally there are Planning and Business Optimization Apps, which are applications that
leverage the Planning and Calculation Engine and Simulation capabilities in the SAP HANA
platform to help companies leverage their big data to do things like better forecast their cash
flows, manage their liquidity risk and optimize their working capital.
One example of application in this category is SAP Liquidity Risk Management which helps
banks manage their liquidity risk in real time. One of the problems that large banks face today
is that they execute millions of cash transactions each day in dierent countries, with
dierent currencies and across dierent and complex nancial products. Building a solid real
time understanding of their liquidity becomes a huge challenge when operating in such an
environment. Adding to that challenge there are new and stricter regulatory requirements
that are being put into place after the recent nancial meltdown that require banks not just to
report on specic liquidity metrics but also to simulate these results based on dierent future
economic stress scenarios. SAP HANA allows banks to consolidate large numbers of cash
ows and run stress simulations so they can get a better understating of their liquidity risk
profile.
SAP Liquidity Risk Management
Another example in this category is SAP Fraud Management. Its estimated that trillions
of dollars are lost every year by governments and corporations in fraud abuses. SAP Fraud
Management uses the power of the SAP HANA platform to detect, investigate and prevent
fraud. The application helps minimize false positive signals through real-time calibration and
simulation capabilities on very large volumes of data. With that, the workload (and cost) of
the investigation team can be signicantly reduced. For instance, the user can run
simulations by testing fraud detection criteria, to determine the right level of severity and
avoid excessive load of false positives to be sent to the fraud investigation team. In addition
by combining rules and predictive methods SAP Fraud Management users can optimize fraud
scenario analysis, and adapt measures to changing fraud patterns to better prevent fraud
situations from happening.
SAP Fraud Management powered by SAP HANA
Below are a few more examples of new and existing SAP applications that are now powered
by SAP HANA.
SAP BW powered by SAP HANA
Want a super-charged data warehouse?
SAP Predictive Analysis powered by SAP HANA
Real-time, in-memory predictive and next-generation visualization and modeling
SAP Visual Intelligence with SAP HANA
Gather, analyze, and present the facts to solve your most pressing business questions.
SAP Sales and Operations Planning
Integrated business planning to align your business to profitably meet future demand
SAP Collections Insight
Turn revenue into cash faster with real-time mobile collaboration tools and collections
information.
SAP Accelerated Trade Promotion Planning
Maximize trade with deeper and faster trade promotion planning
SAP Invoice Receipts and Goods Receipts
Accelerate your financial close while ensuring compliance with your corporate rules
SAP Working Capital Analytics
Monitor and analyze your Days Sales Outstanding in real time
SAP Supply Chain Info Centre
Fully exploit your Demand and Supply Planning data for better decision making,
SAP Access Control Role Analytics
Quickly
Want a super-charged data warehouse?
SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with SAP HANA
Analytics and business intelligence at blazing speed
My GreenSpot
SAP is teaming up with the World Wildlife Fund (the worlds leading conservation
organization) to preserve and protect endangered forests and their ecologies with SAP HANA
One.
Preserve Your GreenSpot
SAP HANA for Humanity
We provide the necessary technology and the associated technical resources to help
nonprots and governmental agencies analyze and visualize their large data sets to solve
pressing global problems.
Learn More
Care Circles
Find and deliver the best care. Care Circles is a free service that helps patients and their
families find best practices in caregiving from experts and caregivers around the world.
Learn More
Recalls Plus
We track product and food safety so you dont have to. Make a list. Receive alerts. Keep your
kids safe.
Learn More
SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA Business Scenarios
SAP has set up an automated tool call Business Scenario Recommendations for SAP Business
Suite Powered by SAP HANA to help you find and assess the areas where SAP HANA will bring
the most value to your companys SAP Business Suite implementation. This tool provides a
report that includes tailored recommendations for optimizations and scenarios based on your
actual current production system usage data.
To obtain your personalized assessment, you need to ll out the form at suiteonhana.com
and then upload a screenshot of your ST03N-Workload Monitor screen in your production
system. The entire process takes about 510 minutes. SAP will then input your actual
workload data into the tool and prepare a customized report that highlights the various
scenarios that will benefit from adding SAP HANA to your SAP Business Suite landscape.
You can view an example of a typical business scenario recommendation report at this
s i t e : http://suiteonhana.com/assets/business_scenario_recommendations/en/cross-
industry.pdf
SAP Business Suite applications using SAP HANA as (the only) database
In this scenario, applications including SAP ERP, SAP CRM, and SAP Supply Chain
Management (SAP SCM) can fully run on top of SAP HANA in an integrated manner
*
. As part
of this rst wave of innovations, SAP delivers optimizations for 23 business value scenarios
across key lines of business (e.g., nance, sales, marketing, service, procurement, and HR)
and more than 400 industry-specic reports to achieve unprecedented performance. See the
details below for examples of scenarios in the SAP Business Suite that leverage SAP HANA.
The available SAP Rapid-deployment solutions in these areas are:
CRM rapid-deployment solution with SAP HANA, is bringing together software and
services to give you essential marketing, sales and service functionality.
Wi t h SAP ERP powered by SAP HANA Rapid-Deployment Solutions, SAP is simply
combining together the best suite of applications and the next generation best performing
platform for doing real-time business:
SAP ERP for Finance & Controlling Rapid Deployment Solution powered by SAP HANA
With this rapid-deployment solution, you can implement a nancial and management
accounting solution quickly and affordably.
SAP ERP for Trading Rapid Deployment Solution powered by SAP HANA
With this rapid-deployment solution, you can quickly and aordably implement
functionality to enable predened business scenarios that are crucial for companies active in
trading industries.
SAP ERP for Manufacturing Rapid Deployment Solution powered by SAP HANA
With this rapid-deployment solution, you can quickly and aordably implement
functionality to enable predened business scenarios that are crucial for companies active in
the process, discrete, and repetitive manufacturing industries.
Business Scenarios that directly benefit from running on SAP HANA
In this section, we will review the current SAP HANAenabled business scenarios included in
the SAP Business Suite. A business scenario, in this context, consists of a comprehensive set
of business processes that are enabled by one or more applications within the SAP Business
Suite. For example, Strategic Purchase Optimization utilizes data from multiple areas
including Supply Chain Management and Procurement, and Accelerated Organizational
Changes Publishing draws primarily from HCM data.
Irrespective of the data source, the critical point conveyed in the following scenarios is
that many of these business functions can be performed much faster and, consequently,
much more frequently by utilizing SAP HANA. For many business, this capability
represents a wish that was dicult, if not impossible, to fulll in the pre-HANA days. In some
cases, the ability to perform certain scenarios more frequently enables businesses to
perform more what-if type analyses, which in turn help key personnel make better
decisions in a more timely manner. This ability to perform complex transactions and reports
in real time is a significant boost to driving value within the enterprise.
Fast Financial Close
Real-Time Financial Performance
Efficient Receivables Management
Efficient Payables Management
Central Treasury Exposure management
Access Control Role Analytics
Automated Cross-System Process Control
Optimized Quote Management
Real-Time Inventory management
Efficient Procurement
Strategic Purchase Optimization
Maximized Asset utilization and Uptime
Accelerated Organizational Changes Publishing
Insight-Driven Workforce Cost Management
Real-Time material Planning
Instant Material Flow Control
Comprehensive Engineer-to-Order Project Management
Maximized Productivity and Profitability of Complex Projects
Fast Financial Close
A nancial close denes the nancial results of a group as required for presentation to
external and internal stakeholders by valuating business activities from an accounting
perspective. It closes the books for all individual companies. A corporate close for the group
and subgroups and nancial disclosures combine quantitative data with comprehensive
qualitative information. A fast financial close is a core element of financial excellence.
Support for real-time, fast nancial close oers a single multi-dimensional database and
shared functionality for accounting and consolidation, providing governance, compliance, and
transparency throughout nancial close management. With deeper and faster insight down to
the lowest level of detail, it delivers quality at the source, process eciencies, a common
view across nancials (invoices) and logistics (goods receipts), and faster reconciliation.
Drill-through for simulation of organizational changes is available.
Real-Time Financial Performance
Managing performance from a nancial perspective is becoming more crucial every day. On-
time results for all audit- and analysis-related inquiries and an ability to react to risks and
opportunities exemplify the need for a transparent and ecient process to deliver nancial
information on time and accurately. You need to manage operations and related performance
successfully in todays volatile business conditions:
Integrated planning uses a case-driven environment that allows new planning scenarios
and user-interaction scenarios.
Real-time close helps ensure accelerated closing activities through faster processes,
reporting without data latency, and heterogeneous consolidation landscapes.
Product costing enables the modeling and simulation of design-to-cost product cost in
real time, management of the impact of product and production cost across an
organization for volatile resource and commodity prices, and comprehensive product-
cost management analytics.
Efficient Receivables Management
Receivables management is a core nance function to manage the payment of customer
invoices. By reducing the number of days sales outstanding (DSO) and bad-debt write-os
and by managing billing disputes and collections activities, you can constantly monitor the
credit risk of your customer base. The goal of receivables management is to optimize the
working capital to enable investment and growth.
Support for increased eectiveness of receivables management oers algorithms to
match incoming payments and invoices, freeing headcount to focus on value-added activities
and processes such as collections, dispute, and credit management. All information is in real
time, not batch, to increase the transparency of the working capital provided in the payment
and working capital dashboard. Exceptions in the process can be pushed to a mobile device to
offer immediate action from everywhere.
Efficient Payables Management
Payables management focuses on evaluating, validating, posting, and managing payments,
and archiving of an invoice. Key elements of the accounts payable process include
integration, automation, standardization, and workows. Close collaboration with the treasury
team optimizes DSO. In addition, e-invoicing becomes more prominent, but paper-based
invoices remain.
Support for this business scenario combines reports in payables and cash position to help
payables clerks make the right nancial decisions. Real-time and accurate insight into
vendor-opened receipts leads to better scheduling of payment runs and provides exible and
automated payments in real time through parallelization of different payment runs.
Central Treasury Exposure management
Treasury and nancial risk management involves a variety of processes, from cash and
liquidity management to the management of nancial transactions like money market, foreign
exchange, derivatives, debt instruments, securities, and commodity paper deals. You need a
holistic view of these processes to be able to respond to changes in a quick, ecient, and
compliant manner, taking into account data from past, present, and future planning.
The treasury exposure hub powered by SAP HANA is part of support for the
comprehensive process of treasury and nancial risk management. It enables global nancial
risk management on the ERP software system at headquarters as the central integration
platform. The platform oers a lower total cost of ownership, central monitoring, data
consistency, and traceability of business events for nancial and external auditing. The
treasury exposure hub is the starting point for analytical applications that provide key
performance indicators.
Access Control Role Analytics
As a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States and similar legislation in other
countries, nearly all publicly listed companies now have a dedicated compliance function.
Elimination of segregation of duties was initially a main reason to implement a solution to
identify access risks. But companies are now striving to evolve many risk and compliance
tools, from bottom-line savings and risk avoidance to top-line strategic advantage.
Using SAP HANA, role administrators can perform real-time analysis on the roles, their
usage, similarity with other roles, and options for reuse to advise business owners about the
most ecient usage to avoid creating new roles. Business executives can analyze roles to
uncover hidden downsides and reduce the uncertainty of many nancial and operational
planning decisions, such as reorganization.
Automated Cross-System Process Control
You need process control to perform automated testing (focused on compliance) and
continuous control monitoring (focused on compliance and on process eciency and
eectiveness). Because of increasing regulations and policies, you must deliver traceable
monitoring and remedial activities to demonstrate compliance. Using queries, reports,
events, and analytics, you keep business processes and systems under control.
Using SAP HANA, you can centralize all data from multiple systems into a single
repository with excellent performance and gain the ability to use complex business rules for
detailed analysis. SAP HANA increases the usability and power of automated testing and
monitoring.
Optimized Quote Management
Informed customers expect a superior sales experience, and internal stakeholders want to
use the almost unlimited amount of Big Data on sales. It is essential to embrace these trends
early in the order-to-cash business. Quote management thus gains importance as a step in
this business process. A huge amount of customer data from diverse categories must be
captured in one quote.
SAP HANA enables smart and context-based recommendations based on historical
customer and sales information. Individually tailored oers can be made to fulll customer
needs in a fast and user-friendly way. The recommendations also embrace predictive
information, such as the conversion rate and time from quote to order and the likelihood of
paying on time based on sales volume. Recommendations can also take into consideration
orders and materials for sales representatives to oer the best quote in real time to
customers when serving them.
Real-Time Inventory management
Inventory management handles the recording and tracking of stocks of materials on a
quantity and value basis. It covers the planning, entry, and documentation of stock
movements like goods receipts and issues, internal physical stock transfers, and transfer
postings. These movements lead to a large volume of business documents. Inventory
management is also responsible for the performance of physical inventory control.
Real-time inventory management provides stock insight and monitoring with high
performance to support demand-driven procurement. It increases process eciency in
adjacent procurement processes such as purchase order or invoice processing. An analytical
monitor for inventory management, including various dashboards and performance
improvements, is available to enhance the user experience and improve the eciency of the
process.
Efficient Procurement
Because of intense competitive pressure, you often absorb increased costs for commodities,
goods, or services to avoid passing them on to your customers. You aim to boost productivity
and drive innovation to lower additional costs. To drive cost-eective, competitive global
supply chains, you leverage procurement software to relieve slow and costly paper-based
processes, disproportionately high transaction costs, frequent errors, and maverick
spending.
Because SAP HANA lets you analyze massive quantities of data in local memory, the
results of complex inquiries and transactions are available at your ngertips. You can update
plans, run simulations, and execute decisions based on real-time data.
Accelerate lengthy processing of purchasing documents that arises from a multitude of
line items and a long purchase order history. Provide top business intelligence reports in
procurement side by side to help ensure that you get real-time data with high performance
and a modern user interface. Support fast business decisions and user adoption with exible
conguration options for procurement analysis, and provide complete visibility into end-to-
end procurement activities.
Strategic Purchase Optimization
Pressured to reduce supply costs while maintaining high-quality output, you seek greater
eciencies and savings from your procurement operations. You know that high-performance
organizations employ spend-analysis tools, sourcing and process automation, and
standardized procurement operations. A centralized model facilitates negotiations and better
supplier relationships.
Provide the purchaser with a comprehensive, complete, and real-time working
environment and view of business transactions and business data related to the strategic
suppliers. Oer company-wide search for purchasing business documents to inuence actual
payment conditions and rebates. Inuence contract negotiations proactively by getting
insight into sales planning and sales orders.
Maximized Asset utilization and Uptime
In asset-intensive industries, you need to handle multiple maintenance plans that must be
scheduled frequently. SAP software streamlines planning such activities with maintenance
work orders. In traditional systems, this transaction is triggered at regular intervals using a
batch program. To remain competitive, you look for new ways to get the most out of your
assets by ensuring that they stay up and running.
With scheduling transaction IP30H, based on SAP HANA, you can schedule all existing
maintenance plans within a specic time frame. The software now uses the power of SAP
HANA to automatically preselect maintenance plans that are due. The feature avoids the
need for any parameter restrictions. This approach helps ensure that the software processes
only maintenance plans that are due and that no call objects are missed. It delivers the
results much faster and in a user-friendly transaction.
Accelerated Organizational Changes Publishing
The performance of HR applications and related reporting, analytics, and planning depend to
a large extent on how quickly the software can work through hierarchies in any given context.
More important, the resulting wait times have a direct bearing on the overall user experience
and satisfaction.
Push HR structural evaluations and authorizations to SAP HANA to accelerate the
denition of structural authorizations (who gets access to what), organization and cost center
hierarchy, and reporting hierarchy. Determine which manager is responsible for the
organization hierarchy and dene logical views in the learning catalog to provide reporting
and analysis without degrading performance.
Insight-Driven Workforce Cost Management
Time and payroll processes create immense amounts of valuable operational data that can
bring positive and negative trends to light. The data can provide insight into the fully loaded
cost of employees and real-time costs associated with operations, projects, campaigns, and
so on. An inability to tap this information source quickly and easily counteracts your eorts to
drive HR efficiencies and introduce agile business processes.
Eective and ecient payroll exception handling is based on real-time data through
provision of rapid insight into payroll-related workforce costs and trends in core HR functions.
The functions include drill-down to employee and earning details for the fully loaded cost of
employees, remuneration and overtime based on master data, and time management data
stored in payroll results. Hierarchical structures are based on organizational management or
cost center in reporting and analysis.
Real-Time material Planning
Material requirements planning (MRP) determines material shortages by comparing sales
orders, forecast demand, and stock-transfer demand with inventory and expected material
receipts. It creates planned orders or purchase requisitions for the missing material. MRP is
typically performed in time-consuming batch mode, so that decisions can be based only on
the data derived from periodic runs; production and sales suffer as a result.
Faster re-planning allows more frequent MRP runs in shorter cycles by providing global,
cross-plant planning where demand information is propagated faster through the supply
chain. Faster reactions to demand changes reduce the risk of stock-outs and allow reduced
safety stocks. This lets users run what-if scenarios in real time to make decisions faster
regarding reallocation and outsourcing. This functionality instantly updates supply network
collaboration with the latest demand information to help suppliers react much faster.
Instant Material Flow Control
The results of MRP are stored in MRP lists. Material receipts and requirements for selected
materials can be checked in the stock and requirement list. Production planners can select
MRP lists with problems and stock and requirement lists with a short range of coverage
(when critical to performance). Production planning and purchasing departments often make
decisions based on outdated information from batch runs.
Early identication of critical materials (such as range of coverage below threshold,
unconsumed forecast, overconsumed forecast, inventory without demand, and so on) and a
feasibility check of production orders can be done on the y. This functionality enables better
production-order sequences to help determine the fraction of demand needed for sales
orders, leading to lower work in progress, shorter lead times, and better due-date
performance when only the required quantity is produced.
Comprehensive Engineer-to-Order Project Management
Project-driven procurement and progress monitoring are vital to executing complex projects
successfully. The huge volume of real-time data and time-consuming transactions for
maintaining or analyzing project data constrain project and program engineers in making
decisions when needed. Waiting for the relevant data to be provided slows engineers down
significantly.
Support for this business scenario combines the speed and acceleration of SAP HANA and
the integrated processes in the SAP ERP application for complex projects. Real-time progress
monitoring along the project lifecycle, including version comparison and combined analysis of
nancials and logistics data, enables faster decision making so you can act and react to real
project execution work. New project line-item reporting with acceleration and improved user
experience is available to support in-depth analysis of complex projects.
Maximized Productivity and Profitability of Complex Projects
Monitoring of progress is a key to successful execution of complex projects. The main
challenge is the volume of data. Project analysis and progress monitoring are time-
consuming due to high volumes of data for complex, lengthy projects. Project or program
engineers cannot provide the information needed to decide on natural deviations (time,
quality, and costs) in project execution. Cross-project or program monitoring is even more
challenging.
Support for monitoring and analysis of large projects and programs in real time lets you
decide faster, mitigate risks, and deliver the best resource productivity and project
protability. Progress monitoring along the project lifecycle can include version comparison,
and a combined analysis of nancials and logistics data enables decisions to be made for
acting and reacting within a window of opportunity. Indirect improvements through SAP
HANA arise in production planning, materials management, controlling, and nancials
because of tight integration.
Chapter 5
SAP Business Warehouse Powered by SAP HANA
This chapter was contributed by Storm Archer III (@stormarcher3).
Product Expert, SAP Business Warehouse Product Management
Introduction
SAP Business Warehouse (BW) is the rst SAP application to be HANA-ed to take
advantage of the power of SAP HANA. With more than 14,000 SAP BW implementations
globally, SAP BW has become a critical piece of the IT landscape, and it is particularly well
suited to benefit from the speed and simplicity that SAP HANA can provide to applications.
To discuss the benets of SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA, a brief introduction to SAP BW
and some recent history of its evolution is in order. Given the scope of this book, well have to
assume that readers are already familiar with SAP BW concepts. Also, well refer to many
online resources for deeper technical details. With this background, well then illustrate the
additional power and functionality that SAP HANA adds to SAP BW.
SAP Business Warehouse (BW)
SAP BW is an application that SAP developed in the 1990s. It is essentially an enterprise data
warehouse (EDW) application that includes many built-in functions to create an end-to-end
EDW solution. In addition, SAP BW includes a substantial amount of content based on best
business practices. Many SAP customers work with SAP directly through inuence councils
and the global SAP User groups to define new features and validate content additions
Customers frequently inquire about the dierences between SAP BW and their existing
EDW solution. To answer this question, we need to be familiar with the fundamental features
common to all EDWs. All EDW systems include a database and a data modeling tool. Many
companies that implement an EDW will choose an alternate modeling tool based on features
and functionality. In addition, there are a number of other tools that companies need to add
to complete their enterprise-ready data warehouse. Specically, they will need a content-
management tool, a metadata-management tool, security software, a master data manager,
workflow capabilities, and many more. The challenge most companies face is integrating all of
these software tools into one seamless operation. As you might suspect, this is often easier
said than done.
SAP BW provides many of the functions needed to install an enterprise-ready EDW. The
major dierence between SAP BW and these other EDWs is that the additional software
elements that are add-ons in a traditional EDW are included in SAP BW, and they work
together right out of the box. In addition, SAP BW oers solutions to customers who need to
expand the included functionality. An example is a scenario in which the included security is
adequate, but the customer needs to participate in a greater identity management solution
(e.g., SAP Identity Management Services.)
SAP BW and In-Memory Computing
One of the fundamental aspects of EDW systems is their ability to manage multidimensional
data (cubes) and to conduct analytical operations on those data. As previously mentioned,
one key element of an EDW is a database. A major limitation of most databases is that they
were designed and optimized to manipulate transactional data stored in a relational database
management system (RDBMS). More specically, they were congured to provide the best
performance for row-based inserts imported from OLTP applications. EDWs are a dierent
breed of application entirely. As OLAP rather than OLTP applications, their primary role is to
read data from the database and display them in reports or analytical views. EDWs almost
never insert data into rows as an OLTP application does. Therefore, many of the performance
issues (and related technical solutions) in the EDW are a direct result of this mismatch
between the needs of the application for OLAP workloads and the OLTP design of the
underlying databases.
For an EDW to operate with the complex data needed for advanced analytics, the data
warehouse application has developed functionality that circumvents the basic limitation of
the database and provides better performance. This structure is referred to as the Layered
Scalable Architecture (LSA) model.
Although the LSA model provides a foundation for developing data models, the additional
layers of functionality that are designed to work around the limitations of relational databases
cause performance issues as the amount of data increases. Specically, these additional
layers limit the exibility of the system and place heavy workloads on the hardware. To
combat this problem, SAP introduced the SAP BW Accelerator (BWA) in 2005. BWA is an in-
memory appliance that can be added to the SAP BW system landscape to provide query
acceleration and to ooad some SAP BW functions to the appliance. Basically, an index of a
slice of data from the BW system, such as a cube, is copied to BWA and stored in RAM. This
function is very similar to the way that Google indexes websites. Next, user queries are
directed to the in-memory columnar index of the data, rather than to the physical data
arranged in rows on physical disks in the BW system. SAP designed this shift to in-memory
indexing for queries as a workaround to avoid the performance penalties that must be paid
when users attempt to read large datasets o a disk-based database. SAP BWA provided an
in-memory, columnar system that allowed queries to operate up to 100 times faster than a
disk-based system. This development was an important leap for many SAP BW customers
who were experiencing diculties due to the limiting nature of the RDBMS. In many ways, the
introduction of BWA was the rst real proof point for SAP that in-memory databases could
provide the magic bullet to eliminate the horrible performance issues inherent in disk-
based databases while simultaneously reducing the costs and complexity of the application
that had to be built around these performance bottlenecks.
Evolving In-Memory Footprint in SAP NetWeaver BW
Figure 1: SAP BW and In-Memory Technology
This description of SAP BWA sounds very similar to SAP HANA. There is, however, one
fundamental dierence between the two systems; namely, BWA is a caching engine rather
than a database. SAP HANA can now take the place of a traditional RDBMS and an SAP BWA
appliance. This chapter will examine the benets of replacing an existing database with or
without SAP BWA with SAP HANA as the database.
SAP HANA Specific Enhancements for SAP BW
Companies typically implement SAP HANA to enhance their systems performance and to
process voluminous amounts of data. When companies evaluate their performance, they
generally identify specic areas that need improvement; most commonly, query performance,
data loading, and software add-on/application performance. Below we provide examples of
how in-memory computing both enhances performance and accelerates applications.
SAP BW 7.3x oers a substantial number of improvements over traditional RDBMS
congurations. Some of these improvements also reduce both administration costs and total
cost of ownership (TCO). With each release, SAP BW introduces new innovations to better
support customers business operations.
Query Performance
Over the past decade, the amount of data that businesses need to query and analyze has
grown exponentially. Unfortunately, as weve already discussed, relational databases were
not designed around multidimensional data models in the EDW. To overcome the limitations
of the transactional-based databases, EDW systems incorporated functionality
aggregates, fact tables, and other features into the LSA model. Today, however, the
availability of columnar databases and in-memory technologies has made these additional
elements obsolete. In 2005, SAP introduced the SAP BW Accelerator as a query accelerator.
As SAP BWA matured, SAP provided additional engines and features. Specically, SAP BW on
SAP HANA has incorporated the query acceleration and engines from BWA, along with other
valuable columnar database features.
As with the SAP BW Accelerator, performance is one of the key drivers for in-memory
computing. In-memory computing improves performance in a number of areas. From the end
user perspective, query response time is often one of the primary elements in system
performance. SAP BW Accelerator delivered approximately 100 times the query performance
compared to a relational database alone. SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA provides similar
results for end user query response times. Of course, customer results have varied and will
vary based on conguration and content. Some customers have reported query performance
greater than SAP BWA. The general rule, however, is to expect similar query performance.
In an SAP BW with SAP BWA implementation, customers have to maintain two systems.
This is one area where this architecture can reduce both TCO and administration costs.
Further, when companies utilize an SAP BWA appliance, they must obtain separate licenses
for the relational database and for SAP BWA. They also need to maintain two sets of
hardware and data. In contrast, implementing SAP HANA as the database for SAP BW
involves only a single hardware appliance and license model. From an administration point of
view, then, the customer no longer needs to manage multiple data sets. By reducing
redundancy, improving data lifecycle management, and eliminating hardware and license
duplication, SAP HANA dramatically reduces a companys TCO.
Figure 2: Migrat ion from SAP BW & BWA t o SAP BW on SAP HANA
Figure 3: SAP BW on SAP HANA Archit ect ure
Data-Loading Performance
In contrast to SAP BWA, SAP HANA provides much more functionality to the SAP BW than
simply query acceleration. In the business environment for many SAP customers, the need
for real-time or near real-time data reporting has dramatically increased. With their existing
systems, the time required to extract data from a source system is fairly static and
predictable; it generally comprises about 20% of the data load process. The remaining 80%
is spent on data activation and updates. This is where the intelligence and deep integration of
the SAP HANA appliance and the hardware are able to reduce this time considerably.
Figure 4: In-Memory Execut ion in SAP BW
The process of data activation requires business logic from the application to perform
activation actions on the data updates. When this business logic exists entirely in the
application, potentially millions or billions of round trips occur between the database server
and the application server. With SAP HANA, the business logic for the activation is passed to
the SAP HANA appliance along with the data. This arrangement reduces the number of round
trips between SAP BW and the SAP HANA appliance to only a few. When SAP was tested, the
data-loading improvement was 10 times that of an RDBMS alone. Customers have reported
improvement rates ranging from 6 times to more than 20 times. Of course, the actual
customer performance is dependent on a number of factors. Overall, then, we can safely use
an average of 6 to 10 times as a guideline.
Data Loading
Figure 5: SAP BW on SAP HANA DSO Accelerat ion
By utilizing the enhanced data-loading and analytic capabilities of SAP HANA, customers
have been able to provide their businesses with more rapid results to data and analytics use
cases. In addition, the reduced load times enable them to run updates and analysis
operations more often without severely aecting SAP BW operations. Many IT departments
currently have severely limited windows for regular updates due to the global nature of
business operations. By reducing data-loading times, SAP BW and SAP HANA enable IT
operations to provide greater support to the business.
Data Model Efficiency
As mentioned earlier, EDW systems added specic functionality to enable the RDBMS to
process analytic operations on vast amounts of data. SAP HANA makes it possible for users
to eliminate many of these artifacts, thereby making the data model more ecient. This
process is known as attening the LSA model. SAP BW 7.3x delivered programs to convert
existing data store objects (DSOs) and info cubes into SAP HANA-optimized DSOs and info
cubes. While the old structures continue to operate with SAP HANA as the database, the
performance is improved by converting to the SAP HANA-optimized structures.
Figure 6: Conversion of SAP BW Dat a St ruct ures
In this new structure, the most common question is whether info cubes are still needed.
The answer is that SAP HANA still utilizes info cubes, but their role and use are more dened.
Customers have been able to reduce the need for info cubes dramatically and report directly
against a DSO. In general, info cubes are utilized only in certain specic scenarios: (1) when
multiple DSOs are consolidated, (2) when additional transformations are needed, or (3) when
an add-in application requires an info cube for specic operations. The lighter LSA model
structure that allows for more exibility makes data modeling easier and more ecient. This
eciency generally leads to a further reduction in TCO, although quantifying these savings is
problematic.
Application Improvement
There are a number of add-in applications for SAP BW, including Strategic Enterprise
Management (SEM), Integrated Planning (BI-IP), and Corporate Performance Management
(CPM). As with data-activation processes, these applications utilize complete business logic
as an integral part of the solution. When the application server has to host the business logic,
the number of round trips to the database server can be extremely large. These add-in
applications are now being HANA-ed to fully utilize SAP HANA to process the business
logic inside the database rather than up in the application layer. The result is much improved
performance from multiple areas within the application.
SAP In-Memory Planning
Figure 7: Planning in SAP BW on SAP HANA
SAP BW Operational Efficiency and SAP HANA Model Interoperability
SAP BW 7.30 SP8 and SAP HANA SP5 have delivered new eciency and exibility
capabilities. As database sizes in SAP BW landscapes have increased, SAP has been re-
evaluating which data need to be in memory that is, active data and which data can be
loaded as needed that is, non-active data. Signicantly, SAP has congured SAP BW
7.30 SP8 and SAP HANA SP5 to ag all PSA tables and write-optimized DSOs as non-active.
Consequently, the non-active data will remain on disk persistence until they are needed. In
addition, they will be the rst data to be ushed from memory when they are no longer
needed. Customers who have implemented these new systems have reported that SAP HANA
memory utilization has been reduced by roughly 20%.
In addition to the features discussed above, SAP has incorporated greater exibility in
utilizing SAP HANA data models with native SAP BW models. Some of these innovations
provide a database connect (DB connection), virtual provider, transient provider, and open
hub services to consume SAP BW and SAP HANA data. This exibility allows for maximum
options in data consolidation and reporting.
Figure 8: Open Hub Services
SAP BW on SAP HANA Performance & TCO Benchmarks
SAP HANA Performance Benchmarks:
Customers frequently ask SAP about benchmarks to verify performance claims for both SAP
BW on SAP HANA and SAP HANA standalone. Below you will nd several links to the various
performance benchmarks relevant to SAP BW and SAP HANA.
Recently, SAP has released a formal benchmark test called BW EML (Enhanced Mix Load)
benchmark, which considers:
Near real-time reporting
Ad-hoc reporting capabilities
Reduction of TCO.
Please see these links for more details and results:
http://www.sap.com/campaigns/benchmark/appbm_bweml.epx
http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/bweml-results.htm
In addition you can access the SAP HANA One Petabyte Test with a similar data model to
what many SAP BW customers are using:
http://www.saphana.com/community/blogs/blog/2012/11/12/the-sap-hana-one-petabyte-
test
Whitepaper SAP HANA Performance
https://www.experiencesaphana.com/docs/DOC-1647
Whitepaper SAP and HP Breaking Analytic Performance Barriers with SAP HANA and HP
AppSystems
https://www.experiencesaphana.com/docs/DOC-1769
Performance Test Report SAP HANA
https://www.experiencesaphana.com/docs/DOC-1755
SAP HANA Performance: 100TB Performance Test Results
http://www.experiencesaphana.com/docs/DOC-2381
TCO for SAP BW on SAP HANA
https://www.experiencesaphana.com/docs/DOC-1769
https://www.experiencesaphana.com/docs/DOC-1755
SAP has also conducted individual benchmarks with SAP customers who migrated their
BW systems on RDBMS to BW on SAP HANA. Please contact your account team for results
from SAP reference customers.
Implementation and Migration
SAP customers who are looking to implement SAP HANA in the SAP BW environment have
several choices to make as to the most eective way to carry out that deployment.
Customers with a mature SAP BW environment typically consider an OS/DB Migration. Other
customers perceive an SAP HANA deployment as an opportunity to cleanse an existing
environment by setting up a new landscape and manually transferring the configurations from
an existing implementation to a new installation. Both options have their benets and their
challenges.
MUST READ: Upgrade/Migration/Implementation SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse
7.3 and higher
The purely technical aspect of the implementation or migration is generally only a portion
of the overall project plan. Customers who choose to manually move congurations from an
existing installation to a new implementation will need to address a number of challenges.
These customers often have to reach the minimum requirements (listed below), object
optimization, and implementation of new features. In contrast, customers who implement
new installations will not experience many problems in these areas. As a general rule, before
selecting a project course of action, all customers should perform an in-depth project scoping
and system analysis to determine whether migration or re-implementation is the better
option.
Once the project direction has been xed, the next step is to determine what additional
functional changes can be implemented as part of the initial project scope. Customers often
choose to break up the technical and functional phases of the implementation into dierent
projects. Project scoping generally denes the initial technical phases where customers can
determine what functional elements need to be included in the migration. Often, the various
business units will request and require specic functionality as part of funding the overall
project. In general, the greater the functional scope, the greater the required project
resources, time, and costs. Customers who have migrated have determined that functionality
can be implemented in a number of areas without signicantly impacting their existing
system.
Figure 9: SAP BW Migrat ion Process
For customers who decide to perform an OS/DB migration, SAP has provided some
additional tools they can utilize to expedite some of the technical steps. When a customer
performs a migration, SAP requires that a Certied Migration Consultant execute the
production system activities. This person does not have to be an external, SAP, or consultant.
Companies often employ sta who are certied in migrations. Even in these cases, however,
it is often still advisable to work with a specialist who has been specially trained and is
proficient with the following SAP BW-specific tools:
Dual-Stack Split Tool
Combined Unicode conversion and Database Migration
Post-Copy Automation (PCA) tool
Software Update Manager http://service.sap.com/sltoolset
In addition, all migrations should include an Archiving/Near Line Storage review, sizing,
and post-migration review. The PCA tool provides a wizard-style interface that details the
post-copy and post-migration steps to deliver an optimized system. Every installation is
unique and has specic areas that require attention. When these items are documented and
addressed, the overall project will run more smoothly and with a greater certainty of
achieving the expected results.
Customers who are looking for a predened service oering either delivered by SAP
Consulting or their preferred implementation partner can leverage SAP Rapid Deployment
solutions for a smooth migration based on best practices. The database migration of SAP BW
to HANA is subject of the rapid database migration of SAP BW to SAP HANA.
SAP BW Near-Line Storage rapid-deployment solution helps to reduce your amount of
data stored in underlying database of BW by archiving them into SAP Sybase IQ as near-line
storage solution.
Software Prerequisites for SAP BW on SAP HANA
Now that we have dened the basics of SAP BW and the associated architecture, it is time to
consider what it takes to run SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA. Below we list the minimum
software requirements:
SAP BW 7.30 Service Pack 5 (Ramp-Up Release)
SAP HANA 1.0 Service Pack 3 (Ramp-Up Release)
SAP BW 7.3x Central Instance installed on separate hardware.
No sharing with SAP HANA Appliance.
Additional System Requirements:
SAP BW => 7.3x Unicode Only
SAP BW =>7.3x Analytic Authorizations (Upgrade Requirement)
SAP BW Add-on software packages support confirmed.
Not all add-on software had initial support for SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA.
At the time of this writing, most add-ons are supported with release-level requirements.
Always check the SAP notes.
SAP BW and BW JAVA must be a split-stack implementation.
SAP HANA does not currently support SAP JAVA Usage Type.
Check SAP Business Objects 4.0 support.
SAP BW provides installation options for both clean installations and upgrades. Upgrades
can require additional steps. Going further, these steps frequently involve additional time,
planning, and system downtime.
Check your SAP BW system for SAP HANA Readiness free Checklist tool!
Use the Checklist Tool developed by SAP Customer Solution Adoption (CSA) and SAP
Development to automate the check of best practice guidelines for operations and
prerequisites for migrating an existing SAP BW deployment to the SAP HANA platform. Please
see SAP Note 1729988 for detailed how-to documentation, and review the corresponding
ABAP code to run the check on your own system.
Scoping/Sizing Topics for SAP BW on SAP HANA
In any implementation, there are several inputs that aect the project timeline and budget
cycle. Project planning should lay out the scope, resources, and TCO benets. Although some
of these TCO improvements will be soft in terms of business eciency, they can be
categorized as elements of the overall expected results. These areas will be identied
throughout the rest of this chapter.
Sizing Any project, whether a new installation or an upgrade, should include a sizing
exercise to determine what resources will be required for a successful productive go-live.
These resources are CPU, memory (SAP BW and SAP HANA), and disk storage. Customers
who are performing new installations need to determine how much volume and what
scenarios they will implement. Their SAP account executive can assist them in determining
what initial sizing is required. The SAP Service Market Place also has a quicksizer available
that will help customers approximate their system requirements. That link is
http://service.sap.com/quicksizer. In addition, SAP has provided an ABAP-based sizing tool.
Please see SAP Note 1736976 for the program and more details.
Figure 10: SAP BW on SAP HANA Landscape Opt ions
Upgrade project sizing can be a bit more challenging. Customers need to take into
consideration the scope of the upgrade to determine the resource requirements. One
example is whether the upgrade scope includes a phase to perform a Unicode conversion.
Typically, the SAP BW system will require more CPU and memory when running Unicode. Disk
storage requirements for Unicode conversions can vary. When a Unicode conversion is
performed, the database is re-organized, and all empty space between data blocks is
eliminated. In some cases, this process reduces the database size.
When a company upgrades to SAP HANA, the size of the data on their existing system is a
direct input as to what sizing they require for the appliance and the disk storage. SAP HANA
uses sophisticated compression algorithms to compress the data. This compression aects
how much RAM is required for the data. Because SAP HANA is an in-memory database,
additional RAM is required for work processing space. The current rule for working space is
twice the amount of data RAM.
The amount of RAM required for a system depends on the amount of source data and the
brand of database in the current system. Some RDBMS already have some amount of
compression. This will reduce the eective overall compression that SAP HANA will achieve
after migration. Through the course of many implementations, SAP has observed varying
levels of compression. In general, the basic rule is to expect a 6:1 compression rate. When
applying the working RAM space required, the expected compression is 3:1. Some customers
have reported much higher compression rates, but the makeup of the data and the source
RDBMS plays a significant role in determining the effective compression rate.
One additional consideration for SAP HANA appliance size is based on two additional
factors:
1. Data-archiving strategy (Archive and Near Line Storage)
2. SAP BW and SAP HANA releases.
SAP recommends that customers create a data-archiving strategy. Archiving and near
line storage (NLS) follow a fairly similar process. Archiving is the process of exporting older
data into offline storage. Near line storage solutions also export older data, but to a
compressed online storage facility. NLS solutions have the benet of reducing the size of the
online database while still allowing queries to access the archived data if needed. The archive
solution requires that the data are restored to the system before queries will show the
archive data. The sooner a company develops an archiving strategy, the more manageable
their system will become.
With SAP BW 7.30 Service Pack 8 and SAP HANA 1.0 Service Pack 5, SAP introduced new
functionality. This functionality is referred to as Active/Not-Active data. With the release of
the updated SAP BW and SAP HANA, certain data are not loaded into memory by default. In
addition, customers can elect to ag certain content as not-active. The not-active data are
loaded into memory only when they are needed. They are also the rst to be ushed when
they are no longer being used. By default, BW now automatically marks all PSA tables and all
write-optimized DSOs as not-active. According to initial customer reviews, the not-active data
concept reduced the SAP HANA system size by approximately 20%.
The size of some SAP BW systems will require a scale-out implementation of the SAP
HANA appliance. As with all SAP HANA implementations, the conguration has to be certied
by the hardware partner. In addition, SAP provides extended monitoring for all scale-out
projects. Some elements of the system require specic tuning and congurations to provide
optimal functionality. SAP recommends that all customers implementing SAP BW Powered by
SAP HANA in a scale-out scenario register for extended monitoring with SAP Active Global
Support.
For more technical details on scale-out for BW/HANA:
SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA Scale-out Best Practices
Customers who create an eective archiving strategy and implement the latest SAP BW
release will be better able to estimate the required initial system size. Note that SAP HANA
Appliances must be certified by both SAP and the hardware vendor prior to implementation.
Landscape Options
When implementing SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA, customers need to consider some
specic congurations. For example, they need to understand what software elements need
to be run on dedicated hardware and when they can combine scenarios. SAP recommends
that each system utilize dedicated hardware. This is specically important in Productive
environments.
In an SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA landscape, the applications servers and central
instance systems are separate from the SAP HANA Appliance system. Below we discuss a
number of congurations that SAP often observes at customer sites. From the SAP HANA
appliance view, there are a number of possible congurations. SAP has dened some
limitations on these configurations, as we explain below.
DEV/SANDBOX/TRAIN
Systems that fall into the DEV/SANDBOX/TRAIN groups are those that tend to have lighter
workloads. The most common question that SAP receives is whether multiple existing
systems can be consolidated into a single physical system to minimize hardware/system
costs. As stated above, SAP still recommends that customers utilize separate hardware for
each system. Nevertheless, customers frequently combine SAP SIDs on one server.
Customers are technically able to put multiple SIDs on a single SAP HANA appliance. The
challenge in this scenario revolves around the software lifecycle and system management. If
the SAP HANA system has to be restarted, then all systems that utilize that appliance will be
aected. Further, if a process runs away for one SID, then the other connected systems will
slow down dramatically or even stop. To avoid this problem, SAP support generally
recommends separating the systems.
QA/TEST
The Quality Assurance and test systems usually perform multiple functions in a project.
Besides the QA/consolidation functions that are the purpose of the system, customers often
will utilize this hardware as a load-testing environment. The conguration will be similar to a
production system so that load testing will produce representative results for the live
production hardware. In some cases, this hardware is specied as fail-over equipment for
production. In this conguration, both the SAP BW system and the SAP HANA system have to
be considered. SAP recommends that ONLY ONE system be running actively on both the SAP
Application and the SAP HANA system.
PRODUCTION
Customers often will congure servers in non-productive systems to make maximum use of
the hardware. In production, the focus should not be on maximum use of resources, but,
rather, on system performance for the business. Based on this foundation, production
application servers should be dedicated, and they should have more-than-sucient
resources to support business operations. Customers utilize their hardware vendors SAP
competency center to determine the appropriate conguration. The SAP HANA appliance can
be more complex.
SAP HANA was originally released as a data mart platform. When SAP made SAP HANA
support available for SAP BW, it released an SAP HANA Database Only Edition specically for
the BW system. From a licensing perspective, this system supports SAP BW only as a use
type. From a technical perspective, it is possible to run other scenarios on the same SAP
HANA appliance that is the database instance for SAP BW. However, SAP has limited this
combination use (license permitting) to a single application and a single data mart. The
application can be SAP BW, SAP ERP, or SAP Business Suite applications.
Production is limited in two specific areas: performance and lifecycle management.
Performance When customers utilize SAP HANA, they select the amounts of CPU and
memory that provide the maximum system performance for their business. When
operations are run against the SAP HANA appliance, the system uses as many resources
as possible to return the best performance. This scenario could cause other processes to
become very slow or to stop completely and wait for resources to become available
before they continue. This delay could cause unpredictable performance behavior within
the system.
Lifecycle Management The other major production issue is software lifecycle
management. Applications as well as the SAP HANA system have to be updated,
patched, or restarted at various points in the process. If one application needs to be
patched that requires a SAP HANA system restart, then all of the connected systems will
be aected, even those that are operating eectively. At the time of this writing, backup
and restore of an SAP HANA system were restricted to ALL schemas. If a system restore
was required, then all schemas in the databases would be restored, even if only one
schema restore was necessary. This limitation could result in unplanned data loss.
Figure 11: SAP BW on SAP HANA Landscape Opt ions
Implementation teams from SAP and partners will help design and guide the optimal
landscape design based on customer input. Their recommendations will provide a system
layout that will generate the performance the business requires.
SAP BW on SAP HANA Administration
As with all software systems, SAP HANA implementations require administration. Every
software system has tools and functionality for operating, maintaining, and protecting those
systems. SAP has made available a number of tools to make administering the system easier
and more consistent, regardless of the database platform. The following list identies the
primary focus areas of most IT organizations:
Database Administration
High Availability
Disaster Recovery
Backup/Restore
Security
To assist organizations in readying the operations for SAP HANA, SAP has provided a
Technical Operations Manual (TOM) that contains a variety of topics for managing SAP HANA
as an appliance (http://help.sap.com/hana_appliance). As a general rule, SAP HANA needs
less administration than other databases. Regular administration duties include:
Regular backups (Database, Bare-Metal software, and configuration backup)
Patches; usually on demand in case of problems or known issues (DB, OS)
Monitoring (automated or manual)
The appliance model breaks up the traditional roles that are housed primarily as part of
the internal IT Operations. Many of the hardware tasks are provided, managed, and
maintained by the hardware provider. Other areas are the customers responsibility. On the
whole, SAP will assist customers in monitoring all areas to best support the solutions. The
table below should provide an overview of where the various administration duties are
defined.
SAP has updated and enhanced its database management tools to provide a consistent
and proactive interface for managing SAP HANA systems. For example, SAP has updated its
SAP DBA Cockpit and SAP Solution Manager to support SAP HANA and provide alerting and
monitoring (Solution Manager 7.1 SP4). Solution Manager SP8 will further extend SAP HANA
Support with End-to-End Workload Analysis. Additional administration for SAP HANA is
performed via the SAP HANA Administration/Modeling Studio. Database administrators have
a selection of tools to choose from to manage the SAP HANA system. Within SAP BW, all
support tools continue to operate normally independent of the underlying database.
High availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) scenarios are generally considered to be
critical to production implementation. The SAP system includes functionality that provides
these services. The implementation and details of these services are the responsibility of the
hardware partner. When sizing the system for implementation, the vendor should be taking
advantage of the most up-to-date SAP-delivered enhancements (e.g., New with SAP HANA
SPS5: SAP HANA synchronous system replication formerly known as warm standby solution).
Below is an overview of the current HA/DR solution.
Figure 12: SAP BW on SAP HANA Dat a Cent er Archit ect ure
SP7 oers new features supporting high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR)
deployment, such as replaying logs on snapshots as well as cascading system replication for
up to three locations.
Backup and recovery is an area that customers will routinely test to ensure that all
systems are protected. As with HA and DR, SAP provides the necessary system features and
functionality within the software delivery. Partners work with SAP to develop and deliver
solutions that integrate with the SAP HANA system. Today, partners deliver agents and tools
that provide for backup, recovery, monitoring, scheduling, antivirus, and more. Meanwhile,
SAP are developing and delivering additional solutions as an ongoing initiative to meet the
needs of the SAP customer base.
Security is also a critical element in any system implementation. Many customers have to
comply with both reporting and regulatory requirements. SAP has delivered additional
security functionality in SAP HANA SP5. This latest support release contains the following
additions:
Dynamic Analytical Privileges
Reuse of Analytic Privileges for several users with customizable restrictions
Support for Complex Logic and Situational Security
Roles as Design Time objects
New Support Role
Used to secure and enhance compliance processes
Audit logging enhancements
New Audit Events
Data Access
Audit Configuration via SAP HANA Studio
Summary
SAP BW Powered by SAP HANA oers a number of advantages over traditional Relational
Database Management Systems. SAP HANA provides a similar query performance as the SAP
Business Warehouse Accelerator, and it extends that performance to data-loading and
software add-on performance. It also reduces TCO by combining the RDBMS and the SAP
BWA Appliance into a single platform. This architecture reduces redundancy and complexity
in the system landscape.
As SAP BW is enhanced and extended to utilize the power and functionality of SAP HANA,
SAP will continue to provide regular updates to its customers at regular intervals. The most
common channels for obtaining enhancement updates are through ASUG Webinars, SAP
TechEd, SapphireNOW and ASUG Annual conference, saphana.com, and the SAP Developer
Network (SDN). The content delivered through each of these channels is updated regularly to
be as current as possible.
FAQ area for SAP BW Powered by HANA
Figure 13: SAP BW on SAP HANA Roadmap
T
Chapter 6
Introduction to SAP Big Data Technologies
Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the
life of a patient, or change the world.
Atul Butte, Stanford
his chapter was written with the expert assistance of John Schitka and David Jonker, SAP
Big Data Marketing.
What is big data?
Big data is more than just data volume or size. It is about generating valuable real-time
insights from raw data, no matter the size, the type, or the rate at which it is generated.
Leveraging big data, organizations are successfully uncovering new insights from all of
their data, creating opportunities to transform businesses, industries, and even the quality of
our lives.
Big data is not an intrinsic good in and of itself. It is useful as a stepping-stone to business
value. Many organizations see the opportunities for big data and understand some of the use
cases. The problem is that there are challenges in getting to that business value. In
attempting to integrate big data with their existing data sources, organizations face questions
and concerns such as:
Lack of skillsWhere can I find the resources to make this project a reality?
Slow deploymentHow do I speed up the implementation time, reducing the eort to
implement a solution or application?
Complex IT environmentsHow do I rationalize new big data technologies in an already
complex IT environment?
Integrating many data sourcesWhat is the relationship between all of my data sources
and how do I normalize that relationship?
To work with big data you need to be able to acquire it, analyze it, and act on insights
derived from it.
The SAP HANA platform provides these capabilities. It delivers in-memory processing of
data with tiered, petabyte scale storage and integration with SAP IQ and Hadoop, both of
which will be touched on in this chapter.
This chapter explains what big data is and how you can leverage it as part of your system
landscape. It describes how three groups can benet from the big data capabilities inherent
in SAP HANA:
BI analysts. These analysts have been used to working with traditional data sources such
as data warehouses and systems of record and helping organizations support a single
version of the truth using SAP BusinessObjects and other BI tools.
Analysts and data scientists using advanced analytics. Analysts and data scientists are
trained to work with the variety, volume, and velocity of big data.
Everyone through operationalized insights. Everyone in an organization benets when
insights are automatically delivered in context. Through embedded analytics, insights
from big data and traditional data sources are integrated into the context of business
processes and applications. In this way, the entire organization becomes more data-
driven as a matter of course, capable of repeatable victories based on the latest
information.
This chapter provides an introduction to SAPs big data technologies, with, as you would
expect in this book, a focus on SAP HANA. Links to further resources will be provided for
those interested in learning more.
Big Data Characteristics
The journey to big data has taken us into a world where data sets are growing in size and
complexity and where there are ever-increasing demands for query execution speed. These
three driving factors of volume, variety, and velocity were rst enumerated by Gartners Doug
Laney in 2001, and the ensuing decade has only brought them into sharper focus.
The volume of data generated by modern computing systems, sensor networks, and social
media streams is ever growing. What was once considered digital exhaust, only to be
collected for audit or regulatory reasons, has now become a treasure trove of information.
Data storage costs have been reduced to the point where it is more cost eective to save
anything that youd ever expect to need and sort through it later rather than spend scarce
resources up front assessing its ultimate worth.
Data is being collected in a wide variety of formats, ranging from simple relationships
collected by tiny machines up to complex multimedia. The modern data center houses an
ever-growing range of data formats as more and more systems come online, producing
transactional and analytical data in a plethora of data structures including bulky and complex
voice and video formats.
The most important aspect of big data has been the need for velocity in all aspects of data
management. It has long been possible to store immense volumes of data in relational
systems, but query times were so slow as to be unusable for real time operations. Thus, in
practice many relational databases never stored more than several terabytes of data
because response times would degrade too much. Inserting even more varieties of data into
that database would further degrade response times, causing IT sta to keep the database
clean of all but the most important transactional information. In other words, big data is a
velocity problem that is exacerbated by greater volumes and varieties of information.
Immense data stores with widely varying data need to have fast performance so that
complex analytical tools can turn around insights and help inform decisions quickly.
http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/big-data/big-data-is-not-about-big-data-028590
The Ultimate Goal: Faster, Data-Driven Decisionmaking
Big data is important because ultimately it can improve decisionmaking. However, time is of
the essence. Figure 1 shows how decision making works and the delays inherent in it. It
comes from a 2003 paper by Dr. Richard Hackathorn called Minimizing Action Distance.
Figure 1. Minimizing Act ion Dist ance
Hackathorn shows that there are three types of latency in the decision making process:
Immediately after the triggered event, there is data latency, where data is integrated
and made ready for analysis. Sometimes this also involves several steps of
preprocessing.
After the data is prepared for analysis, there is analysis latency, the time involved in
initiating the analysis, packaging its results, and delivering it to the appropriate person.
After the information is delivered, theres a certain amount of time that organizations
and people take to actually take action and execute a decision. That introduces decision
latency.
These latencies mean that we are losing time, getting farther and farther away from the
point at which the event occurred. The farther away an action is from the point of the
triggered event, the more the value of that action diminishes. We must respond and respond
fast to the events happening around us.
In todays high speed, highly connected world, the window of opportunity to respond to
events is shrinking, so we need to make sure that we are able to react quickly and reduce the
amount of value erosion.
We can reduce action time by reducing each phase of latency, by making the data
available and ready for analysis as close to the event as possible, by making sure that
information is delivered fast, and therefore, enabling a faster decision through human
collaborative systems.
Meeting the Challenges of Big Data
The enterprise data warehouse is dead! That was the title of a 2011 article that ran in
Business Computing World in the UK. But that vision is short-sighted. Successful companies
will wed old and new together, creating a synergistic, greater whole.
The enterprise data warehouse is not dead, but traditional approaches to managing data
are dead. We live in a dierent world from the one that existed when the traditional relational
database was rst architected. Back then the database dealt with recording and storing
transactional data only and reporting happened for decision support. It was high value, highly
structured datanot the mounds of data that may or may not have value that we face today.
It was an era when time was measured by the calendar, not the stopwatch.
Today we face a completely dierent world. We generate vast amounts of non-
transactional datawhether documents, Facebook posts, tweets, or log information coming
off of our phones, web servers, and other connected devices.
We no longer want to report just against operational activities, but we also want to
analyze, explore, predict, visualize and inspect in ways never imagined by those early
database engineers.
Back when databases were designed, memory was extremely expensive. Just one
terabyte of RAM cost over $100 million dollars. Today, we can get it for less than $5,000.
Because memory was expensive, database engineers built a database architecture centered
on disk.
The problem is, disk is just too slow. Reading 1 petabyte of data o a disk sequentially
would take 58 days using the fastest hard disk available today (according to Toms Hardware
website http://www.tomshardware.com/). SSD speeds that up to 2 days using the fastest
SSD RAID, but the price is hefty: 1 petabyte of SSD RAID disk costs $12.5 million dollars.
Thats why innovators have been nding new ways to store and process data, all in an
effort to get around the disk bottleneck and improve response time.
Distributed Databases
Distributed computing moved around the disk bottleneck by spreading the data across many
disks that can be read simultaneously. In a perfectly balanced environment, a distributed
database would have an equal amount of data across each machine. As a result, the
maximum time to read the data would be a fraction of the time of a database stored on a
single disk. For instance, if we split 1 Petabyte of data evenly across 10 disks that are read
simultaneously, then the response time would be theoretically one tenth of the time of a
single disk. Of course, in practice there is a cost to moving the data between the machines
and coordinating a single result back to the user, but overall a database distributed across
multiple disks can reduce response time.
Enter Hadoop
Hadoop builds on the concept of distributed computing but opens up the platform to handle
arbitrary data sets that do not necessarily follow a predened schema and to analyze that
data with any arbitrarily designed algorithm. This exibility comes at a cost of course, such as
the need for specialized programming skills. However, the Hadoop project has been evolving
over the years to include subprojects that move beyond Hadoop Distributed File System
(HDFS) and MapReduce.
Hadoop was originally developed at big Internet companies as a exible tool to process
Web logs. Based on its heritage, the original Hadoop HDFS and MapReduce projects made
dierent assumptions than relational databases about how data is processed. In particular,
the early Hadoop projects assume you want to read all (or at least most of) the data stored
on your disks, which is why the MapReduce framework is designed to look for a predened
pattern within all of the data stored in HDFS. Furthermore, MapReduce algorithms are coded
in Java or C/C++ in order to give the programmer the exibility to dene the search pattern
as well as the schema of the result set. This combined capability ensured that the original
Web companies could store any or all of the Web logs without having to do a lot of costly
preprocessing of the data typically done with enterprise data. Furthermore, as business
analysts at the rms had a new idea for the fast evolving business, they could easily run a
program to search for a new pattern. This exibility meant that MapReduce queries usually
took time to execute, forcing many companies to run them as a batch process.
Columnar Databases
Moving database architectures from row-oriented storage models to columnar storage
models helped to reduce the amount of data accessed on a single disk. This is fundamentally
dierent than the original Hadoop project, which assumed the user wanted to read all of the
data on a disk. The columnar database architecture assumes that any given query will need
to read only a subset of the data on a disk.
The columnar database architecture assumes that the user typically will only want to
access a small number of the attributes or columns within a database table. Imagine you
have a table storing historical sales transactions with 8 columns: Year, Quarter, Country,
State, Sales Representative, Customer, Product, Revenue. At the end of the year each
department may ask different questions. For example:
Finance: What was total revenue by year and quarter for last 3 years?
Marketing: What was total revenue by product and by country?
Sales: What was total revenue by sales representative?
In each case, the user is only accessing a subset of the columns. While this is a simplistic
example, in practice many of the questions that people ask use only a small subset of the
sometimes hundreds of columns in a table.
A columnar database stores all of the data associated with a particular attribute or
column in the same physical space on the disk. In this way, when only 3 of the 8 columns of
data are needed to answer a question, the database only needs to read 3 segments of the
database from the disk instead of the entire thing.
Furthermore, by storing all of the data for a given column together, columnar databases
can exploit the repeating patterns within a columns data in order to highly compress it,
further reducing the number of bits read o disk. Consider the Country column from our
example above. Storing the name United States as text would take at least 1326 bytes of
data depending on the encoding used. There are less than 256 countries in the world, which
means that each country can be uniquely identied by using only 1 byte (8 bits) of
information. So United States could be replaced with, say, the number 1 compressing the
column entry from 1326 Bytes into 1 Byte. This form of compression is called tokenization.
It is very common for the rows to have a lot of repeated information. Building on our
example, imagine that the country column contains United States for rst 15 rows of the
table, which has been replaced with the number 1 stored in a single byte in each row. This
essentially means we have 15 entries in a row, each containing the number 1. On disk then it
looks like this 111111111111111. This duplication can be replaced with the value, 1, and a
count of the number of duplicate entries something conceptually like this: 1D15, which
says number 1 duplicated 15 times. This form of compression is called run-length encoding.
In summary, then, our rst 15 rows of the country column gets compressed from 195
390 bytes down to potentially 3 or 4 Bytes. Compression is important because it reduces the
amount of data that gets read from disk. In our example above, reading 4 bytes from disk
represents 200 bytes stored in other databases, which dramatically accelerates response
time.
In summary, the data storage architecture organized around columns, which reduces the
amount of data that needs to be scanned and also makes it easy to compress the data,
makes columnar databases ideally suited for BI and analytic workloads.
In-Memory Databases
In-memory databases take response times to a whole new level. They remove the disk from
the equation for data access altogether, and only use it for logging and backup. In-memory
databases leverage the power of todays processors to read and analyze data 1,000 times
faster than reading data off disk.
Combine columnar data stores with in memory to highly compress the data, and soon you
can see performance gains of 1,000, 10,000 and in some cases customers have
experienced results 100,000 times faster.
In-memory is the future of data management, and so the real-time SAP HANA platform for
big data platform has SAP HANA at its core. Nonetheless, technology like Hadoop has a
critical, complementary role to play. A complete big data solution is end-to-end in nature. It
handles everything from low-level data ingestion, storage, processing, visualization, and
engagement to analytic solutions and applications.
A complete big data solution has another characteristic as well: it handles all kinds of
data. Location aware applications and applications that support mapping have made spatial
data more important than ever, both operationally and in targeting customers. SAP HANA
Spatial Processing helps process this important type of big data.
So much of big data is text, and text analytics, whether sentiment analysis of social media
data or analysis of doctors notes to help drive better healthcare, is another key to big data.
Text analysis is another key capability of SAP HANA (see the text analytics webinar to learn
more).
Predictive analytics, largely the province of the data scientist, is another feature
supported in SAP HANA through the Predictive Analytic Libraries or PAL.
Streaming analytics is another key area supported by SAP HANA and Sybase Event
Stream Processor (ESP). Analytics where the velocity of the data is especially critical, such
as in nancial services, as well as in contexts like manufacturing where machine or sensor
data is used and analyzed, an area referred to as the Internet of Things.
Making Big Data Real
Since talking about big data in the abstract cant provide a clear vision of its benets, this
section offers concrete examples related to BI, data science, and real-time insights.
Business Intelligence
Big data technology is needed not only for the many new types of data, but for large scale
data warehouses. Case in point: the largest data warehouse in the world, as attested by the
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/5000/largest-data-warehouse,
holding 12.1 petabytes of data.
To explore another example, consider ARI, the largest eet management services
company in the world. In conjunction with its partners, ARI accounts for more than 2 million
vehicles worldwide.
Maintenance management for the entire lifecycle of a single vehicle can involve more than
14,000 data points, including everything from information on minor repairs to regular
preventive maintenance information and manufacturer updates and recalls.
ARIs data warehouse was straining under the load of the data. Its in-house ETL solution
could not keep up with the growth in data, and analysis was taking far too long. After a proof-
of-concept, ARI migrated its data warehouse to SAP HANA.
ARI is able to perform deeper data analysis in less than four seconds (previously a manual
process that took over 24 hours). The company also increased eciency in call centers and
improved rst-time call resolution, resulting in higher customer satisfaction. We have a 360-
degree view of the data with our SAP solution, says Steve Haindl, EVP Technology and
Innovation at ARI. We can see whats working, where the opportunities are, and what
customers no longer need. We can also tailor conversations about requirements to the
interested party: CEO, eet manager, or mechanic. All of this helps us to drive revenue, but
most important, it helps us to keep our customers happy.
As ARIs Director of Information Management, Bill Powell explained, There was a sea of
information coming in and it could take up to two days to pull together, which aected our
service levels. In-memory HANA means we can answer questions in seconds. ARIs Keith
Allen added, Our goal has been to drive greater eciencies. The business can ask questions
[of the data] and get responses directly. Customers can also build their own dashboards. It is
self-service BI.
Many companies are considering moving their data warehouses and BI initiatives to SAP
HANA and SAP IQ to speed up their analytic capabilities and drive faster value from their
data.
Data Science and Advanced Analytics
Healthcare is one of the most exciting big data stories there is, as seemingly intractable
problems are beginning to find solutions through genomic analysis.
Invasive cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US. In 2008, approximately
7.6 million people died of cancer worldwide. The path to more successful cancer treatment
lies in human DNA. More and more physicians are not only searching for changes in human
tissue that signal cancer but are increasingly interested in the alterations of the human
genome itself.
Mitsui Knowledge Industries (MKI) is working on http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-
1799. They begin by pre-processing DNA sequences from normal cells and comparing them
with cancer cells. Processing is done against large volumes of data. This pre-processing is
run against data in Hadoop clusters and can take anywhere from several days to a week.
Next, they move relevant data into SAP HANA, where they perform complex analytical
processes to identify variants from the pre-processed sequences. They also analyze what
medicines might work against the mutated genes.
With SAP HANA, they take advantage of built-in predictive algorithm libraries (PAL) and
integration with the open source R statistical tool to create predictive models to assess best
treatment options for the patient.
Initially, MKI was using only Hadoop and R for analysis, but decided to add SAP HANA to
reduce processing time so that they could deliver personalized results more quickly. Imagine
being a patient in a doctors oce being told that you have cancer and that you have to
wait for days before a treatment plan can be set. Now, imagine how you would feel if a
customized treatment plan were provided to you the same day. This is MKIs goal to
provide personalized treatments to patients as quickly as possible.
MKI still uses Hadoop to pre-process large volumes of DNA (normal and cancerous) so
that they have a strong foundation of existing sequences. But they now use SAP HANA to
analyze a particular patients DNA against related sequences from Hadoop to better predict
the best medicines and treatment for the patient.
Hadoop is used to align the patients DNA sequence with the normal sequence, because
the data is in a semi-structured format, can be parallelized across multiple machines. Also,
the MKI team is able to use an open source package for aligning genomes.
Identifying the mutations and predicting the best treatment requires a lot of highly
iterative analysis. This is ideally done in SAP HANA. As a result MKI has been able to
accelerate the overall time from 2 to 3 days to 20 minutes. Furthermore, MKI believes they
can get it under 10 minutes when they deploy a 64 node Hadoop cluster and a 40-core HANA
machine.
Real-time Insights
Arguably, big data can be most important where you need to analyze real-time data as it
streams. Lets look at one such use of big data. McLaren Formula One cars run up to 350 km
per hour on powerful V8 engines. These cars are loaded with sensors. About 120 sensors
transmit data every second and some transmit even more frequently. Organizations like
McLaren collect all this data to analyze it, and the pit crew uses it to make real-time
decisions. Sensors provide information about wheel alignment, tire pressure, suspension, and
so on and all of these parameters play a critical role in winning or losing a race. McLaren
Applied Technologies leverages what it learns from this technology to drive other
innovations, such as improvements in air trac control and monitoring the vital signs of
professional athletes.
These are just a few examples. Businesses can use big data to gain a 360-degree view of
the customer by combining enterprise data with customer sentiment gleaned from social
networks, customer service interactions, and web click-stream data. Service providers can
proactively reach out to customers and keep them satisfied, loyal, and coming back for more.
Who Uses Big Data?
A big data platform should meet the needs of all your stakeholders, from BI and analytic
professionals to data scientists, to IT sta who help bring actionable insights to executive
leadership, middle managers, and frontline workers, sometimes by even embedding those
insights directly into business processes.
It is helpful to classify the dierent users into essentially three categories shown in Figure
2.
Figure 2. An IT landscape for big dat a, broken down by role
Business Analyst
The business analyst provides the organization with precise, repeatable, accurate reporting
on the data stored within the organization. They are supporting business operational
decisions; its all about the statements of fact, answered instantly. The business analyst is
focused on reporting on the one and only truth. Normally, the information analyzed comes
from data generated in transactional systems, data that is highly structured. There is an
emphasis on data quality so that standardized reports can be executed with condence that
all of the numbers will line up. The information views of the data have well understood
meanings and there is a focus on unambiguous determinations.
The Business Analyst is in essence looking for an enterprise data warehouse and the rigor
that entails. However, current data warehouses dont handle large datasets extremely well.
As a result, many data warehouses contain summary data with much of the detailed
information thrown away or stored in a highly complex BI landscape with many data marts,
data caches, and generally many layers of technology. With SAP HANA, users can store all of
the data without causing query response times to grind to a halt. This also makes it possible
to remove the many data marts and data caches originally put in place to compensate for
poor performance, greatly simplifying the data warehouse.
In some cases Business Analysts may benet from access to Hadoop environments. If the
data in Hadoop needs to be reported on, you may want to bring it into your enterprise data
warehouse. Otherwise, it should be carefully structured and stored in Hadoop. Heres the key.
The BI analyst uses GUI-based tools to access information and to generate reports. This
requires data to be organized and structured in order to make it easily accessible and
generated using forms. Projects like Hive and Pig help to do that for your Hadoop
environment.
SAP BusinessObjects BI can now access Hadoop environments through Hive. With Hive,
you dene table structures to data stored in Hadoop. BI analysts can use the SAP
BusinessObjects BI tools to create reports, dashboards, and explore data all inside Hadoop.
BusinessObjects translates the users actions into HiveQL commands, a language modeled
after SQL. What is particularly powerful with BusinessObjects is that if the BI administrator
has created the right universes, or access layers, the BI analyst can query data across
various systems. In other words, you can take data from Hadoop and combine it with data
from other data sources.
SAP IQ is an important platform to support the BI analyst. IQ is a disk-based bulk data
store optimized for analytics. It can be used along with or even in place of Hadoop.
Of course, a critical step to providing the BI analyst access to Hadoop is to dene what
tables, columns, and so on are accessible and the relationships between them. SAP
BusinessObjects BI gives the administrator the tools needed to do just that, including for a
Hive implementation.
Heres the key: BI analysts need carefully controlled, structured access to Hadoop
environments from their GUI tools.
Data Scientists
In contrast, data scientists work at the other end of the information certainty spectrum. They
deal with the uncertainty inherent in any large, complex organization and seek to draw
conclusions that are statistically relevant but not completely certain. One example is
predictive analytics, where large amounts of data are fed into models in order to predict what
the future may hold. The data scientist may create custom systems to explore and probe the
corporate data store and must be equipped with tools that interpret unstructured data and
make sense of it for the organization and the problem domain.
The data scientist therefore requires as much exibility as possible. The business analyst
is skilled at using BI tools and understanding how the data applies to the business while the
data scientist usually has very technical skills. Data scientists typically decide which tool to
use based on the data that oers the most promise. They may choose a data mining
technique, or techniques, and then select the tools that support the technique, such as the R
statistical language, which is supported in SAP HANA.
While the BI analyst needs structure in a controlled environment, the data scientist wants
a lot of freedom and exibility. Depending on the analysis performed, they want to be able to
run their algorithms in Hadoop using MapReduce algorithms, in-memory, or in the database
using in-database analytic algorithms.
Operational Users
Operational users are involved in the day-to-day operation of core business processes. They
are the frontline workers such as call center operators, marketing campaign managers,
warehouse personnel, and sales representatives. Operational users can benet from
information that helps them make decisions in the moment, often based on insights
uncovered by business analysts and data scientists. This information is often delivered in the
form of dashboards, daily reports, or even predictive models embedded in enterprise
applications. The challenge of real-time analysis is to feed automated insights back into the
decision loop fast enough to guide the action of the human or the machine making crucial
decisions.
Operational users typically are not technical nor do they have experience in using analytic
and reporting tools. In essence, the solution requires development of user interfaces suited
to how operational users need to consume the information.
SAP HANA: The Heart of SAPs Big Data Ecosystem
Like most things in the real world, the big data landscape is complex. Competitive advantage
doesnt come from having one tool, but from having the right toolset to support business
needs.
SAP provides an integrated set of data management solutions for big data: HANA for real-
time analytics on operational and transactional data, SAP IQ for petabyte scale storage and
analytics of less time critical data, and Hadoop as a massive data lake where data can be
stored and explored. SAP does not market its own Hadoop distribution, but provides an open
platform to work with a variety of Hadoop distributions. Lastly, SAP provides a suite of
Information Management solutions to integrate systems, ensure data quality, and manage
the overall data landscape.
The heart of SAPs big data platform is SAP HANA. At its core SAP HANA provides an in-
memory, columnar, distributed database architecture designed to handle massive datasets.
Since the SAP HANA database resides entirely in-memory all the time, additional complex
calculations, functions, and data-intensive operations can happen on the data directly in the
database, without requiring time-consuming and costly aggregations.
SAP IQ was the rst commercial column store, which is designed to scale to petabyte
scale database size. While it is not in-memory like SAP HANA, it has excellent performance
characteristics with a rich SQL layer, patented indexing, and a disk-backed store. SAP IQ and
SAP HANA are integrated to work well together through smart data access, which allows
remote tables to be queried as though they were local tables. This provides real-time
analytics along with data scalability. Smart data access in eect creates a logical data
warehouse.
In essence, SAP HANA smart data access enables the creation of a logical data
warehouse, where data in HANA, IQ, and Hadoop can be mapped at a higher level, freeing the
analyst from understanding exactly where in the landscape data resides. This solution
amplies the value of big data across your data fabric by enabling working with data sets
stored in a variety of places including Hadoop. For more information, see the Data
Virtualization webinar.
SAP HANA can access data in other data sources such as Hadoop to extend the reach of
its processing power. Hadoop provides vast and exible storage for data objects, independent
of their structure and size. Hadoop is perfectly positioned to store the very large data sets
that are too big to t into memory and that require a preprocessing step before they can be
easily analyzed. By connecting SAP HANA to Hadoop, you can run jobs in Hadoop that load
information into HANA and then provide super-fast nal analysis, as described in the section
on personalized cancer treatment earlier in this chapter.
When you put SAP HANA, SAP IQ, and Hadoop together, you have three data processing
domains with dierent strengths that combine to form a big data processing backbone.
Together, these three components provide real-time capabilities along with extreme scale.
Data can be processed with the appropriate technology depending on its characteristics
hot data in HANA, warm data in IQ, and a vast data lake in Hadoop where data can be
stored, processed, and aggregated without constraints on size, format, or cleanliness.
SAP Data Services is a sophisticated ETL and text processing tool, and ESP can capture
streaming sources of machine generated data. SAP BW is a rich data warehouse layer on top
of SAP HANA. SAP BusinessObjects BI universes can pull Hadoop and database sources
together to serve up information to business applications. All of this technology works
together to bring big data into the enterprise (see Figure 3).
SAP

Event Stream Processor (SAP ESP) is a mature and high throughput complex event
processing engine that allows for integration of real-time data streams into the big data
environment. It is a key tool for building real-time applications that help to formulate a
response to real-time data.
Figure 3 shows the SAP HANA architecture in the context of big data.
Figure 3. The SAP HANA Plat form
The Worlds Biggest, Big Data Database
In early 2014, SAP generated a new world record for the worlds largest data warehouse
using the SAP HANA

platform and SAP

IQ software. This independently audited 12.1PB

data warehouse has been recognized by Guinness World Records, and is four times larger
than the prior record.
This new world record demonstrates the ability of SAP HANA and SAP IQ to eciently
handle extreme-scale enterprise data warehouse and Big Data analytics. SAP and its
partners had previously set a world record for loading and indexing Big Data at 34.3
Terabytes per hour.
Conclusion
SAPs big data technology simplies the IT landscape. SAP HANA provides speed for dealing
with big data in real-time. It can also speed up traditional enterprise data warehouse
applications, putting them on steroids. This chapter has touched on many points that are
deserving of their own chapters, and we hope you will explore the links to learn more as well
as checking out SAPHANA.com. The complementary nature of SAP HANA, SAP IQ, and
Hadoop supports every big data use case, whether its driven by BI analysts, data scientists,
or IT seeking to help big data inform the real-time enterprise.
S
Chapter 7
Data Modeling with SAP HANA
Make everything as simple as possible but no simpler.
Albert Einstein
ince SAP HANA is a radically new database underneath the hood, SAP had to provide
DBAs, data architects and others a familiar way to interact with the tables while
maintaining a level of abstraction to ensure that people wouldnt disrupt the tables. Thats
how you get the virtual data modeling capabilities of SAP HANA. Although people can log in
and see the tables, they arent really there, like they are in a traditional disk-based
database. What youre seeing is a virtual representation of the tables since the actual tables
arent physically persisted on the storage medium as they would be in a disk-based database.
This virtual data model allows people incredible exibility when manipulating the data and
protects them from some of the more nasty eects of playing around with physical tables in
the database.
In the context of SAP HANA, data modeling can be viewed as the construction of dierent
types of views of the data tables maintained in the SAP HANA database. Modeling denes
how you are going to access the data thats physically stored in HANA tables. Views can be
thought of as virtual tables that are built up from underlying data structures in memory or
from other views.
From an SAP HANA perspective, data modeling denes how youre going to store and
access your data. By creating views, you build new layers of access to your data that are
derived from whats in physical RAM storage, but that is calculated or adapted based on your
application needs. Views are built on demand and are always up to date, and they can contain
complex calculations that are computed within the database.
Because SAP HANA is a fast, in-memory database, you can build virtual models that are
more exible and powerful than those found in typical disk-based database designs. HANA is
optimized for aggregating mass data on the y, and thus it allows you to build models on top
of raw transaction data without first doing pre-aggregation or creating materialized views.
The concept of a logical view in a database is pretty universal. The logical structure points
to where the physical data is stored. Whats dierent in HANA is that operations on large
quantities of data are so fast that its not necessary to build a persistent additional physical
view or an additional index on the data to make it go fast. Rather than building redundant
tables for speed, you aggregate data on the y. The key in there is that HANA is not re-
persisting the data multiple times for every dierent view of data that we want to do. It is
stored once and then we can create a lot of dierent logical views that point to the data that
is physically in the database for dierent use cases and dierent application uses without
having to make copies of the data to support additional views.
Another upside to logical views: Extending data modeling to more stakeholders.
Another upside to logical views: Extending data modeling to more stakeholders.
Data modeling is typically reserved for data modelers, data wranglers, and application developers. But what
about business analysts and others who want to create views of the data for their own use cases?
The great thing about creating logical views of the data is that you can allow more people to create those
views because their views dont change anything about the underlying data store. You might never allow less
technical people to access a traditional database, but with the ability to create logical views of the data that
dont change the underlying data store (let alone corrupt it), you can allow as many people as are interested
to get involved with modeling in SAP HANA.
With HANA, youre not modeling to get around disk space constraints, and you arent
needing to model and keep in mind where your datas partitioned and where its coming from
and how to best access it from dierent storage pieces to reduce the lag time of disks. With
HANA you can create queries that are more complex and still achieve high performance using
straightforward SQL statements. If youre coming from a legacy system with maybe a
hundred dierent types of models that draw on dierent master data, you may nd that you
need only a tenth that many in HANA because you are no longer having to design models with
regard to disk or data volume constraints. You can blend models together and get a broader
view of whats going on with the data, with more granularity than you could before.
Becoming procient at data modeling for HANA is one of the key elements of extracting all
of the performance out of the system. Understanding how the system works, where its speed
advantages are, and how to get the best performance from the system are all best done with
hands-on experience. If youre ready to get started at the detail level, see the SAP HANA
Modeling Guide, which talks in depth about data modeling in HANA. And if youre eager to get
your hands dirty, see the SAP HANA Developer Center where you can set up your HANA
environment and download SAP HANA Studio!
Tools for Data Modeling
SAP HANA Studio is used for creating data models within SAP HANA. It can be used to
explore and analyze existing data models, make modications, and build new data models
from scratch. The modeler generally uses the Administration Console and Modeler
perspectives and tools of SAP HANA Studio.
Figure 6-1. SAP HANA St udio: Modeler Perspect ive
Packaged applications for SAP HANA come with their own data models. You can inspect
them with SAP HANA Studio and tailor them to your needs.
BI clients use data models directly for reports. Views that are created inside SAP HANA
can be treated by BI tools as any other table, allowing for direct access for reporting. If you
calculate net sales in your data model and have the HANA engine execute the calculation of
net sales in memory and then just send the result set up to your query tool, its much more
ecient than having the query tool pull up all the raw data and then having the BI query
execute what the net sales dierence is. Think of HANA like a Formula 1 race car and let it do
the calculations for you. Thats why modeling in HANA takes a bit of an adjustment in mindset
in order to maximize all the speed that HANA can give you.
Application developers use the output of data models as inputs into their applications (for
more information on this topic for application developers, see Chapter 8). For best
performance, application developers will want to maximize the number of calculations that
are done in the database and to reduce the amount of data thats transferred back up to the
application. That can allow the application developer to ooad the bulk of the calculation
logic into the database, making it possible for application logic to be greatly simplied and for
views to be useful across a range of tools.
Views in Data Modeling in SAP HANA
There are three types of views in data modeling in SAP HANA: attribute views, analytic views,
and calculation views. Understanding how each of these dierent views provides additional
value on the raw data in the database will help you gure out how to model your data for
maximum flexibility and performance.
Attribute views provide descriptive data about the characteristics of data in your
database. This is master data that denes things like hierarchies that describe
relationships between data elements. By constructing attribute views, you create dimensions
from which subsequent views can be constructed.
Analytic views in SAP HANA are optimized for aggregating mass data. Because the
database is so fast, its not necessary to store aggregates in the database; rather, you
aggregate on the y in memory. Analytic views construct a central master fact table with
key figures. You can use expressions, operators, and functions to analyze this data.
Calculation views provide a way to do exible, complex logic in the database. They are
built on top of one or more analytic or attribute views and allow you do to calculations after
aggregation and grouping. Calculations are generally done after grouping at the attribute
level and after aggregation at the analytic level.
Figure 6-2 shows a summary of the three types of views in SAP HANA.
Figure 6-2. SAP HANA Modeling Views
Views and ELT versus ETL
In order to work with data more eectively, Accounting may need a dierent transformation on its data
than Sales does. Traditionally transformation comes before loading data into the database (ETL). With
HANA, it makes sense to load data, and then do transformation (ELT). Because of the power of HANA, you
can store (load) one version of the truth in the database and then use views to support transformations for
dierent lines of business. This eliminates redundancy as well as the potential for data getting out of
sync.
Attribute Views
Suppose your transaction database has a customer ID that links to all the information about a
customer who purchased a given product. By itself, the customer record allows you to
compute simple measures, like total sales by customer. But what if you want to group related
customers together to measure sales by some other metric, like sales by customer region?
Attribute views allow you to join relationships together that further describe the data that
youre working with. By joining your customer ID to data in your customer database, you
can further subdivide and analyze sales data according to conditions and relationships not
present in the original transaction. Because these joins run in memory and are not limited by
disk speeds, you can explore even more complex relationships than you could in traditional
database models and still maintain performance.
Figure 6-3. SAP HANA At t ribut e View
Using attribute views allows you to bring data analysis down to size before running
complex calculations. In HANA, it makes sense to apply attribute views as lters, which pull
out just the data you need before handing it off to a complex calculation.
The SAP HANA Modeling Guide provides details of how to dene joins between tables and
to select a subset or all of the tables columns and rows. Use it as your guide to the details of
how to implement attribute views in your model. HANA Academy also oers courses on
creating attribute views and creating hierarchies within attribute views.
Analytic Views
Analytic views operate on key gures in your database. They are used to model data that
includes measures and to compute operations based on those measures.
An SAP HANA database may have a very large number of records in it, corresponding to
individual transactions. In a typical disk-based database, youd compute and store a separate
table for aggregated data, so that something like total sales by day would be updated
periodically and stored separately on disk. In HANA, this is not necessary since the database
is very fast and aggregates are best computed on the y. Because these aggregates are
computed very rapidly, you can explore a much broader set of queries than if you had to
decide up front which aggregation approach you would be using and commit those records to
disk.
The end result of this for modeling is that the analytic views that you build on top of these
measures are also key for reducing the amount of data passed along to subsequent views. Do
the aggregation in your database before you pass that data up to the next level so that the
computations happen at the right level. Youll gain a lot of performance when the BI tool or
the application can deal with data thats already been aggregated rather than giving it a
firehose dump of data to aggregate.
Figure 6-4. SAP HANA Analyt ic View
The SAP HANA Modeling Guide provides details about how to set up analytic views, and a
course from SAP HANA Academy provides a video on the same topic.
Calculation Views
One of the exceptional features of SAP HANA is the ability to do calculation views in the
database. These views oer a level of programming exibility that goes beyond the
aggregations found in the analytic views, and they can bring in data from multiple analytic and
attribute views to express complex logic. Calculation views can have layers of calculation
logic, can include measures sourced from multiple source tables, and can include advanced
SQL logic, R code, and more.
Whats the dierence between the analytic view and the calculation view? Think of it like Excel. Many of us
use functions in Excel (thats the analytic view). But only Excel ninjas write Visual Basic scripts and embed
them in Excel. Thats the level of user who will be interested in the calculation view.
Calculation views are visible within HANA as virtual tables, and applications and BI tools
can access them in the same way that they consume other views. Like other views in HANA
they are computed as needed, and intermediate values and aggregates are built on the y
rather than being stored on disk and updated periodically.
To obtain best results, the modeler should use the full power of the attribute and analytic
views before passing data into the calculation view. Calculations will work best with data that
has already been reduced in size. If your database has a billion records in it, but you only
need the calculations to run on a few thousand of them, you should build your models so that
the aggregation and grouping has already occurred before your calculations run.
Figure 6-5. SAP HANA Calculat ion View
The SAP HANA Modeling Guide has detailed information on how to create and work with
calculation views; SAP HANA Academy also covers creating a calculation view.
Principles of Data Modeling
Data modeling in SAP HANA should be very familiar to those who are used to data modeling in
other database environments. The biggest dierence is the exceptional performance of
HANAs in-memory database, which makes a number of traditional database performance
tuning techniques unnecessary and introduces its own set of performance considerations.
Figure 6-5 summarizes some of the principles of data modeling with SAP HANA.
Figure 6-6. SAP HANA General Modeling Principles
People doing database work normally bring all of the data they are working with up to the
application layer for analysis. When the database cant handle that, they have been trained to
work around the problems. With HANA, you rethink your approach to data modeling. The
more work that gets done in the database, and the less data that makes its way to the
application, the more power you have in the system and the bigger the performance gains
over traditional disk-bound database applications. We call that HANAfying your application.
Use views to lter out the data at the lowest level. If you dont need a eld for a
subsequent computation, dont build it out in a view. Similarly, if there are records that can be
aggregated before they are provided to a calculation view, do the aggregation rst. Compact
views will always perform better than views with lots of unneeded data in them.
Finally, look at ways of moving application logic into the database. Whenever possible,
move calculations that would have been once part of the design of the application into a
database calculation view. Youll nd that they will run faster inside the database, and that by
providing these results in views you can reuse them in other contexts. (Application
developers can see Chapter 8 for more details.)
Getting Your Feet Wet
The best way to understand how to adapt your data to use within HANA is to experience it
rst hand. This chapter is just a level one explanation of modeling. Youll want to read the SAP
HANA Modeling Guide and the SAP HANA Studio Overview, and watch the presentations on
the SAP HANA Academy to step through the fine points.
Here are just some of the HANA Academy resources you may want to access:
Creating an attribute view
Creating an analytic view
Creating a calculation view
Creating hierarchies in an attribute view
Using the Create View GUI in SAP HANA Studio
Using calculated columns in an analytic view
Using calculated columns in an attribute view
Using variables in an analytic view
Using decision tables with update values
Using decision tables with return values only
Creating row store or column store tables
Example of using calculated columns and calculation views
G
Chapter 8
Application Development with SAP HANA
This chapter was contributed by Thomas Jung (@thomas_jung). Director,
Product Management, SAP HANA-Data and Analytics Engine Product
Management
iven the high-level focus of this book and the growing inventory of technical knowledge
that we will link to, well avoid getting into too many code samples or deep technical
discussions in this chapter. Instead, well focus on some of the most salient features of
programming applications for SAP HANA that can maximize its speed and computational
power. In addition, well present examples of some of the new capabilities that SAP HANA
provides to developers. Before we proceed, we need to make two important points. First, this
chapter discusses how to use ABAP and SQL programming concepts in the new SAP HANA
programming paradigm. Therefore, we composed this chapter with the assumption that
youre familiar with these concepts. Second, the chapter focuses specically on development
in SAP landscapes. Nevertheless, most developers should obtain value from the chapter
content regardless of their programming language experience. We plan to incorporate
additional languages and programming approaches in subsequent revisions.
Basic Concepts
SAP HANA is an ACID-compliant database, conceptually similar in most ways to every other
database youve ever worked with. It speaks SQL and MDX, it has JDBC and ODBC libraries, it
stores data in tables, with rows and columns, and it requires administration and backup.
However, there are quite a few key philosophical dierences and cutting-edge development
concepts that you need to consider when youre writing apps that leverage SAP HANA as a
database. Most importantly, youll have to let go of some of the rules of gravity that existed
in the old world order to take advantage of all of the new capabilities that SAP HANA
provides.
SAP HANA is compliant with the standard interfaces of all databases. Therefore, to
implement this system, you could simply keep your existing applications, redirect the ODBC
or JDBC conguration, and then run them as-is with SAP HANA as their new database layer.
The problem with this scenario is that SAP HANA oers capabilities that other databases
simply dont. Some of these advantages involve the core technical capabilities of the
database, which are superior to those of other databases. In addition, SAP HANA goes well
beyond the traditional database to oer a full application and development platform as well
as to extend capabilities in areas such as search, predictive analysis, and so on. Therefore,
building an application with these SAP HANA-specic advantages in mind will provide you
with the maximum opportunities for innovative and responsive applications.
No Constraints
The primary philosophical dierence between developing apps in the old world and
developing apps for SAP HANA is probably the mindshift that is needed to program in a world
without constraints. Several of the early developers who worked with SAP HANA referred to
this psychological shift as taking the red pill. Developers are taught from their very rst
hello world application that they have to achieve a compromise between maximum utility of
the application and maximum usage of the base infrastructure supporting the app. There are
numerous books that teach these best practices (including quite a few from SAP) to help
developers achieve this shaky balance.
In a traditional disk-based architecture, writing a complex algorithm that calls raw data
from 200 large (100 million rows), unique tables simultaneously and performs an on-the-y
join would be considered foolish and impossible just a couple of years ago. But, what if it
wasnt foolish or impossible? What if that algorithm in the app would provide a huge amount
of business value to the users? What if there were no penalties for writing that algorithm?
What if you could get an answer to that calculation in a few milliseconds instead of several
hours? What if you had a supercomputer dedicated to calculating that algorithm whenever
you needed it? What if, in addition to performing these operations in the database, you could
collapse all of the other application and presentation layers down into the database to
provide a simple, low-complexity platform to run the entire application?
This is the type of philosophical shift required to make the leap from programing in a world
of constraints into the new world of SAP HANA. In the SAP HANA world, the old constraints of
database I/O and computational power become largely irrelevant . The boundaries as to
where the database ends and the application server begins are also strongly challenged.
Abstraction
In the SAP world (ABAP especially), developers are taught to abstract their applications
completely from the database and treat them as a black box. The ABAP engine is the
primary location for all application logic and SQL generation, so the database is used only for
data storage. ABAP developers literally have no idea what database their app is going to be
run on, so they have to assume the lowest common denominator and write to NO specic
database. JAVA, PHP, .NET, and various other development platforms often utilize very
similar abstraction approaches, thanks to ODBC/JDBC. Unfortunately, these platforms often
sacrice capabilities for compatibility. This extreme separation of application logic and data
storage has been one of the cornerstones of ABAP application development for the past 20
years, primarily because this was the most effective strategy for SAP to compromise between
broad support for many databases and performance of the applications.
In contrast, in the SAP HANA world, the ABAP engine knows EXACTLY which database it is
going to interface with. It also knows that SAP HANA has been optimized to meet its needs.
Consequently, the ABAP engine not only can take advantage of the native speed of memory-
to-processor, it can also take advantage of all of the under-the-hood capabilities that SAP
HANA offers for calculations and business functions.
Abstraction is also present in the JDBC interface for Java apps and ODBC for various other
development platforms. This buer between the app logic and the data it needs works well
to insulate the developers from the database engine. However, it also prevents the
developers from utilizing many of the database functions.
With SAP HANA, many of the performance-related processing tasks are actually carried
out deep inside the database (like stored procedures on steroids). Thus, SAP HANA enables
developers to get deep inside the data model. In addition, SAP HANA functions inside the
database to program data-intensive operations at the data level, not inside the application as
they do in disk-based databases.
Figure 1: New Programing Paradigm
In the old programming paradigm, developers would design the application and write the
app logic, data transformations, and algorithm/calculations while leaving the database
largely untouched. When the app ran, it would fetch whatever data it needed from the
database, bring it up to the app, transform the data, and then run them through the algorithm
or calculations to present the results to the user. In SAP HANA, that process is ipped upside
down. The app contains only the business logic. A function call is inserted to fetch the
ANSWER from the database. The data transformations, algorithm, and calculations are all
executed INSIDE the database, and only the result is passed up to the application. Ooading
all of the data-intensive operations to the database and calling those operations as functions
from the application makes the entire architecture signicantly more elegant and ecient. In
fact, companies that employ SAP HANA have seen their application performances improve by
hundreds of thousands of times.
Figure 2: Paradigm Swit ch in Programming Models
This shift from data manipulation at the application level to data manipulation at the
database level is necessary to take advantage of all of the power contained in SAP HANA. Of
course, you can keep your old apps the way they are and obtain slightly faster response times
simply because the database sits in memory. If you delegate the data-intensive operations
down to SAP HANA, however, youll not only simplify the architecture and streamline the
application, youll also see SAP HANA really let loose its horsepower for supercharged
performance in the applications.
ABAP Programming for SAP HANA
Because ABAP is the primary application programming language and application server
foundation for the SAP Business Suite, it plays an important role in SAP HANAs adoption into
SAPs current customer base. Consequently, many people are interested in how they can
utilize SAP HANA within the SAP Business Suite and, by connection, how they can use ABAP
to access SAP HANA logic and constructs. In the next few sections we will look at various
architectures where ABAP and SAP HANA work together to create innovative opportunities in
the SAP Business Suite. See Chapter 4 for more details on the SAP Business Suite Powered
by SAP HANA.
In this section, we will discuss several scenarios for leveraging the power of SAP HANA
with both new and existing SAP Business Suite applications. These scenarios range from very
simple, non-disruptive applications to accelerate a handful of problematic transactions or
reports all the way to running the entire SAP Business Suite natively on SAP HANA as the
primary database.
SAP HANA as a Secondary Database
In this scenario, you install SAP HANA as a secondary database instead of as a replacement
for your current database. You then use replication to move a copy of the data into the SAP
HANA system. Your ABAP applications can then be accelerated because they will read data
from the SAP HANA copy instead of the local database.
Figure 3: SAP HANA as a Secondary Dat abase
ABAP Secondary Database Connection
ABAP has long possessed the capability to make a secondary database connection. This
capability allows ABAP programs to access a database system other than the local database,
even a database from a completely different DBMS vendor.
This functionality is extended to support SAP HANA for all the NetWeaver release levels
from 7.00 and beyond. Service Note 1597627 lists the preconditions and technical steps
required to connect to HANA systems, and it should always be the master guide for these
preconditions. Below we summarize the current state of SAP HANA Development tools at the
time of publication of this book.
Preconditions
The SAP HANA Client is installed on each ABAP Application Server. The ABAP Application
Server Operating System must support the HANA Client. (Check the Platform Availability
Matrix for supported operating systems.)
SAP HANA DBSL is installed. (This is the Database-specic library that is part of the
ABAP Kernel.)
The SAP HANA DBSL is available only for the ABAP Kernel 7.20 and higher.
Kernel 7.20 is already the default kernel for NetWeaver 7.02, 7.03, 7.20, 7.30, and
7.31.
Kernel 7.20 is backward compatible, so it can also be applied to NetWeaver 7.00,
7.01, 7.10, and 7.11.
Your ABAP system must be Unicode or Single Code Page 1100 (Latin 1/ISO-8850-1)
See Service note 1700052 for Single Code Page Support instructions.
Next, you must congure your ABAP system to connect to this alternative database. You
have one central location where you maintain the database connection string, username, and
password. Your applications then need only to specify the conguration key for the database,
thereby making the connection information application independent.
Secondary Database Connection Via Open SQL
The easiest solution for performing SQL operations from ABAP to your secondary database
connection is to use the Open SQL statements that ABAP developers are already familiar
with. If you supply the additional syntax of CONNECTION (dbcon), you can force the Open SQL
statement to be performed against the alternative database connection.
For instance, lets take a simple Select, and perform it against our HANA database:
The advantage of this approach is its simplicity. By making one minor addition to existing
SQL Statements, you can redirect your operation to SAP HANA. The downside is that the table
or view you are accessing must exist in the ABAP Data Dictionary.
That isnt a huge problem for this Accelerator scenario, however, because all of the data
reside in the local ABAP DBMS and are replicated to SAP HANA. In this situation we will
always have local copies of the tables in the ABAP Data Dictionary. Note, however, that you
cant access SAP HANA-specic artifacts like Analytic Views and Database Procedures. You
also cant access any tables that use SAP HANA as their own/primary persistence.
Secondary Database Connection Via Native SQL
ABAP also has the ability to utilize Native SQL. In this situation you write database-specic
SQL statements. This process allows you to access tables and other artifacts that exist only
in the underlying database. In addition, Native SQL contains syntax that allows you to call
Database Procedures. If we take the example from above, we can rewrite it using Native SQL:
One disadvantage of using Native SQL via EXEC SQL in this example is that the statement
contains signicantly more code than the Open SQL option. It is also a little less elegant
because it utilizes database cursors to bring back an array of data. The upside is that it
provides access to features you wouldnt otherwise have. For example, you can insert data
into a SAP HANA table and use the SAP HANA database sequence for the number range or
for built-in database functions like now().
The other disadvantage of using Native SQL via EXEC SQL is that there are few, if any,
syntax checks on the SQL statements you create. Errors arent caught until runtime, which
can lead to short dumps if the exceptions arent properly handled. This limitation makes
testing absolutely essential when youre using Native SQL.
Secondary Database Connection via Native SQL ADBC
There is a third option that provides the benets of the Native SQL connection via EXEC SQL
but also eliminates some of the limitations. This is the concept of ADBC ABAP Database
Connectivity. This approach is essentially a series of classes (CL_SQL*) that simplify and
abstract the EXEC SQL blocks. For example, we could once again rewrite our SELECT *FROM
SFLIGHT example:
In this iteration we remove the step-wise processing of the Database Cursor and instead
read an entire package of data back into our internal table all at once. The initial package size
will return all of the resulting records by default. However, you can specify any package size
you wish, thereby tuning processing for large return result sets. Most importantly for SAP
HANA situations, however, is the fact that ADBC also lets you access non-Data Dictionary
artifacts including SAP HANA Stored Procedures. Given the advantages of ADBC over EXEC
SQL, SAP recommends that you always try to use the ADBC class-based interfaces.
This is really just the beginning of what you could accomplish with this secondary
database approach to ABAP integration into SAP HANA. Weve deliberately used very
simplistic SQL statements in these examples so that we could focus on the details of how the
technical integration works. However, the real power comes when you execute more powerful
statements (SELECT SUM GROUP BY), access SAP HANA-specic artifacts (like OLAP
Views upon OLTP tables), or database procedures.
SAP HANA as a Primary ABAP Database
Of course, SAP HANA can also be used as the primary DBMS under any ABAP-based system.
With the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA oering, ABAP-based Suite applications
like ERP can be run with SAP HANA as the primary DBMS no replication or other databases
is needed. Likewise, ABAP has evolved to provide new tools and techniques that enable
developers to directly access certain distinguishing features of SAP HANA. These features
come with ABAP 7.40-based systems.
Weve already examined how secondary database connections can be accessed via both
Open SQL and Native SQL in ABAP. We also learned that ABAP Open SQL is limited to objects
that exist in the ABAP Data Dictionary. To address these limitations, ABAP 7.40 has
introduced a new concept known as Data Dictionary Proxy Views. Proxy Views allow a
developer to create an ABAP Data Dictionary entry for SAP HANA-specic view types
Analytic, Attribute, and Calculation views. Developers can utilize Proxy Views to leverage the
power and ease of use of ABAP Open SQL against these SAP HANA-specic view types. This
capability is particularly useful when it is combined with ABAP range types that is, Select-
Options and Parameters.
Going further, ABAP 7.40 has introduced a parallel concept for Stored Procedures called
Procedure Proxies. Procedure Proxies generate both an ABAP interface and parameter data
types for a SAP HANA Stored Procedure. A new ABAP syntax (CALL PROCEDURE) was also
introduced, which makes calling Stored Procedures very similar to calling ABAP Function
Modules.
Both Proxy Views and Procedure Proxies make it unnecessary to drop into Native SQL
within ABAP to leverage database-specic features. They streamline the amount of work the
developer must perform to design applications for code push down into SAP HANA. They also
improve the data transfer efficiency between the ABAP Application Server and SAP HANA.
Transition Closer to the Database
Regardless of whether you are utilizing SAP HANA as your primary or secondary database
connection, ABAP developers have to adopt dierent design strategies if they wish to take
advantage of its full power. ABAP developers tend to shy away from deeper aspects of SQL in
favor of processing the data on the application server in ABAP. For ABAP developers who are
reading this, when was the last time you used a sub-query or a join in ABAP? Or even a select
sum?
ABAP developers have been taught from early on to abstract the database as much as
possible. Therefore, they tend to trust the processing on the application server where they
have total control instead of the black box of the DBMS. This situation has been
exacerbated in recent years because ABAP contains a greater array of tools that will
generate the SQL for us.
This approach has served ABAP developers well for many years. Lets take the typical
situation of loading supporting details from a foreign key table. In this case we want to load
all of the ight details from SFLIGHT and also load the carrier details from SCARR. In ABAP
we could write an inner join:
Figure 4 ABAP Open SQL wit h Inner Join
Many ABAP developers, however, would adopt an alternative approach where they
perform the join in memory on the application server via internal tables:
Figure 5 Typical ABAP Coding of Joining at t he App Server
This approach can be benecial when it is combined with ABAP table buering. Keep in
mind that we are comparing developer design patterns here, not the actual technical merits
of these specific examples.
If we now added SAP HANA to the mixture, how would the developer approach change? In
HANA the developer should strive to push more of the processing into the database. The
question might be, why?
To answer this question, we need to keep in mind that SAP HANA is an in-memory
database. Almost any developer can appreciate the advantages of consolidating all of your
data in fast memory as opposed to relatively slow disk-based storage. If this were the only
advantage that SAP HANA oers, however, we wouldnt notice a huge dierence compared to
processing in ABAP. After all, ABAP has full table buering. Ignoring the cost of updates, if we
were to buer both SFLIGHT and SCARR, our ABAP table loop join in the previous example
would be pretty fast, although it still wouldnt be as fast as SAP HANA.
The other key points of SAP HANAs architecture are that in addition to being in-memory,
it is designed for columnar storage and parallel processing. In the ABAP table loop, each
record in the table has to be processed sequentially, one record at a time. The current
version of ABAP statements, however, just isnt designed for parallel processing. Instead,
ABAP leverages multiple cores/CPUs by running dierent user sessions in separate work
processes. SAP HANA, in contrast, can parallelize blocks of data within a single request. The
fact that the data are consolidated in memory only further supports this parallelization by
making access from multiple CPUs more useful, because data can be fed to the CPUs that
much faster. After all, parallization isnt useful if the CPUs spend most of their cycles waiting
for data to process.
The other technical aspect at play here is the columnar architecture of SAP HANA. When
tabular data are stored in columns, all of the data for a single column are stored together in
memory. In contrast, row storage as even ABAP internal tables are processed places
data in memory one row at a time.
Thus, for the join condition mentioned above, the CARRID column in each table can be
scanned faster because of the arrangement of data. Scans of unneeded data in memory
arent nearly as expensive as performing the same operation on disk (because of the need to
wait for platter rotation), but there is a cost all the same. Storing the data columnar reduces
that cost when performing operations that scan one or more columns as well as when
optimizing compression routines.
For these reasons, developers (and especially ABAP developers) must re-think their
applications designs. To extract the maximum benet of SAP HANA, they will also need to
push more of the processing from ABAP down into the database. To accomplish this task,
developers need to write more SQL and to interact more frequently with the underlying
database. The database will no longer be a bit bucket to be minimized and abstracted.
Rather, it will become another tool in the developers toolset to be fully leveraged.
SAP HANA Extended Application Services (XS)
With SAP HANA SP5*, SAP has introduced an exciting new capability called SAP HANA
Extended Application Services (sometimes referred to unocially as XS or XS Engine). The
core concept of XS Engine is to embed a full-featured application server, Web server, and
development environment within the SAP HANA appliance itself. However, this technology
isnt just another piece of software installed on the same hardware as SAP HANA. Instead,
SAP has decided to truly integrate this new application services functionality directly into the
deepest parts of the SAP HANA database. This architecture will enhance the performance of
the app and enable it to access SAP HANA dierentiating features that no other application
server has.
Before SAP HANA SP5 was introduced, if you wanted to build a lightweight Web page or
REST Service that consumes SAP HANA data or logic, you would need another application
server in your system landscape. For example, you might use SAP NetWeaver ABAP or SAP
NetWeaver Java to connect to your SAP HANA system via a network connection and use
ADBC (ABAP Database Connectivity) or JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) to pass SQL
statements to SAP HANA. Because of SAP HANAs openness, you might also use NET or any
number of other environments or languages that support Open Database Connectivity
(ODBC) as well. These scenarios are all still perfectly valid. In particular, when you are
extending an existing application with new SAP HANA functionality, these approaches are
very appealing because you can integrate this SAP HANA functionality into your current
architecture easily and with minimal disruption.
When you are building a new SAP HANA-specic application from scratch, however, it
makes sense to consider the option of the SAP HANA Extended Application Services. This
architecture enables you to build and deploy your application completely self-contained
within SAP HANA. This approach can lower your costs of development and ownership while
providing performance advantages because the application and control ow logic are located
so close to the database.
Applications designed specically to leverage the power of SAP HANA are frequently
designed to push as much of the logic down into the database as possible. It makes sense to
place all of your data-intensive logic into SQL, SQLScript Procedures, and SAP HANA Views,
because these techniques will leverage SAP HANAs in-memory, columnar table
optimizations as well as massively parallel processing (MPP). For the end-user experience,
we are increasingly targeting HTML5 and mobile-based applications where the complete UI
logic is executed on the client side. Therefore, we need an application server in the middle
that is signicantly smaller than the traditional application server. This server needs to
provide only some basic validation logic and service enablement. The reduced scope of the
application server lends further credit to the approach of a lightweight embedded approach
like that of the SAP HANA Extended Application Services.
Figure 6 Paradigm Shift in Runt ime Layers
SAP HANA Studio Becomes a Development Workbench
To support developers in creating applications and services directly within SAP HANA
Extended Application Services, SAP has enhanced the SAP HANA Studio to include all of the
necessary tools. SAP HANA Studio was already based upon Eclipse; therefore, SAP was able
to extend the Studio via an Eclipse Team Provider plug-in that sees the SAP HANA Repository
as a remote source code repository similar to Git or Perforce. This arrangement empowers
the SAP HANA Database to manage the entire lifecycle of all of the development resources
(everything from SAP HANA Views, SQLScript Procedures, Roles, Server Side Logic, HTML
and JavaScript content, etc.). These management capabilities include versioning, language
translation export/import, and software delivery/transport.
The SAP HANA Studio is extended with a new perspective called SAP HANA Development.
As Figure 7 illustrates, this new perspective combines existing tools (e.g., the Navigator view
from the Modeler perspective) with standard Eclipse tools (e.g., the Project Explorer) and new
tools specically created for SAP HANA Extended Application Services development (e.g., the
Server Side JavaScript editor shown in the figure or the SAP HANA Repository browser).
Because SAP HANA Studio is based on Eclipse, SAP can also integrate other Eclipse-
based tools into it. For example, the SAP UI Development Toolkit for HTML5 (SAPUI5) is a
standard feature in SAP HANA Extended Application Services. SAP HANA 1.0 SP5 comes
preloaded with the 1.8 version of the SAPUI5 runtime, and the SAPUI5 development tools are
integrated into SAP HANA Studio and managed by the SAP HANA Repository, like all other
XS-based artifacts.
Figure 7 SAP HANA Development Perspect ive
These extensions to the SAP HANA Studio include features that enhance developer
productivity; for example, project wizards (Figure 8), resource wizards, code completion and
syntax highlighting for SAP HANA Extended Application Services server side APIs, integrated
debuggers, and so much more.
Figure 8 SAP HANA Specific Project Wizards
These features also include team management functionality. All development work is
performed based on standard Eclipse projects. The project les are then stored within the
SAP HANA Repository along with all the other resources. Team members can utilize the SAP
HANA Repository browser view to examine existing projects and import them directly into
their local Eclipse workspace. Developers can then work on these projects oine. In addition,
multiple developers can work on the same resources at the same time. Upon commit back to
the SAP HANA Repository, the tool will detect any conicts, and developers can access a
merge tool to integrate the conflicts back into the Repository.
The SAP HANA Repository also supports the concept of active/inactive workspace
objects. This feature allows developers to safely commit their work back to the server and
store it there without immediately overwriting the current runtime version. The new runtime
version isnt created until the developer chooses to activate the Repository object.
SQLScript
As we have described, the cornerstone of the architectural optimization for applications
designed for SAP HANA is the concept of code push down. Execution of data-intensive logic
within the database begins with the usage of standard SQL and views. Developers, however,
also need semantics that exceed the capabilities of SQL if they wish to create business logic
within the database.
To this end, SAP delivers just such an extension to SQL, called SQLScript. SQLScript is the
primary language for creating stored procedures and functions in SAP HANA. The extensions
that form SQLScript allow the developer to push down more of the data-intensive logic into
the database.
Typical SQL statements are often well suited to parallel processing because of their
declarative nature. The primary weakness of SQL becomes apparent when you need to pass
the result set of one SQL operation into the input of a second operation. In this scenario,
developers traditionally had only two options: copy the result set to the application server, or
write complex, nested SQL statements utilizing sub-queries or multiple join conditions.
SQLScript solves this problem by providing a feature that describes the data ow from one
SQL operation to another. This feature enables developers to continue to write logic as they
would with an application server and also to declare and use intermediate result sets and
variables. Yet it SQLScript often can be compiled down to database joins and sub-queries.
This feature oers developers a syntax that is easier for a person to read and write while still
providing a logic ow that is well suited to database execution. At the same time, SQLScript
avoids [sending] massive data copies to an application server, [thereby] leveraging
sophisticated parallel execution strategies within the database.
In addition to all of these benets, SQLScript provides enhanced control ow capabilities
as well as some limited procedural logic constructs. These features make it possible to
rewrite some of the more complex parts of the application logic and push them down into the
database layer as well.
Overall, SQLScript will improve the readability and structure of your data-intensive logic
(compared to complex SQL alone) by passing the results of one SQL statement to another
and by breaking complex SQL into smaller chunks. It also brings the data-intensive
application logic close to the database by combining the existing Declarative logic of SQL with
its own built-in functions as well as with orchestration logic such as Data Denition Language
(DDL), Data Manipulation Language (DML), and imperative logic constructs.
When compared to standard SQL, SQLScript has several advantages. Procedures can
return multiple results, whereas an SQL query can return only a single result set. Going
further, SQLScript can decompose complex functions into smaller chunks. This capability
enables modular programming, reuse, and a better understandability by functional
abstraction. For structuring complex queries, standard SQL allows only the denition of SQL
views. These views have neither parameters nor a xed interface. Another advantage of
SQLScript over SQL is that it supports local variables for intermediate results with implicitly
dened types. With standard SQL, globally visible views have to be dened even for
intermediate steps. Going further, SQLScript has control logic such as if/else that is not
available in the SQL standard. Finally, SQLScript can increase overall performance by utilizing
parallel processing within most of its executions.
R
Stored Procedures serve a second purpose within SAP HANA: They are the mechanism that
integrates other programming languages and interfaces directly into the database execution
layer. The best example of this integration of third-party languages is the introduction of R
Language within Stored Procedures.
R is an open-source software language and environment for statistical computing and
graphics that includes more than 3000 add-on packages. R covers a wide range of topics
from Cluster Analysis to Probability Distributions to Graphic Displays to Machine Learning
to name just a few.
With the R integration into SAP HANA, developers can write their R Scripts directly within
a stored procedure. During execution, the R script, along with any input data, are sent to the
remote, open-source R server. The execution takes place on the R server, and the results are
sent back to SAP HANA. SAP provides the interfaces in both SAP HANA and the R server to
make this integration completely transparent to the application developer.
Figure 9 R Language Int egrat ion
L
In addition to SQLScript language for the implementation of Stored Procedures, SAP also has
the language L. L is a robust, low-level, high-performance programming language located
inside SAP HANA that allows code to be created at runtime. The L language is based on
concepts from the C/C++ world; it can be roughly characterized as a safe subset of C/C++
that is enriched by SAP HANA data types and concepts to simplify the manipulation of and
interaction with database objects. L provides direct access to the table and column objects
that are utilized in the Calculation Engine.
However, the direct access that makes L very powerful also makes it rather dangerous.
Therefore, L is currently restricted to SAP internal usage. Customers and partners should use
L only in close cooperation with SAP development resources. SAPs long-term goal is to
safely wrap the most useful abilities of L and integrate them into the SQLScript language. At
this point, direct access to L will become unnecessary.
AFL
AFL stands for Application Function Library. It represents multiple function libraries like
Business Function Library (BFL) and Predictive Analysis Library (PAL). BFL is a prebuilt,
parameter-driven, basic building block library of calculations delivered at high performance,
including depreciation, capacity optimization, and time-based functions such as year over
year (YoY) and delay.
The AFLs are written in C/C++, and they become closely linked with the database kernel
itself. Signicantly, only SAP can write these libraries. Because the AFLs interact so closely
with the database kernel, they operate without a virtual machine abstraction. Nevertheless,
customers and partners can easily access and reuse these libraries because, with the
introduction of SAP HANA 1.0 SP5, SAP can now generate a Stored Procedure interface for
them. Therefore, consuming one of the powerful functions of the Application Function Library
is now as easy as working with any other SQLScript procedure. In time, SAP plans to release
additional tools that make the consumption of these AFL-based procedures even easier. SAP
may even open up development of new AFL functions to select partners.
Working with Large Teams
The SAP HANA Change Manager, new in SP7 and a part of SAP HANA XS, includes
enhancements aimed at facilitating multi-developer/multi-project environments.
Enhancements include changes to the repository interface, enabling interactive artifact
testing, and a new change manager interface that helps pinpoint code changes between
versions.
Next Steps
By this point, youre probably sick of reading, and want to get your hands dirty playing with
SAP HANA. Luckily for you, SAP oers FREE developer instances of SAP HANA as well as all of
the development tools you need to experiment with everything discussed in this chapter (and
more). Simply head over to the SAP HANA One Developer Edition site to get started. It takes
about 15 minutes to sign up, provision your instance on the cloud, and start writing code.
When you download the SAP HANA Client, it includes SDKs for JDBC, ODBC, ODBO and Python
DB API. While the Client is downloading, you can pop over to the SAP HANA Academy to
watch hundreds of tutorials on how to build your rst hello world application or to do any
number of other things with SAP HANA for free. And, if youre not sick of reading, check out
the SAP HANA Developer Guide for a lot more information.
Additional Resources
Application development with SAP HANA is such a huge topic that it could ll up several
books. In this chapter weve tried to cover some of the most critical aspects of working with
SAP HANA as an application developer. We highly recommend that you continue learning
about development topics at the following sites:
SAP HANA Developer Center
SAP HANA Documentation (help portal)
ABAP for SAP HANA
SAP HANA Academy (educational videos)
The Road to HANA (the ultimate link collection for beginners and experts)
Development Resources on SAPHANA.com
SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA
Chapter 9
SAP HANA Administration & Operations
COMING FALL 2014
S
Chapter 10
SAP HANA Hardware Overview
AP HANA is the rst SAP solution that has been built to be specically run as an
appliance and optimized for a very specic combination of processor, memory, and
operating system. This approach represents a departure from SAPs long history of broad
platform support. SAP implemented this new policy to still provide customers with multiple
choices in hardware platforms while avoiding the TCO implications of multiple OS and
processor support combinations. In order to understand why, we need to look back
historically at some of the hardware platform changes that led SAP to adopt this policy this
strategy and explore why this path oers SAP customers the best balance of broad hardware
partner options and focused innovation around a stable set of key components.
When SAP shifted from mainframe to client-server architecture with SAP R/3, two of the
critical benets were the lower costs and the more standardized options associated with the
UNIX-based servers that had just become available. When the mass-adoption of SAP R/3
took o, customers began asking SAP to certify more and more new combinations of
operating system and database on various hardware platforms. This made sense because
many companies were employing existing landscapes from a preferred hardware vendor and
had developed expertise in certain versions of operating system and database that they
wanted to leverage for their SAP environment.
SAP happily obliged, building out a robust certication laboratory in its headquarters to
constantly test and validate new hardware and software combinations that were being
released by its partners for customer use. At the time, SAP believed that providing customers
with such a broad choice would help them achieve lower TCO of their SAP solutions by
reusing technology and resources that were already in place. SAP also felt that being
hardware and OS/DB agnostic would be the best strategy to set itself apart from the other
enterprise app vendors. This technology-neutral strategy worked very well for SAP for
more than 30 years. At a certain point in the mid-2000s, however, the small number of
combinations that SAP began with had exploded into a truly dizzying collection. Customers no
longer beneted signicantly from such a broad list of hardware and technology choices, and
the costs for SAP and its customers of this broad coverage were becoming unsustainable.
After SAP R/3 was released, the UNIX platform began to splinter into multiple dialects,
with each hardware vendor putting its eorts behind its preferred variant (HPUX, AIX, Solaris,
etc). In addition, x86 platforms from Intel and AMD began to displace the RISC-based
platforms of the early UNIX hardware vendors due to their lower costs and their support for
industry standards. Later, Linux began to displace the original UNIX operating systems due to
its lower costs and the advantages of open-source code. Soon, the Product Availability Matrix
(PAM) for SAP ERP exceeded 200 combinations of OS and database, with a vast number of
hardware platforms for those combinations. At a certain point, choice became a liability for
SAP and its customers rather than the benefit that it was originally intended to be.
So, when SAP began development on the precursors of SAP HANA, the company made a
strategic decision to avoid all of the costs and complexity of supporting so many variations of
hardware and technology platforms. SAP was primarily concerned with the three pieces of
technology that had the greatest impact on performance and would be the largest drivers of
TCO reduction: operating system (OS), RAM, and processors. SAP decided to bet on open-
source and industry standards as the core platform for SAP HANA. By supporting only ONE
combination of OS and processors, SAP could invest all its development and testing
resources into a single platform while still allowing customers to choose which hardware
vendor would deliver and support the appliance.
SAP had been working with Novell/SUSE for many years to support Novell SLES Linux as a
certied operating system for SAP applications. Because Linux is so technically similar to
UNIX, almost any UNIX engineer could transition his or her skills easily. Moreover, because
Linux was open-source and easily supported by third parties, it was clearly the lowest TCO
option for running an SAP system.
In addition to selecting a single OS, SAP had to settle on a single processor family for the
new solution. Although there were many chips on the market that could handle SAPs
traditional application-processing requirements, there werent any processors that had been
designed to handle in-memory processing tasks (because enterprise-scale in-memory
computing didnt exist yet). The initial SAP HANA conversations that SAPs executives held
with anyone outside the company were with Intel because SAP realized that shifting to in-
memory computing would require a new breed of processors that were optimized for the new
architecture, and Intel has a long history of innovating for the future needs of the enterprise.
SAP laid out its strategy for the shift to in-memory computing to Intels executives, and
the two parties discussed the level of co-innovation that would be needed to jointly engineer
both an in-memory database and optimized processors that could handle the unique needs of
this new architecture. The top executives from each company agreed that the they would
have to establish a new level of co-innovation partnership and starting in 2005, Intel sent a
team of their best software and chip engineers to SAP HQ to begin the work of jointly
optimizing each successive version of the industry-standard Intel Xeon chips for the needs of
SAPs evolving in-memory database. Since that time, SAP has benetted from early access to
each new generation of Xeon processor from Intel, and Intel has incorporated SAPs unique
in-memory processing requirements into its chip capabilities.
Intel and SAP: A History of Co-Innovation
For more than 10 years, Intel and SAP have worked together to deliver industry-leading performance of SAP
solutions on Intel

architecture, and a large proportion of new SAP implementations are now deployed on
Intel

platforms. The latest success from that tradition of co-innovation is available to customers of all sizes
in SAP HANA, which is delivered on the Intel

Xeon

processor.
The relationship between Intel and SAP has become even stronger over the years, growing to include a broad
set of collaborations and initiatives. Some of the most visible:
Joint roadmap enablement. Early in the design process, Intel and SAP decision makers identify
complementary features and capabilities in their upcoming products, and those insights help to direct
the development cycle for maximum value.
Collaborative product optimization. Intel engineers located on-site at SAP work with their SAP
counterparts to provide tuning expertise that enables SAP HANA and other software solutions to take
advantage of the latest hardware features.
Combined research eorts. Together, researchers from Intel and SAP continually explore and drive the
future of business computing
As a result of these eorts, customer solutions achieve performance, scalability, reliability, and energy
efficiency that translate into favorable ROI and TCO, for increased business value.
Having created an optimized core (operating system, RAM, and processors) for SAP
HANA, SAP needed to reach out to the server manufacturers to package the software and
hardware into industry-standard appliances in a way that would remove as much
conguration and integration work from the customers as possible (again, lowering TCO).
SAP realized that even though the core components of the SAP HANA servers would be
nearly identical (OS, RAM, and processors), the hardware vendors provide a great deal of
additional value in the implementation, management and operations of the hardware. Plus,
customers typically have a preferred hardware vendor for their enterprise landscapes. This is
really where SAP felt that customer choice would have the most value. So, they engaged
seven of their primary hardware vendors (see the next paragraph) to build certied SAP
HANA appliances and create packaged services to implement SAP HANA quickly and easily at
customer sites.
In early 2011, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, and HP all jumped on the SAP HANA bandwagon
and had their agship Intel-based servers certied and in production. Hitachi joined the list
later that year, and NEC was certied in early 2012. Huawei, VMC and Lenovo joined in 2013.
This broad support from industry-leading hardware vendors provides customers with a
choice of seven hardware partners to deploy their SAP HANA solution, each with unique
service and support oerings to t their customers needs. SAPs strategy of solid core,
multivendor hardware support for SAP HANA has been received extremely well by customers
because it eliminates the confusing number of hardware combinations and focuses on the
value-added solutions that each vendor can offer on top of the solid core.
In May of 2013, SAP made a major step forward in providing an even lower cost, higher-
value deployment option for customers by announcing the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. The
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud oering is a comprehensive RAM-optimized cloud infrastructure
combined with managed services. Customers can now run their SAP HANA applications,
including SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse powered
by SAP HANA, in a managed cloud environment. It delivers the power of real-time in-memory
technology with cloud simplicity and elastic economics.
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is a fully scalable, enterprise-ready, mission critical, secure,
and high availability cloud offering with a full-managed services approach.
For more information on the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and other cloud deployment
options, please see the comparision at http://www.saphana.com/community/about-
hana/deployment-options.
General SAP HANA Hardware Specifications
SAP HANA is sold as a pre-congured, pre-installed appliance that is delivered directly from
the hardware partner. SUSE Linux SLES 11 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA are
the only supported operating systems, and Intel E7 processors are the primary supported
chips. Samsung RAM is currently the primary memory used by most of the hardware
partners.
Most partner systems use on-board 15k RPM hard disks (4x ratio for main memory) for
data-volume backup and Fusion I/O SSD cards (1:1 ratio for main memory) for log-volume
backup.
SAP ensures the quality, availability, and performance of the certied systems through a
rigorous process of end-to-end quality testing, performance testing, and continuous early
access to next-generation technologies from all of its partners.
SAP HANA Product Availability Matrix (PAM)
SAP has recently made the SAP HANA supported hardware matrix available on an open
website. Since the supported congurations are changing so rapidly, well simply insert the
link to the site here so you can always get the most up-to-date listing.
SAP Certified Appliance Hardware for SAP HANA
Additional Infrastructure
SAP recommends that customers deploy 10 gb network data connections. SAP has no
preference on external storage/SAN; rather, it is determined by the server vendor.
Multi-Node and Scale-Out Options
SAP HANA is a linearly scalable database, meaning, you can string together multiple physical
servers into a single logical database instance and achieve linear performance results for
every additional server added to the landscape.
Currently, SAP HANA has certied several vendors for multi-node scale out. Literally, you
just add another node/server to the landscape, and you immediately enjoy an exponential
increase in performance, in addition to the additional memory. Refer to the SAP HANA
hardware partner section of this chapter for more information on the various scale-out
offerings from the individual partners.
In 2012, SAP recently completed the rst 100TB benchmark for the 16 node scale out
solution. The data set consisted of ve years of Sales and Distribution Records (100 Billion
records) and was run on a single logical server consisting of 16 nodes. Each node was a
certied IBM X5 machine with eight Intel E7-8870 processors with 10 cores, running at 2.40
GHz. The total cost of the 16 node system was roughly USD$640K.
SAP HANA was able to scan 100 Billion rows/Sec on the 100 TB dataset and was able to
load 16 million records/min. SAP HANAs compression algorithms were able to achieve 20x
compression on the raw data when loading into memory, going from 100TB on disk to 3.8TB
in memory.
Typical query results were:
BW Workload: 300ms 500ms
Ad-Hoc Analytics: 800ms 2s
No database tuning, indexing or caching were needed to achieve these results. To put that
in context, the closest competitive database is roughly 1000x slower in the same benchmark
and several times more expensive.
High Availability
SAP HANA supports cold standby hosts, meaning a standby host is kept ready in the event
that a failover situation occurs during production operation. In a distributed system, some of
the servers are designated as worker hosts, and others as standby hosts. Signicantly, you
can assign multiple standby hosts to each group. Alternatively, you can group together
multiple servers to create a dedicated standby host for each group.
A standby host is not used for database processing. All of the database processes run on
the standby host, but they are idle and do not enable SQL connections.
Disaster Recovery
The SAP HANA database holds the bulk of its data in memory to ensure optimal performance,
but it still uses persistent storage to provide a fallback in case of failure.
During normal database operations, data is automatically saved from memory to disk at
regular save-points. Additionally, all data changes are recorded in the log. The log is saved
from memory to SSD after each committed database transaction. After a power failure, the
database can be restarted in the same way as a disk-based database, and it returns to its
last consistent state by replaying the log since the last save-point.
Although save-points and log writing protect your data against power failures, they do not
help if the persistent storage itself is damaged. Protecting against data loss due to disk
failures requires backups. Backups save the contents of the data and log areas to dierent
locations. These backups are performed while the database is running, so users can continue
to work normally. The impact of the backups on system performance is negligible.
If the SAP HANA system detects a failover situation, the work of the services on the failed
server is reassigned to the services running on the standby host. The failed volume and all
the included tables are reassigned and loaded into memory in accordance with the failover
strategy dened for the system. This reassignment can be performed without moving any
data, because all the persistency of the servers is stored on a shared disk. Data and logs are
stored on shared storage, where every server has access to the same disks.
Before a failover is performed, the system waits for a few seconds to determine whether
the service can be restarted. During this time, the status is displayed as Waiting. This
procedure can take up to a minute. The entire process of failover detection and loading may
take several minutes to complete.
For more information on HA and DR with SAP HANA, refer to the documentation on
SAPHANA.com.
Also see the great overview documentation about SAP HANA in data centers.
Tailored Data Center Concept for SAP HANA deployments
In addition to SAP HANA as standardized and highly optimized appliance, SAP now oers the
opportunity to run the SAP HANA server with a customers preferred storage solution. This
option enables a reduction in hardware and operational costs at installed base customers
through the reuse of existing hardware components and operational processes. This
approach not only helps to mitigate risk and optimize time-to-value by enabling existing IT
Management processes for SAP HANA implementations, it also aords additional exibility in
hardware vendor selection by leveraging the existing ecosystem. IT departments will benet
from staying within IT budgets, shorter implementation cycles, and better consumption of
hardware innovations to drive the SAP HANA adoption.
Many SAP HANA customers have existing investments in shared storage architecture, and
since the in-memory architecture of SAP HANA does not require Tier 1 storage, SAP would
like to allow customers to take advantage of their existing investments in skills and
technology to make the transition to in-memory computing with SAP HANA easier and more
cost-effective.
To help customers that want to manage their own storage, as of SP7, SAP HANA tailored
data center integration is now provided as a exible conguration option for enterprise
customers. SAP HANA customers can plan and validate customized storage congurations
for SAP HANA with SAP partners for enterprise storage and the SAP HANA appliance.
Essentially, this gives large customers the freedom (and responsibility) of deploying HANA
with their own storage rather than deploying it as an appliance. To understand the
implications of this, see Whats New? SAP HANA SPS 07 SAP HANA tailored data center
integration.
SAP Hardware Partner Details
In the remaining section of this chapter, each Certied SAP HANA hardware partner was
given the opportunity to briey describe their SAP HANA oering and discuss their value-
added services for SAP HANA implementation, support, and operations.
We encourage you to speak directly to the hardware partners for more details about their
products and services for SAP HANA.
Links:
Intel
Cisco
Dell
Fujitsu
Hitachi
HP
Huawei
IBM
NEC
VCE
Intel & SAP: Co-innovation for Real-Time Computing
For more than 10 years, Intel and SAP have worked together to deliver industry-leading
performance of SAP solutions on Intel architecture, and a large proportion of new SAP
implementations are now deployed on Intel platforms. The latest success from that tradition
of co-innovation is available to customers of all sizes in the SAP HANA, which is fully
supported only on the Intel Xeon

processor E7 family.
The relationship between Intel and SAP has become even stronger over the years,
growing to include a broad set of collaborations and initiatives. Some of the most visible
include the following:
Joint roadmap enablement. Early in the design process, Intel and SAP decision-makers
identify complementary features and capabilities in their upcoming products, and those
insights help to direct the development cycle for maximum value.
Collaborative product optimization. Intel engineers located on-site at SAP work with
their SAP counterparts to provide tuning expertise that enables SAP HANA and other
software solutions to take advantage of the latest hardware features.
Combined research eorts. Together, researchers from Intel and SAP continually
explore and drive the future of business computing. As a result of these eorts, customer
solutions achieve performance, scalability, reliability, and energy eciency that translate
into favorable ROI and TCO, for increased business value.
Operational Success and Management of Real-Time Events
In-memory computing based on SAP solutions on the Intel Xeon

processor E7 family
enables greater business agility and innovative usage models that let companies respond to
changing conditions in real time.
Scenarios such as monitoring customer and supplier activity can generate petabytes of
data, the value of which depends on the ability to distill it into actionable intelligence.
SAP HANA and the latest Intel Xeon

processor E7 v2 family with up to 15 cores per

socket deliver rapid data analysis that discerns patterns and trends so you can adjust your
just-in-time supply chain rapidly. You can also model what if scenarios to structure sales
and promotions for optimal outcomes based on the latest sales and pipeline information.
Features of the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family such as 37.5MB of L3 cache, Intel

QuickPath Interconnects, and quad-channel integrated memory controllers with max memory
speed of up to up to 1600MHz deliver extraordinary capabilities for businesses of all sizes
that implement SAP HANA for functionality such as business intelligence and data analytics.
Especially the up to 24 DIMMs per socket with 64GB max DIMM density which allow up to
6 TB in 4-socket, up to 12 TB in 8-socket or 24 TB in 16-socket servers provide SAP
customers signicant improvements for large transactional workloads e.g. BusinessSuite on
HANA.
Performance Optimizations of SAP HANA with the Intel Xeon

Processor E7 Family
SAP HANA benets dramatically from high-speed Intel

QuickPath processor- to-memory

interconnects and the latest processor instructions, Streaming SIMD Extensions e.g. Intel

AVX. Those features eliminate many I/O bottlenecks, so processor headroom is available to
generate excellent throughput and responsiveness. SAP HANA is also engineered to take
particular advantage of RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability) features of the Intel
Xeon processor E7family, especially error correction through Machine Check Architecture
Recovery, for mission-critical implementations.
As a result of the high level of performance optimization for servers based on the Intel
Xeon processor E7 family, SAP HANA can provide businesses of all sizes superior results for
data warehousing implementations such as business intelligence and data analytics.
Assured Performance with Mission-Critical Advanced Reliability of
the Intel Xeon Processor E7 Family
Machine Check Architecture Recovery, a reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS)
feature built into the Intel Xeon

processor E7 family, enables the hardware platform to

generate Machine Check Exceptions. In many cases, these notications enable the system to
take corrective action that allows SAP HANA to keep running where an outage would
otherwise occur.
Hardware based on the Intel Xeon

processor E7 family enables SAP HANA to fail over

from one processor socket to another in the event of a processor failure and to handle
memory errors with as little impact to workloads as possible.
Copyright 2014 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
Cisco Systems SAP HANA Solutions
As part of the Unied Appliance Environment, Cisco has developed a full portfolio of SAP
HANA appliances based on Cisco Unied Computing System (Cisco UCS) spanning from
the smallest T-shirt sizing, supporting as low as 64 GB memory, up to large scale-out
solutions which can support up to 8 TB of usable memory. Depending on the compression
factors, the Cisco appliances can support databases up to 56 TB, the largest currently
supported by SAP. However the Cisco technology can support up to 20 TB of usable memory,
which corresponds to uncompressed databases up to 100 TB or more.
Cisco UCS: A Unique SAP HANA Solution
Cisco UCS is a single unied system entirely programmable through unied, model-based
management to simplify and speed deployment of enterprise-class applications and services.
All Cisco UCS SAP HANA appliances are intelligent infrastructure that can be managed
through the embedded, single management plane across multiple Cisco UCS rack and blade
servers (Figure 1). This radically simplies operations and lowers costs. The model-based
management applies personality and congures server, network, and storage connectivity
resources. Using Cisco service proles, which dene the model, it is simple to provision
servers by applying a desired conguration to physical infrastructure. The conguration is
applied quickly, accurately, and automatically, improving business agility, sta productivity,
and eliminating a major source of errors that can cause downtime.
The Cisco Fabric Extender Architecture reduces the number of system components to
purchase, congure, manage, and maintain by condensing three network layers into one. It
eliminates both blade server and hypervisor-based switches by connecting fabric
interconnect ports directly to individual blade servers and virtual machines. Virtual networks
are now managed exactly as physical networks are, but with massive scalability. This
represents a radical simplication over traditional systems, reducing capital and operating
costs while increasing business agility, simplifying and speeding deployment, and improving
performance.
Cisco UCS helps organizations go beyond eciency: it helps them become more eective
through technologies that breed simplicity rather than complexity. The result is exible, agile,
high-performance, self-integrating information technology that reduces sta costs and
increases uptime through automation, providing a more rapid return on investment.
The excellent performance combined with the broad range of usable memory make the
Cisco UCS SAP Appliances an excellent, easy-to-manage choice for analyzing massive
amounts of business data.
Figure 1. Cisco UCS SAP HANA Architecture
SAP HANA T-Shirt Sizes Offered
The Extra Small (XS) and Small (S)-size appliances are based on the Cisco C260 M2 rack
mount server with 2 Intel

Xeon

Processor E7-4870 (2.4 GHz) and up to 256 GB of usable

memory for BW and 512 GB for SAP business suite on HANA. This conguration is primarily
used for development, test, and small production SAP HANA systems with uncompressed
datasets up to 1.75 TB. The Cisco UCS appliance incorporates a persistency layer, based on
internal SSD drives that require no additional drivers tainting the Linux kernel.
The Medium (M)-size appliance is based on the Cisco C460 M2 rack mount server with 4
Intel

Xeon

Processor E7-4870 (2.4 GHz) and up to 512 GB of usable memory for BW and
1024 GB for SAP business suite on HANA. This conguration is ideal for use in mid-sized and
larger production environments such as the one used by Medtronic, a large, worldwide
manufacturer of medical devices (see customer example). The persistency layer is provided
by two Fusion IO cards to avoid possible bottlenecks in duo card congurations sharing the
same PCI slot.
SAP HANA Scale-out offering
The Cisco UCS solution that has been certied for large SAP HANA implementations is a
uniquely scalable appliance. It allows customers to easily adapt to the growing demands of
their individual environment by incrementally adding Cisco B440 M2 blade servers with 4
Intel

Xeon

Processors E7-4870 (2.4 GHz) and up to 512 GB usable memory each, as

needed. For every four Cisco UCS blade servers, the persistency layer is provided by an EMC
VNX 5300 or a NetApp FAS 3240, depending on customer preference.
The basic conguration of the Cisco scale-out oering is made up of redundant fabric
interconnects with embedded infrastructure management, a Cisco UCS C200 server for SAP
HANA studio, a Cisco 2911 for secure remote management, and one enclosure with support
for up to 4 Cisco B440 blades. The basic conguration can easily scale by adding up by a
literally infinite number of Cisco B440 M2 blades servers each and the correspondent storage
from EMC or NetApp. The beauty of Ciscos scale out architecture that it can be extended by
additional blades and storage units without shutting down the HANA system as we have
proven at eBay where an existing HANA system with 4 TB was extended to 12 TB on the y
without any downtime.
High Availability SAP HANA Solution
Cisco UCS SAP HANA appliances have redundancy designed-in providing no single point of
failure. However, in the event of a hardware failure on a blade or rack server, any spare Cisco
UCS server can take over the role of the failed server in minutes by simply applying the
service prole to the spare server. Synchronous Disaster recovery (DR) scenarios up to
50km and asynchronous over innite distances can be easily implemented by using service
proles to quickly provision servers at the DR site in conjunction with the classical
replication technologies of EMC and NetApp or the SAP HANA system replication feature.
SAP HANA Support infrastructure
All Cisco UCS servers are interconnected with a low-latency, high-bandwidth 10-Gbps unied
Ethernet fabric. The unied fabric supports both IP and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
connections through redundant, high performance, low-latency Cisco Fabric Interconnects.
The Cisco Fabric Interconnect, with embedded management, is the core of the Cisco UCS and
reduces both the number of network hops and network latency, critical to SAP HANA
performance. The unied fabric radically reduces the number of cables, interchassis
switches, and network adapters required by legacy platforms. This reduces energy
consumption and operational costs resulting in much lower total cost of ownership.
Additional software
The operating system, Cisco UCS drivers, and Cisco UCS management software are all part
of the appliance; therefore no additional software is necessary to manage the entire system.
However Cisco Intelligent Automation for SAP HANA is highly recommended. The Cisco
Intelligent Automation software solution supports the daily operation of a SAP HANA
appliance by:
Monitoring the CPU and memory workload, and the average index read time at blade
level
Automating quarterly maintenance, including firmware updates and file system validation
Ensuring configuration management assurance for all appliance components
Monitoring data services availability
Proactively monitoring SAP HANA subsystem components status
Monitoring query execution response times using the SAP HANA index for the query
execution SAP HANA Query Response Time
Executing sample queries and recording total execution time and query component
performance breakdown
Proactively monitoring the SAP TREX services statistics based on thresholds
Alerting CPU, memory, or throughput thresholds for SAP TREX services
Automating Cisco UCS blade and rack server provisioning for use in the appliance in
minutes, instead of days
SAP HANA Installation and Support Services
Cisco SAP HANA installation services includes the assembly of all necessary hardware and
software required for a SAP HANA appliance. Ciscos SAP HANA engineers will install the
appliance into the customers network and connect it to source system(s).
Also included are the necessary SuSe Linux Licenses, Smartnet 24x7x4 day 2 support for
the Cisco hardware, as well as licenses, and rst-year maintenance for EMC or NetApp
storage as required.
Implementation of solutions based on Cisco SAP HANA appliances are provided through
Cisco Advanced Services and Ciscos ecosystem of systems integrators and partners. These
solutions include data modeling, data load, replication, and SAP HANA application
configuration.
Customers who dont want to run into the hassle of reading a high number of interlinked
SAP notes before any HANA patch can use the Cisco HANA remote operation service which
will that on systems which keep sensitive data on premise will be managed in a cloud like
style without compromising security.
Customer Success Story
Medtronic dramatically improved reporting performance, increasing the value of its customer
information, with the SAP HANA platform and Cisco Unied Computing System (Cisco
UCS) server platform.
Challenge:
Medtronic needed to increase its ability to analyze large amounts of data, such as customer
feedback. BI reporting on its fast-growing data warehouse was straining the capabilities of
the companys computer infrastructure. Because employees couldnt generate some types of
reports (particularly using unstructured data), their ability to draw conclusions from existing
data was limited.
Solution:
The company deployed the SAP HANA platform on the Cisco UCS server platform based on
the Intel

Xeon

processor E7 family. In preliminary testing, users of an un-tuned system

observed query times just one-third as long as those with existing production systems. With
the fully scaled and optimized implementation now in place, Medtronic hopes to cut response
times even further.
Customer Benefit:
BI operations at Medtronic will use the SAP HANA platform to report on structured and
unstructured data, wherever it resides, whether on SAP or non-SAP systems. The added
performance, scalability, and exibility of this new architecture will increase the value of
company data as it continues to proliferate, increasing employee eciency and enabling
smarter decision making.
For More Information
For more information on Cisco UCS, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ucs
For more information on Cisco UCS SAP HANA Appliances, please visit
http://www.cisco.com/go/sap
To learn more about Cisco Solutions, please visit
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns340/ns394/ns224/solutions.html
To contact Cisco for additional information on SAP on Cisco UCS please email
saponcisco@cisco.com
Dell SAP HANA Solutions
Dell has collaborated with SAP for more than two decades to deliver hundreds of solutions to
customers across many industries. Dell helps organizations achieve rapid and sustainable
business results with end-to-end solutions that are high-performing and standards-based.
In addition to innovative, leading edge hardware platforms, Dell oers access to
thousands of enterprise computing solutions consultants. Our knowledge experts incorporate
lessons learned and best practices into an enterprise solution delivery model that spans
hardware, consulting, implementation, hosting and application management services
designed to enhance value for customer investments in SAP solutions.
Dell oers customers a portfolio of end-to-end solutions and services in support of SAP
HANA applications. Our complement of assessment, implementation, management, data
modeling and use case assistance services help reduce IT costs while helping organizations
transform their business. Dells innovative platforms can dramatically increase the
availability and speed of business information which in turn drives insightful decision-making
using SAP HANA.
The Dell Advantage
Dell and SAP have teamed up to oer an optimally congured SAP HANA solution that
includes a hardware appliance, pre-loaded software and a full range of services. This solution
is reliable, scalable and oered in multiple congurations to address your specic business
needs and gives your organization full access to the power of SAP HANA.
Dells SAP HANA appliance solution includes:
Powerful technology: Single server congurations, ranging in size from 128GB to 2TB,
are based on the Dell PowerEdge R920 server platform and provide a consistent
experience and a solid base for future expansion. Dells PowerEdge R920 incorporates
Intel E7 v2 technology, is certied for SAP HANA single server solutions, and includes
everything needed to support your SAP HANA solution. The forerunner of the R920, the
PowerEdge R910, will continue to be oered in scale out congurations until the
PowerEdge R920 is certified by SAP for scale out solutions later this year.
Virtualization for development: Dell single server solutions are also certied by SAP to
run SAP HANA virtualized using VMware VMs. A virtualized HANA implementation allows
for a more economical application development environment and is ready for deployment
in production environments when SAP and VMware enable it.
Enterprise class availability: The Dell scale out solutions for SAP HANA are engineered
to provide resiliency and easy expandability from 1TB up to 16TB and beyond using both
fibre channel SAN technology and a highly available multi-node design.
High performance: Automated tiering of data with Dell Compellent storage software
provides the quickest access to the data sets most needed for analysis.
Disaster recovery: Dell solutions for SAP HANA leverage unique features found in Dell
Compellent SAN storage to provide remote disaster recovery through SAP HANA system
replication and/or storage replication.
Modular growth: The Dell scale out solution is designed to grow from 1TB up to 16TB
(available later this year with the certication of the PowerEdge R920) in modular
increments and to grow without disruption to the existing system.
SAP applications in-memory: Application deployment is now supported on Dell solutions
for SAP HANA, enabling production business applications to enjoy the speed and
performance of in-memory computing, without the need for multiple compute
environments.
The combination of Dells PowerEdge server platforms and SAP HANA software allows
users to conduct analytics and operations in a single system. Together, the solutions help
enable a business to react faster to events impacting operations.
Dell is your one source for all solution components, including SAP HANA software licenses,
engineering, and Dell Services that provide end-to-end solution support and consulting
expertise. Dells portfolio of SAP full lifecycle services leverage industry best practices to
oer better business outcomes for SAP clients, and Dells ProSupport and Mission Critical
Services help keep your SAP HANA solution running smoothly. Dell also oers SAP HANA
Managed Services that provide comprehensive management and support for your SAP HANA
landscape.
Dells SAP HANA solution positions an organization to identify and analyze data trends and
patterns that can improve planning, forecasting and price optimization. Enterprise customers
taking advantage of Dells SAP HANA platform get a cost-eective, optimized in-memory
computing solution that can increase availability and reduce risk.
Dell SAP HANA configurations a complete portfolio
The Dell Solution for SAP HANA is oered in a wide variety of pre-congured and optimized
sizes to meet virtually any customer need. Dell and SAP have worked together to provide
solutions that are right sized for each data analysis environment.
The Dell PowerEdge R920 server platform is the new agship, foundational platform for
the Dell solution for SAP HANA. The R920 immediately replaces its generational predecessor,
the PowerEdge R910, for all single server congurations and will be certied for scale out
congurations later this year. Dells commitment to a consistent platform across all
conguration sizes delivers a stable environment for SAP HANA that can evolve and adapt as
customer needs grow.
The Dell PowerEdge R920 provides:
Performance and reliability in a scalable 4U, four-socket server allowing large workload
consolidation and scale for the SAP HANA in-memory database.
Integrated diagnostics and system management with the Dell LifeCycle Controller and
iDRAC integrated management adapter.
Processing power using high performing Intel E7v2 Series processors, with up to 60
cores of processing power with Intel

Advanced RAS (Reliability, Availability,

Serviceability) Technology.
96 DIMMs of memory (max.) that support up to 6 terabytes of DDR3 RAM and providing
a massive memory footprint with room to expand as SAP HANA capabilities expand.
SAS drives for internal storage with high capacity and performance to permit higher
speed (multi spindle) data access and support all SAP HANA single server performance
requirements.
Hot swappable, front load NVMe Express Flash drives for faster transaction rates for
even better SAP HANA performance and reliability than earlier generations.
Scale-out HANA appliance configurations
The linear scalability of our SAP HANA software platform makes growing to meet larger
workload demands a very straightforward and non-disruptive process.
Dell combines the superior scalability and RAS features of the PowerEdge R910 platform
into a multi-node conguration, utilizing 10GbE networking, and sharing data across Dell
Compellent SAN Storage. Designing for modular scalability creates a system that grows
seamlessly, without requiring a hardware change when expansion is needed, without
disrupting the existing functionality. The coming certication of the PowerEdge R920 platform
for scale out systems will allow for even larger and higher performing configurations.
Dell Compellent SAN Storage complements the power, performance, and manageability of
the Dell PowerEdge servers and oers the additional benet of the Fluid Data storage system
a virtualized environment that provides tremendous exibility in storage management.
Automated tiering of data standard with Dell Compellent storage software manages
persistent storage to provide the quickest access to the data sets most needed for analysis,
and high availability features that simplify backups, expansion, and data migration provide
tangible enhancements to the SAP HANA analytics engine infrastructure.
Dell engineered its scale out solutions for SAP HANA to provide resiliency and easy
expandability. This modular scalability is an important feature for IT departments deploying a
mission critical solution for their business. The Dell Active Infrastructure solution lets you
start with high availability at 1TB, and grow your system as your data processing needs grow,
512GB at a time, without disruption to the operation of the system. Above all, there is no
requirement to change architectures or remove existing system components to facilitate
expansion.
Dell engineers each of these components, end-to-end, to provide a completely integrated
and fully supported ecosystem for high performance data analytics, and the architecture
design supports additional applications as they are released by SAP. This model provides
even more investment protection over the life of the SAP HANA implementation.
Dell PowerEdge R920 (with Intel E7 v2 processors) based scale-out certication is
underway, and will enable congurations from 1-16TB RAM. The scale-out information
provided is based on current Dell PowerEdge R910 server building block.
Dells SAP Single-Node HANA Appliance
The SAP Single-Node HANA appliance from Dell is fully contained in the PowerEdge R920
server, making use of fast internal disk and Dell PowerEdge ExpressFlash NVME PCIe SSDs
for data and logs. Solid state PCIe storage technology oers high IOPs and low latency
performance for maintaining the SAP HANA system logs, while an array of internal 10Krpm
SAS disks is used to maintain a copy of the data image.
Dell oers several dierent sizes of HANA appliances that are all based on the Dell
PowerEdge R920 server. These single server congurations also support SAP HANA
Virtualized on VMware vSphere 5.5 to support the virtualization of multiple pre-production
environments on a single server.
Dell oers a 2TB 4 processor server conguration that supports SAP Business Suite
applications running on SAP HANA and supports the transactional capabilities in SAP HANA.
This conguration allows SAP Business Suite environments as large as 4TB can take
advantage of the acceleration oered by the SAP HANA in-memory database environment.
Dell was one of the first SAP partners to certify a 4 processor configuration.
Built-in High Availability
The Dell PowerEdge R920 is designed for reliability and scalability for mission-critical
applications.
High availability features include:
Built-in reliability features at the CPU, memory and hardware
Intel advanced reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) capabilities
Redundant power supplies
Remote iDRAC6 connectivity
Integrated systems management, Lifecycle Controller and embedded diagnostics to help
maximize uptime
Dells focus on reliability starts with product design, and ends only when it has delivered a
solution that meets strict testing and quality control standards.
Support infrastructure
Dells SAP HANA appliance is delivered as an all-inclusive solution that comes as a pre-
integrated unit with all necessary hardware, storage and networking capabilities.
Additional software needed
Dells SAP HANA appliance is an end-to-end and all-in-one solution that comes pre-loaded
with all of the software and management tools necessary. SAP HANA Virtualized
configurations also include pre-installed VMware vSphere 5.5 software.
Services and Support
SAP HANA services are also available to assist you with implementing the solution. Dell oers
a complete solution to support your SAP HANA environment.
The Dell SAP HANA appliance is delivered fully installed and congured with all the
required software for Dell SAP Service engineers to connect it to customer source system(s).
Dell provides the following HANA services:
HANA Quick-Start Service that enables installation, conguration and validation of the
hardware, software and post-install documentation.
HANA Managed Service providing ongoing management and support for SAP HANA
landscape. This service includes 24x7 monitoring, ongoing remote health-checks,
rmware and software upgrades, including application patching, as well as assistance
with problem tracking and resolution.
Rapid Deployment Solutions for BW to HANA Migration that provide rapid database
migration of SAP BW 7.3 to SAP HANA using SAP tools & best practices, as well as RDS
services for profitability analysis and operational reporting on HANA.
Dell HANA Services coupled with Dell HANA Scale-Out Solutions provides the optimum in
HANA capabilities, delivery and support.
Support Services the Dell Assurance
Dells SAP HANA appliance comes with three years of Dells award winning ProSupport
Mission Critical services and a 3-year extended hardware warranty. Customers receive
24x7x365 phone support, escalation management and collaborative support leveraging
Dells global ProSupport infrastructure of more than 30,000 technicians supporting more
than 100 countries in 55 languages.
Dells ProSupport Mission Critical services are designed to accelerate rapid resolution by
oering quick delivery of on-site parts and or labor and providing access to Dells Critical
Situation Process.
Key support features:
On-site Response 4 hour on-site service with 6 hour hardware repair available 24x7,
including holidays.
CritSit Procedures Severity level 1 issues will be reviewed by Dell and may be
nominated for CritSit incident coverage through Dell Global Command Centers. During a
CritSit incident, expert resource teams are mobilized to get you back up and running fast.
Emergency dispatch On-site service technician dispatched in parallel with phone-
based troubleshooting when you declare a Severity level 1 incident.
Optional SAP HANA services
Dell offers optional SAP HANA services to assist with your implementation.
SAP HANA Executive Workshop This workshop helps to develop the Use Case and
Business justication for a SAP HANA solution and helps organizations determine
whether SAP HANA is a fit for their situation.
SAP HANA Proof of Concept Using Dell DIMCAM methodology and IMPROVE jump-
start process, customers can see quickly the value that SAP HANA can bring to the
decision making process.
SAP Modernization Services Dell has developed a portfolio of Modernization Service
for SAP applications that features cloud computing, real-time analytics and mobile
applications.
Implementation SAP HANA Implementation workshops facilitate planning and creation
of the Business Justification for the rest of the deployment.
Analytics Factory Dell offers global business intelligence consulting and support.
Customer success stories
Aareon AG is a leading consultancy and provider of IT systems for the property sector,
oering software and services to its customers, and managing their outsourced business
processes. It also provides datacentre services. The company, which has more than 50
years experience in the market, offers expertise as well as software and services.
Aareon invests as many resources in its internal systems as it does developing IT
systems for clients. It knows that customers employees rely on rapid access to operational
data to make the smartest business decisions. With this in mind, a customer wanted to speed
up its data warehouse for its line-of business applications.
Aareon found the right IT partner in Dell. The company had worked with Dell in the past,
deploying a number of its server solutions to support a wide range of applications. When we
looked for an IT provider to deliver a SAP HANA appliance, Dell came closest to our
demands, says Snger.
The benefits the new system provided to Aeroen include:
Aereon predicts data access speeds to quadruple for its customers sta driving strong
productivity gains
Aareon ensures smooth implementation with expert SAP support
Easy-to-use tools make environment design simple
Company ensures great performance with responsive support
The IT team works with Dell ProSupport to optimize the performance of its Dell appliance.
It chose the Mission Critical option with four-hour on-site support to ensure it receives a high
level of responsiveness 24/7.
As a result of the SAP HANA workshop from Dell, personnel gained a deep level of insight into the software and
knowledge to begin working with the technology when it goes live.
Stefan Claus, System Administrator, Aareon AG
Koehler Paper Group is a manufacturing company based in Germany. World leaders in
specialist paper manufacturing, Koehler Paper Group sells 500,000 tons of paper each year.
It employs around 1,800 staff and reports an annual turnover of more than ?700 million.
Koehler wanted to replace its conventional database environment with a more ecient
infrastructure. The company worked with Dell and SAP to introduce a new database solution
based on SAP HANA and Dell PowerEdge servers in three days.
Dells SAP HANA solution delivered many benefits to Koehler Paper Group, including:
New system cuts data loading times from five minutes to five seconds
Firm reduces cost of business warehouse by one-third
Ease of use simplifies reporting process
Efficient reporting helps employees make smarter decisions faster
Strong partnership provides expert consultancy
I was very pleased with the technical know-how of the Dell and SAP teams. Not only was the level of expertise
impressive, but on a personal level, everyone collaborated well to make the project a success.
Karl Schindler, Head of IT, Koehler Paper Group, Germany
Contact information for inquiries
Dell oers you the complete portfolio of end-to-end solutions in support of your SAP HANA
applications that can drive down your IT costs and help transform your business
performance. Contact your Dell Sales or Services Account Executive to learn more.
Fujitsu SAP HANA Solutions
The global partnership between Fujitsu and SAP has been an innovation engine for customers
for decades. In its role as a pioneering SAP HANA partner, Fujitsu oers solutions and
services that simplify the introduction and operation of the SAP HANA platform, enabling its
full potential to be exploited thus providing customers with optimal support on their way
towards real-time business.
The features of our broad approach to support SAPs in-memory technology include:
A smart infrastructure architecture based on the latest Intel Xeon processor technology
(Ivy Bridge) for highest flexibility, scalability and availability
Tailored solutions for dierent use cases and requirements, ready for on-premise and
off-premise implementations
Rapid time to value and a quick return on investment thanks to a unique, high-quality
pre-installation and staging process.
Dedicated services that go far beyond traditional infrastructure services to support
better decision-making, project preparation, financing and migration.
The Fujitsu SAP HANA Global Demo Center which can be used remotely by customers to
test and tangibly experience the business benefits of SAP HANA.
The innovative FlexFrame Orchestrator solution, which enables operating SAP
applications, SAP databases and the SAP HANA platform faster and more easily and
eectively. It thus simplies the management of complex SAP environments and
reduces costs by up to 90%.
Fujitsus expertise in infrastructure solutions and BI knowledge enables us to provide
superior service and best-in-class support for SAP HANA projects. Furthermore Fujitsu is
certied in SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud and thus well positioned to help customers transform
CAPEX into OPEX by leveraging hosted SAP HANA deployments.
Fujitsu SAP HANA Infrastructure Offering
The Fujitsu portfolio for SAP HANA addresses the requirements of various customer
segments from specic turnkey appliances for small and medium-sized companies to
customized solutions for large enterprises:
The Fujitsu Compact Appliance is optimized for HANA implementations in combination
with SAP Business One and SAP Business All-in-One.
The Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA is designed as an optimal foundation for the
SAP HANA database and comprises single-node and multi-node oerings that are
suitable for all the existing usage scenarios including SAP BW on HANA, Business Suite
on HANA and the entire set of accelerator options.
Fujitsu infrastructure solutions for SAP HANA are based on industry-standard
PRIMEQUEST servers, which represent a unique combination of Japanese-style innovation
and German quality standards. Solid reliability and excellent price performance contribute to
the favorable lifecycle costs. Operational costs are reduced thanks to server management,
energy efficiency, and innovative, market-leading technology.
Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA (designed for SAP Business
One customers)
Fujitsu PRIMERGY TX300 and PRIMERGY RX350 servers are SAP-validated platforms for SAP
Business One, analytics powered by SAP HANA and SAP Business One on HANA. The tower
and rack systems are available with four dierent main memory options ranging from 64 GB
to 256 GB and allow tailored configurations for different environments and use cases.
Fujitsus high-quality pre-installation services for SUSE Linux and the SAP HANA software
ensure a ready-to-connect delivery for fast and non-disruptive SAP HANA implementation.
Pre-installation is optional, and software components can also be installed onsite by the
partner.
The Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA is rounded o by a set of optional services
including SAP Business One migration, partner coaching, extended maintenance for hardware
or the SUSE Linux operating system, etc.
Fujitsu Power Appliance: Single-Node (scale-up)
The single-node congurations range from TCO-optimized entry options based on
PRIMEQUEST RX4770 up to PRIMEQUEST 2800B systems, and all set new levels of
performance and system resilience. Data persistency is ensured by the easy-to-use storage
subsystem Fujitsu ETERNUS JX40. The offerings are ideal for:
SAP HANA proof-of-concept and proof-of-value projects, plus initial SAP HANA projects
with a limited scope
SAP HANA environments for development, tests, quality assurance and training
Productive use of SAP HANA, even in business critical use cases thanks to advanced RAS
features
SAP Business Suite powered by HANA, even for projects with highest performance and
capacity requirements (thanks to scalability up to 6TB main memory and 8 CPUs)
All single node options can be delivered pre-installed with the complete software stack
including SUSE Linux and the SAP HANA software. The industrialized, high quality installation
and pre-tested delivery ensures fast time-to-value. VMware virtualized appliances enable
signicant cost savings, increase agility and enable the simultaneously drive of several
development, test and production projects.
Fujitsu Power Appliance: Multi-Node (scale-out)
The Fujitsu multi-node oering concept for SAP HANA is designed for productive
environments and mission-critical use. The building block concept allows customers to start
small and easily add and integrate additional servers (up to 16) and storage capacity as
requirements grow.
Our oering is based on industry-standard PRIMEQUEST RX4770 or PRIMEQUEST
2800B/E servers with up to 6 TB main memory and most recent NetApp storage systems due
to comprehensive long-term experience with NetApp technology. Nevertheless, to comply
with individual storage requirements and strategies of our customers, Fujitsu fully supports
the SAP Tailored Datacenter Approach (TDI) and thus integrates any SAP validated storage
system into our Fujitsu Power Appliance. Utilization of the existing enterprise storage is
possible in order to significantly reduce TCO.
Based on mutual development with Symantec and CommVault Fujitsu has presented the
rst certied third-party backup solutions for SAP HANA. ComVault Simpana and Symantec
NetBackup are optional components of the Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA. To meet
individual requirements Fujitsu also oers the option of tailoring customized backup solutions
as well as integrating existing solutions.
High availability is crucial for the mission-critical readiness of the overall SAP HANA
solution and this is already built into the smart concept, thanks to the dierentiation between
worker nodes and standby nodes, which take over should a productive server fail. The second
pillar ensuring high availability is NFS (Network File System) and the shared NetApp FAS
storage system, which ensures that all data is constantly mirrored. If there is a data loss in
the main memory, data can be copied back from the storage system. The highest system
availability demands can be met by the implementation of the SAP-certied disaster-tolerant
Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA

solution (see SAP Note #1755396). The

implementation requires identical appliance congurations on two sites. The SAP HANA
production instance at the primary site runs all the transactions, and all the data is stored
consistently on a shared NetApp FAS3000, 6000 or FAS8000 Series storage system and
replicated to the NetApp storage system at the secondary site. Zero data loss can be ensured
with NetApp MetroCluster mirroring for implementations at up to 200 kilometers in distance.
Asynchronous SnapMirror can be used for long range disaster resilience (> 200 kilometers).
During normal operations, the infrastructure on the secondary site can be used for test and
development projects with an additional storage system. In a possible disaster situation, an
IT expert evaluates the dangers involved and initiates the recovery, if and where applicable.
A guided recovery process reduces the risk of human error and administration overheads,
ensuring a rapid return to normal SAP HANA operations.
Support infrastructure
As an additional, certied component, the Fujitsu SAP HANA infrastructure solution may
include a PRIMERGY RX 100 Infrastructure Management Server (IMS) used for:
Efficient SAP HANA software maintenance (initial installation and upgrade)
Seamless integration into the customers systems management landscape
Integrated monitoring of SAP HANA environment or connection of customers monitoring
tools
Easy remote support access as a key part of the solution maintenance oering
(SolutionContract)
System administrators especially benet from the IMS when systems need to be
recovered or software updates are distributed automatically within multi-node environments.
Additional software needed
The AISConnect software enables remote access to the SAP HANA landscape and is thus a
prerequisite component for the solution maintenance offering (SolutionContract).
Support Services
A complete set of infrastructure-related services covers all project phases from a
customer-specic solution concept to continuous solution support ensured by the Fujitsu
SolutionContract. All services are based on proven methods and follow strict guidelines to
ensure high quality projects.
Additional information on the Fujitsu pre-installation (Solution
Implementation)
Pre-installation allows fast time-to-value and a rapid return on investment. Consequently,
Fujitsu oers a highly professional and industrialized pre-installation service which exceeds
the mere assembly of hardware components, the pre-installation of the SAP HANA software
stack, and the SUSE Linux operating system. Customer-specic settings (e.g., IP addresses
and switch congurations) are also prepared in the dedicated Fujitsu staging center. The
installation is steered by dedicated scripts, which help to avoid human failure and ensure the
highest quality. Having delivered a completely installed, individually staged and
comprehensively tested system on the customers premises, the Fujitsu Power Appliance for
SAP HANA can then be implemented and integrated rapidly using proven Fujitsu deployment
and integration services. Single-node implementations are generally completed within 48
hours, whereas multi-nodes require a few days depending on the project size and complexity.
Additional information on the Fujitsu SolutionContract (Solution
Support)
The Fujitsu SolutionContract is the maintenance and support service for specic Fujitsu
solutions. It represents a mix of proactive and reactive services, ensuring that issues are
resolved before they aect business operations. This concept takes into account that Fujitsu
solutions consist of hardware, software and network products from a range of dierent
vendors. Fujitsu is the single point of contact for all the infrastructure components involved in
a Fujitsu solution as well as their interactions with each other. The Fujitsu SolutionContract
oers several service level options depending on the individual requirements. SAP software
support is not part of this contract.
Additional SAP HANA Services
The comprehensive Fujitsu service portfolio for SAP HANA exceeds the traditional
infrastructure service oering and helps customers answer typical questions, such as: How
can SAP HANA help to solve specic problems in my organization? How can we migrate
existing data securely? How much will the SAP HANA implementation actually cost?
The portfolio includes developing business cases, demonstrations and test oerings,
professional database optimization and migration, as well as decision-making support based
on cost estimates and nancing options. The services are partly provided by the Fujitsu SAP
HANA Global Demo Center, which is operated by our subsidiary TDS. The Demo Center hosts
a remote accessible environment comprised of a system landscape for SAP HANA
applications that is maintained by a competent team of developers and consultants for
solution, database, BI and business process matters.
Services overview:
Smart discovery (e.g., Bi consulting, demos, Proof of Concept projects)
Solid preparation (e.g., DB assessment and optimization, SAP
BW 7.3 upgrade)
Smooth implementation (e.g., database migration, SAP HANA Deployment))
Secure operations (e.g., Fujitsu SolutionContract, Application Management Services)
This offering is under constant refinement, development and extension.
Innovation: Uniform management for all SAP environments including
SAP HANA with FlexFrame Orchestrator
Fujitsus innovative FlexFrame Orchestrator solution enables operating SAP applications, SAP
databases and the SAP HANA platform easier, faster and more eectively. It simplies the
management of complex SAP environments, optimizes planning, operation and change
management and reduces costs by up to 90% whilst increasing agility by up to 50%.
Comprising most advanced orchestration and administration capabilities, FlexFrame
Orchestrator is an optimized operational concept for the entire SAP landscape. Centralized
SAP software components can be dynamically deployed across physical and virtual resources
based on business demand. The result is faster provisioning of innovations resulting in an
empowered, agile business. Working with our specialist partners such as, NetApp and
VMWare, this can be applied for all IT provisioning models, on premise, as a managed or
hosting service or deployed in the cloud.
FlexFrame Orchestrator can be delivered as a pre-installed and pre-tested ready-to-run
installation out of the Fujitsu factory, which ensures highest quality and fast time to value.
Customer Success Stories
Modern Bakery, Dubai
Modern Bakery has selected Fujitsu for a highly strategic project to update the bakerys IT
infrastructure. Using the SAP HANA platform running on Fujitsu Power Appliance, the project
is designed to provide real-time insight into the business data and nancials that can be
critical for a business in perishable products.
Modern Bakery turned to Fujitsu, which has 40 years of experience working with SAP
solutions. Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA is expected to provide Modern Bakery with
the speed and transparency it needs to improve its business. As a future step, Modern Bakery
plans to expand the system to a disaster-resilient configuration.
With the aid of Fujitsus end-to-end consulting, and using remote access to the Fujitsu
Global Demo Center to view an initial demo of SAP HANA, Modern Bakery was able to gain a
clear picture of how the solution is expected to accelerate its reporting and business
processes.
Dr. Fawaz Al Bahri, CEO & Managing Partner, Modern Bakery:
We chose Fujitsu based on its comprehensive portfolio of infrastructure solutions and long
experience working with SAP solutions. Fujitsus end-to-end consulting and our ability to
remotely use the Fujitsu Global Demo Center demonstrated how the implementation of SAP
HANA could be used to help us achieve our business goals. Most of all, we value the fact that
Fujitsu intends to tailor its offering for us based on our individual needs.
SAP internal project: SAP BW powered by SAP HANA
The new SAP internal SAP BW powered by SAP HANA has a central role to play in the
corporate analytics architecture for combined and integrated planning with BW IP and SAP
BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation.
For SAPs system, the decision was made to go with a Fujitsu Scale-Out HANA solution
based on PRIMERGY servers. The key features are:
The SAP HANA scale-out infrastructure is designed to have no single point of failure. This
means that any failure in the infrastructure server, storage, network would be
corrected automatically with minimal to no downtime.
If a server fails, the work of the server is taken over by a standby node. More than one
standby node may be configured as an option.
The storage is designed for highest availability many disks or even a storage
controller can fail without stopping operations.
Last, but not least, the complete network infrastructure NICs, cables, switches is
designed to cope with component failures without the user even noticing that something
has broken.
For further information see SAP Blog (http://scn.sap.com/community/hana-in-
memory/blog/2012/05/04/get-high-availability-with-bw-on-hana-scale-out-solution)
Further information
For more information please visit:
www.fujitsu.com/fts/hana
www.fujitsu.com/fts/flexframe
www.fujitsu.com/fts/sap
Feel free to get in touch with your local Fujitsu sales representative or contact us at:
expert.sap@ts.fujitsu.com.
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Select for SAP HANA
Hitachi Unied Compute Platform Select for SAP HANA is an SAP-certied, optimized, and
converged infrastructure platform for SAP HANA that enhances an organizations decision-
making capabilities while providing advanced business insights based on instant, intuitive
access to data. This platform is comprised of Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 and Hitachi Unied
Storage (HUS) 130, an enterprise-class storage system rated at 99.999% uptime with SAP
in-memory computing technology for a broad range of high-speed analytic capabilities.
The HDS SAP HANA Solution is pre-integrated in Hitachi Data Systems distribution
centers and is architected to meet SAPs high standards, including SUSE Linux 11 (for SAP)
and SAP HANA.
Customers can derive the following benets from Hitachi Unied Compute Platform Select
for SAP HANA:
Predictable, repeatable, reliable results: Pre-validated reference architectures, pre-
packaged solutions with enterprise-class components across the entire stack, and
targeted provisioning to help ensure consistent, predictable results as organizations look
to manage and store massive volumes of rapidly changing data.
Exceptional performance: High-density computing and throughput with wide-striping
technology for enhanced utilization. Customers benet from exible server management
capabilities and scalable architectures.
Faster time-to-value: Quicker, simpler deployment oered from a single source for
ordering and for providing services for planning and implementation. Pre-conguration
and SAP validation of key components drastically reduce onsite deployment time.
Intelligent automation of complex tasks enables rapid provisioning of resources with the
assurance that the appropriate underlying infrastructure components are in place.
As additional applications and business units use SAP HANA or the organizations data
volumes increase, all three Hitachi SAP HANA appliances sizes Small, Medium, and
Large enable users to easily scale system processing capability without forklift
upgrades or complete system overhauls. Customers may elect to start with a Small
conguration and easily scale to Medium or Large by inserting additional blades into the
server chassis. There is no need to change server models because scaling requires a
Medium or Large appliance size.
Hitachi SAP HANA Appliances Sizes
Each Hitachi Data Systems Converged Platform for SAP HANA Small, Medium, and
Large is delivered as a single unit that is ready to plug into the customer network. In
addition, each platform oers a scalable patch to easily increase the systems processing
capability.
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Select for SAP HANA includes:
Operating System: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 for SAP
Storage: Hitachi Unied Storage 130, with a 99.999% uptime rating, is designed for high
availability, down to the dual battery backup that protects the cache during power outages. It
contains symmetric active-active controllers that self-balance workloads.
SAN: Fibre Channel host bus adaptors
Blade servers: Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 offers the considerable I/O capacity and onboard
memory that are required for eective implementation of SAP HANA. Systems include 4-way
x86 blade servers with Intel 10-core processors.
SAP HANA:
SAP HANA Load Controller 1.0
SAP IMCE Server 1.0, Client, Studio
SAP Host Agent
Sybase Replication Server 15.5 +ECDA
Hitachi Unied Compute Platform Select for SAP HANA Small, Medium, Large meets
varying performance requirements. All three options come with Hitachi Unied Storage 130
storage subsystems and with SAP HANA pre-loaded.
Hitachi supports SAP HANA from the smallest conguration with a single Compute Blade
and 256 GB of RAM to the largest conguration of 4 Compute Blade 2000s and 1.0 terabytes
of RAM.
Operating System: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 for SAP
Storage: Hitachi HUS 130, which is designed for high availability, down to the dual
battery backup that protects the cache during power outage. It contains symmetric
active-active controllers that self-balance workloads.
Network: Fibre Channel host bus adaptors
Compute: Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 oers the large I/O capacity and onboard
memory required for effective implementation of SAP HANA
Figure 1 Hit achi SAP HANA Appliance Archit ect ure
Hitachi-SAP Alliance
Since 1994, Hitachi, Ltd., and its subsidiaries, including Hitachi Data Systems, have had a
strategic relationship with SAP that includes the sale, integration, and implementation of SAP
solutions. During this time, Hitachi has won numerous SAP awards for exceptional customer
satisfaction.
In 2011, Hitachi became an SAP Global Technology Partner, the highest level of
partnership SAP offers. Many large global enterprises run their business on SAP and Hitachi.
Hitachi also ensures the necessary storage performance and high throughput to meet the
stringent demands of in-memory computing. By dramatically reducing the traditional delay
between operations and analytics, this platform helps business leaders gain near real-time
insights and information to make smarter business decisions, faster.
Services
Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services (GSS) oers experienced infrastructure
consultants, proven methodologies, and comprehensive services for converged platforms to
help customers further streamline their SAP environments. The HANA Implementation
Service ensures a smooth integration with lower risk and accelerated deployment of the
Hitachi Unied Compute Platform Select for SAP HANA tailored to our customers specic
needs. Along with our consulting partners such as Hitachi Consulting, we can integrate and
customize the solution into the customers SAP environment.
Support Infrastructure
Hitachi Data Systems Global Services and Hitachi Consulting are equipped to support every
aspect of an SAP HANA solution. In addition, they provide strategy; infrastructure; and HANA
Appliance, Integration, Development, and Support Services for a HANA initiative.
Modern information technologies have blurred the lines between infrastructure, software,
and applications. Given this reality, having one partner who provides a single, fully integrated
solution is a tremendous benet. Hitachis full breadth of capabilities delivers one fully
integrated, highly-optimized environment that ensures the desired results in a lower-cost,
lower-risk, high-business-value HANA initiative.
Contact Hitachi
If you would like to get in touch with the SAP team at Hitachi, please email sap@hds.com. You
can nd additional information at www.hds.com/go/sap or Hitachi Consulting:
http://www.hitachiconsulting.com/hana.
HP Solutions for SAP HANA
HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA
Through a close, collaborative partnership that spans more than 25 years, HP and SAP have
worked together to oer an innovative and comprehensive portfolio of products and services
that help more than 40,000 joint customers around the world, of all sizes and in all industries,
solve their business problems. This strategic partnership has ultimately resulted in system
oerings like HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA as well as value-added services to
implement rapid-deployment solutions for SAP HANA.
HP has collaborated with SAP on in-memory technologies from the beginning. In 2006 it
became the rst SAP partner to design and deliver SAP NetWeaver

Business Warehouse
Accelerator. Based on that experience, HP developed highly engineered and optimized
systems plus core competencies to deliver successful implementations of HP AppSystems for
SAP HANA which has since evolved into HPs latest oering HP ConvergedSystem for SAP
HANA.
HPs point of view
Customers are making long-term, strategic, architectural bets for their data centers and data
management platforms. Solutions like SAP HANA act as a catalyst for business
transformation and HP is the only player who has the architecture, expertise and vision to
meet its infrastructure needs by oering HP ConvergedSystem a portfolio of workload-
optimized systems that are easy to buy, manage, and support.
HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA is a portfolio of engineered, pre-built, optimized-for-
SAP HANA systems that provide the fastest path-to-value on the SAP HANA journey. These
systems are optimized with proven performance and built-in high availability, as well as
unmatched scalability to grow as data and business needs grow. In addition, only HP has the
committed long-term roadmap and investments to oer customers a number of system
congurations and deployment options, including on-premise, hosted, and Cloud (HANA
Enterprise Cloud, HEC). These systems, in combination with leading data management
solutions and consulting services (from planning to migration to deployment), provide the
most complete offering in the market.
HP recognizes that SAP HANA adoption is a journey. There are SAP customers who are
primarily interested in accelerating analytics/reporting with SAP HANA, while others want to
run multiple SAP business applications on HANA as a database. Because of our experience
working with customers, we understand the importance of laying out an adoption strategy
that best aligns with their HANA journey.
Whether you are looking to accelerate business analytics for one of your lines-of-
business, are ready to build your next generation Business Warehouse on SAP HANA, or want
to transform your entire global SAP landscape with HANA, HP has a solution conguration
thats sized just right for you and is ready to scale as your needs change.
The HP ConvergedSystem for HANA portfolio includes the HP ConvergedSystem 500
which is optimized for Analytics, Data Warehousing and basic business application
deployments as well as HP ConvergedSystem 900 which leverages technologies that were
developed as part of HP/SAPs co-innovation prototype, Project Kraken. It is this technology
that enables the largest, most mission-critical business application deployments.
HP ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA
HP ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA is built on HP Converged Infrastructure and
includes all of the implementation and support services that you need to ensure quick time to
value and minimal planned or unplanned downtime. It is a complete system not just a
collection of components. That means your staff has more time for innovation.
With HP ConvergedSystem 500, you can simplify the way you deploy SAP HANA with a
pre-engineered HANA optimized system that can be congured, quoted and installed in as
few as 15 days. And the system can grow as you grow scaling to meet your changing SAP
requirements from Analytics and Data Warehousing, to business applications on SAP HANA.
Built on the HP Proliant DL580 Gen8 server powered by the Intel Xeon E7-4880 v2
processor and HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 storage, HP oers a range of scale up and scale out
configurations.
Scale up: 2s/256GB RAM, 2s/512GB RAM, 4s/1TB RAM and
4s/2TB RAM
Scale out: 4s/8TB++
HP ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA
The HP ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA is based on next generation Superdome
technology oering unparalleled exibility and high availability. Superdome has been a
long time, leading server platform for enterprise class SAP systems. Now, SAP HANA
users can take advantage of hardware partitioning and fault tolerant features developed
for the most challenging and business critical environments.
ConvergedSystem 900 oers the worlds largest single memory image for SAP Business
Suite on HANA implementations up to 16 processors and 12 TB RAM on a single
server.
Later this year, ConvergedSystem 900 will also oer a powerful, general purpose, scale
out conguration that can run OLAP, OLTP, or even mixed workloads on the same
system, enabling IT to focus on strategy and innovation instead of management of
sprawl.
Built on the HP Superdome BL920s Gen 9 server blade powered by the Intel Xeon 15 core
E7-2890 V2 processor and HP 3PAR StoreServ storage, HP oers a range of scale up and
scale out configurations.
Scale up: 8s/6TB or 16s/12TB in memory computing power, with up to 24TB on the roadmap
Scale out: dual nPar 8s/2TB congurations that can scaleout to the largest mission critical
needs
Why HP for SAP HANA?
Only HP provides a portfolio from start to nish with a strong history of innovation and
partnership with SAP and a committed, long-term roadmap. When it comes to SAP HANA, you
can spend less time on IT and more time driving your margins, growing your prot and being
the innovator your business needs.
HP has implemented more than 800 SAP HANA installations and runs nearly half of all
SAP installations in the world (77,000), and is a global leader in SAP operations, supporting
1.7 million users in more than 50 countries. In addition, HP has developed core competencies
for designing and building SAP appliance-based solutions, successful on-site customer
implementations, and industry-leading support services to ensure optimal performance
throughout the lifecycle. And, HP oers multiple deployment choices on premise, hosted or
Cloud. HPs As-a-Service Solutions for SAP HANA, is a rst to market oering, combining the
strength of HPs industry leading ConvergedSystem, the complete portfolio of business
solutions, and optional cloud deployment models all bundled into a monthly subscription
payment. This oering helps companies to move to an OPex nancial model and freeing up
capital investment for strategic programs.
As testimony to HPs close alignment and support of SAP, HP has received numerous SAP
Innovation and Impact awards across all three geographic regions, with the most recent ones
being:
SAP Pinnacle Awards:
Platform Co-Innovation Partner of the Year 2014 Winner
Rapid Deployment Partner of the Year 2014 Winner
HANA Adoption Partner of the Year 2014 Finalist
Technology Partner Innovator of the Year 2013 Winner
Run SAP Partner of the Year 2013 Finalist
SAP HANA Co-innovator Partner of the Year 2013 Finalist
Technical specifications for HP ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA
Based on HP Converged Infrastructure products HP oers multiple server choices, sized
for your companys needs.
Scale up to 512 GB RAM with a single server
Optimized for cost conscious customers
Ideal for standalone analytics, reporting or application acceleration scenarios
May also be used for small SAP Business Warehouse or SAP Business Suite
scenarios
Compute and memory:
HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server
2 Intel Xeon E7-4880 v2 processors
256 GB or 512 GB RAM
Database data and log files:
8 SAS disk drives (600 GB HDD), server internal storage
OS and HANA application files:
2 SAS disk drives (600 GB HDD), server internal storage
Scale up to 2 TB RAM with a single server
Optimized for customers needing larger memory capacities and higher
performance
1 TB RAM configuration is ideal for larger analytics, reporting or application
acceleration scenarios
1 TB RAM configuration may also be used for small SAP Business Warehouse or
SAP Business Suite scenarios
2 TB RAM configuration is restricted by SAP to SAP Business Suite and specific
use cases outlined in SAP note 1826100
Compute and memory:
HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server
4 Intel Xeon E7-4880 v2 processors
1 TB or 2 TB RAM
Database data files:
External D2700 disk enclosure configured with
25 SAS disk drives (600 GB HDD)
OS, HANA application files and database log files:
2 SAS disk drives (800 GB SSD, solid state storage)
Scale out to 16 TB+ RAM with multiple servers
Ideal for SAP Business Warehouse
May also be used for analytics, reporting or application acceleration scenarios
needing more than 1 TB RAM
Compute and memory:
HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server
4 Intel Xeon E7-4880 v2 processors
1 TB RAM
Up to 16 servers per system certified by SAP
Larger, customer-specific systems may be offered with approval by SAP
Database data and log files:
Stored on centralized, shared storage
Direct connect via SAP Storage Connector
Shared HANA application files:
Clustered NFS servers (one pair per system)
Files stored on centralized, shared storage
Shared storage
HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 (4-node)
96 SAS disk drives (900 GB HDD)
Supports up to 4 HANA servers
Storage arrays added as needed to support additional servers
Dedicated management server
HP 10 GbE top of rack (TOR) switches used for HANA internal networks and
connection to customers network
HP 16 Gbps FC switches used for internal SAN (connections from HANA nodes,
NFS servers and dedicated management server to centralized, shared storage)
Enhanced high availability and disaster tolerance with HP Serviceguard
Automated failover for clustered NFS servers (scale out systems)
Automated failover from primary HANA system to secondary HANA system
(usually located in a different data center) for disaster tolerant architectures
Technical specifications for HP ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA
Based on HP Converged Infrastructure products HP oers multiple server choices, sized
for your companys needs:
Scale up to 6 TB RAM with a single server
Ideal for SAP Business Suite scenarios combined with select analytics and
reporting
Compute and memory:
HP ProLiant Superdome BL920s Gen 9 server blade
8 Intel Xeon E7-2890 v2 processors
6 TB RAM
OS, HANA application files, database data and log files:
3PAR StoreServe 7400 storage (4-node)
48 SAS disk drives (600 GB HDD)
2 arrays (96 disk drives total)
Scale up to 12 TB RAM with a single server
The largest single memory pool available
Ideal for SAP Business Suite scenarios combind with select analytics and
reporting
Compute and memory:
HP ProLiant Superdome BL920s Gen 9 server blade
16 Intel Xeon E7-2890 v2 processors
12 TB RAM
OS, HANA application files, database data and log files:
3PAR StoreServe 7400 storage (4-node)
48 SAS disk drives (600 GB HDD)
4 arrays (192 disk drives total)
Scale out to 80 TB RAM with multiple servers
Ideal for SAP Business Warehouse
May also be used for analytics, reporting or application acceleration scenarios
needing more than 16 TB RAM
Compute and memory:
HP ProLiant Superdome BL920s Gen 9 server blade
2 Intel Xeon E7-2890 v2 processors
512 GB RAM
4 blades combined into 1 partition (8s/2 TB)
Up to 2 partitions per server
Up to 16 partitions per system certified by SAP
Larger, customer-specific systems may be offered with approval by SAP
Database data and log files:
Stored on centralized, shared storage
Direct connect via SAP Storage Connector
Shared HANA application files:
Clustered NFS servers (one pair per system)
Files stored on centralized, shared storage
Shared storage
HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 (4-node)
96 SAS disk drives (900 GB HDD)
Supports up to 4 HANA nodes (server partitions)
Storage arrays added as needed to support additional servers
Dedicated management server
HP 10 GbE top of rack (TOR) switches used for HANA internal networks and
connection to customers network
HP 16 Gbps FC switches used for internal SAN (connections from HANA nodes,
NFS servers and dedicated management server to centralized, shared storage)
Enhanced high availability and disaster tolerance with HP Serviceguard
Automated failover for clustered NFS servers (scale out systems)
Automated failover from primary HANA system to secondary HANA system
(usually located in a different data center) for disaster tolerant architectures
HP Converged Infrastructure products include all necessary
installation, deployment and support services
Factory Express Level 4 including custom implementation services includes complete
installation and conguration is performed at the HP Integration Center before shipping
the appliance to the customer. This includes customization of network parameters and
customization of the SAP HANA database based on a questionnaire completed by the
customer
HP Fast Start Service (delivered by HP Enterprise Services) or HP Deployment
Accelerator (delivered by HP Technology Services Consulting) includes onsite
integration services including connecting to the customers network and conrming
communication between SAP HANA and other systems (e.g. SAP Business Warehouse
application servers), demonstrating correct operation of appliance using sample data
and providing knowledge transfer
Proactive Care (delivered by HP Technology Center of Expertise): Solution-level,
one-stop, support service including HANA-specific call management, remote
monitoring, proactive service delivery (e.g. regularly scheduled firmware
updates), and support from HP Center of Expertise for SAP HANA
Scale-out configurations
HP oers two scale-out, future-ready systems that can grow as your needs grow. This design
significantly reduces the costs, difficulties, and down-time associated with field upgrades.
The HP ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA (CS 500) scale-out system uses the HP
ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server powered by the Intel Xeon E7-4880 v2 processor. The HP
ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA (CS 900) scale-out system uses the HP ProLiant
Superdome BL920s server blade powered by the Intel Xeon E7-2890 v2 processor. Both
systems use the 3PAR StoreServ 7400 for shared, centralized storage for the SAP HANA
shared application les and database data and log les. 3PAR is the worlds most advanced
storage platform preferred by eight out of the ten largest service providers. The CS 500 is
ideal for SAP Business Warehouse or standalone analytics/reporting/application acceleration
scenarios needing a system that is certied up to 16 TB RAM. The CS 900 is ideal for
scenarios needing a system that is certied up to 32 TB RAM. Both systems may be used for
larger, customer-specific implementations with approval by SAP and HP.
High Availability and Disaster Tolerance
The CS 500 and CS 900 support all of SAPs high availability and disaster tolerance features
including automated failover from an active node to a standby node inside of an SAP HANA
cluster and failover of an entire SAP HANA system to a standby system (usually located in a
dierent data center) using SAP System Replication. However, HP oers enhanced disaster
tolerance by incorporating HP Serviceguard software plus a quorum server. This
enhancement makes it possible to automate failover to a standby system in disaster tolerant
environments, and it is something that only HP is able to oer. These solutions protect your
information systems in the event of a catastrophic event. In doing so they help to mitigate
risk, improve IT availability, and reduce the costs of downtime.
Storage Infrastructure
HP provides three dierent storage infrastructures depending upon the customers sizing and
budget requirements.
Entry level or budged-sensitive implementations
ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA provides 256 GB and 512 GB scale up systems that use
the internal storage of the HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server to oer a very economical storage
infrastructure. These systems use a pair of 600 GB HDD disk drives in a RAID-1 conguration
for the operating system and HANA application les. They use another eight 600 GB HDD disk
drives in a RAID-5 configuration for the database data and log files.
Medium sized, performance-sensitive implementation
ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA provides 1 TB and 2 TB scale up systems that use a
combination of internal storage and low-cost, direct attached storage to provide a larger,
higher performance storage infrastructure.
These systems use a pair of 800 GB SSD (solid state) disk drives in a RAID-1
conguration for the operating system, HANA application les and database log les. Using
solid state storage and separating the log le storage from the data le storage provides a
higher performance conguration, which is particularly important to customers implementing
SAP Business Suite on HANA (SoH) using the 2 TB scale up configuration.
The D2700 storage enclosure provides a low cost, direct attached storage solution for the
database data les. It is congured with 25 disk drives in a RAID-50 conguration, managed
by an HP Smart Array controller installed in one of the servers PCI slots.
Enterprise-class shared storage
ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA scale out and ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA
scale up and scale out use 3PAR StoreServ 7400 as centralized, shared storage for HANA
application les (which must be stored on shared storage for scale out systems) as well as
HANA database data and log files.
The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 storage array is part of the industry-leading family of HP
3PAR storage arrays chosen by three out of four of the worlds largest managed service
providers (MSPs). It features high performance, high availability and simplied management
through a combination of system-wide striping (all storage is striped across all system
components, including controllers, cache and disk drives), Mesh-Active design and autonomic
(self-managing) capabilities. HP 3PAR Thin Technology is another signicant dierentiator,
implementing thin provisioning at the hardware level instead of requiring customers to
purchase additional software, which is typical for other storage platforms. In addition to
reducing costs, this results in a more ecient design and enables certain capabilities that are
not possible otherwise (e.g. non-disruptively converting thin volumes to thick volumes and
vice versa). For more information, visit http://www.hp.com/go/3par for more information.
Additional Software
HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA includes all of the software needed to deliver a complete
solution including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP applications and Integrated
Lights Out (iLO) Advanced. VMware vSphere and vCenter software is also included if
customers select the virtualization option. HP ensures global quality standards by preloading
and conguring SAP HANA software at the factory before delivery. No additional software is
necessary for the HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA. All solutions are built to your
specifications, and they include all required components, services and support.
HP also provides monitoring and backup software solutions to further enhance your
solution. HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA can be easily monitored utilizing HP Systems
Insight Manager (SIM), available as part of HP Insight Control or as a free download. This
powerful yet intuitive solution provides hardware-level management for system
administrators to improve system uptime and health. For more information, visit
http://www.hp.com/go/sim. Finally, HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA includes Insight
Remote Support Advanced (IRSA) to provide remote monitoring by the HP Center of
Expertise (CoE) for SAP HANA. This is a free add-on to SIM, and free installation and
conguration services are included as part of all recommended support Care Packs. For more
information, visit the HP Insight Online page at http://www.hp.com/go/insight.
HP Data Protector software is certied for Backint for SAP HANA, improving performance
when backing up or restoring the SAP HANA database and improving management and
scheduling of backup jobs. One major benet to customers is the ability to use one backup
solution for all of their computing environments, including SAP HANA there is no longer a
need to do things one way for SAP HANA and a dierent way for everything else. Another
major benet is the ability to develop a comprehensive, single-vendor backup and recovery
solution, simplifying implementation and ongoing administration and support, by combining
HP Data Protector with HP StoreOnce and/or HP StoreEver backup solutions.
One HP service solution for SAP HANA
HP provides end-to-end services across the lifecycle of HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA,
including strategy and design, factory integration, on-site installation, and one-stop solution
level support for HP hardware, SLES, and SAP HANA. HP and SAP collaborate to provide you
with seamless support experience.
Design and Build
With every SAP HANA system, HP includes the resources to assist with the sizing and
conguration of an SAP HANA environment. This includes the sizing of the appropriate
system, in addition to recommendations concerning the congurations to address your
requirements for multiple SAP landscapes, high availability, and disaster tolerance. Then,
with every SAP HANA order, HP includes its core competency process for factory integration,
where they integrate the hardware, load all of the software components, and apply your
unique environmental settings for network and source systems. Finally, the system
completes a burn-in test before they ship the order to your location.
Implementation
Delivery of the SAP HANA system is not the nal step. Beyond the design and build of a SAP
HANA solution, integration of the solution into your environment is equally, if not more,
critical to successfully getting SAP HANA up and running. HP understands this, so they
include installation, implementation, and training with every SAP HANA solution they deliver.
The basic foundational service includes the following:
All HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA come standard with Factory Express Level 4
services that leverage HP factory integration skills on SAP HANA. This way, HP helps reduce
deployment time with hardware built to customers exact specications, then shipped as a
turn-key solution from the HP factory. Additional, on-site installation services help with
harware installation in the Datacenter, powering up server(s) and storage, and connectivity
and Hardware checks.
HP Deployment Accelerator Service is a service that accompanies HP ConvergedSystem
to ensure the appliance is properly installed and that the database connections are made. HP
Fast Start Services are available to ensure that the replication and/or Extract, Transform,
Load (ETL) of data from the source systems have been tested and conrmed as fully
functional. Customers can choose either the Deployment Accelerator Service or the Fast
Start service for their onsite implementation.
Support
Customers may choose from a selection of HP Support Services to meet business needs. The
minimum required support level for HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA is HP Proactive Care
HP recommends HP Proactive Care with HP Personalized Support option and HP Proactive
Select to develop an ongoing support plan, build an advocate into the reactive support
delivery team, and plan for unique or changing needs.
HP Proactive Care Advanced
HP Proactive Care Advanced is the recommended support level for our HP ConvergedSystem
900 for SAP HANA. Proactive Care Advanced builds on the HP Proactive Care Services
providing customers with dedicated and technical resources to extend their IT team to
proactively prevent issues, maximize performance, and accelerate problem resolution. HP
ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA customers will benet by: personalized advice,
planning, and deliverables from dedicated, local resources and single-stop support from HP
Center of Expertise for SAP HANA for the entire system. The customers can prevent
problems and reduce risk with personalized, proactive reports and best practice advice,
optimize the usage and functionality of their IT system, and accelerate problem resolution
with dedicated critical case management, thus enjoying high availability and performance
from their HP ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA.
HP Migration Services for SAP HANA Migrate smoothly to CS900 for SAP HANA
Thanks to HP Migration Services for SAP HANA, you can move to SAP HANA without worrying
about disrupting business. Ease the implementation through step-by-step migration
assessment, preparation, execution, and transition to operations. The services facilitate a
ready-to-use HP ConvergedSystem for SAP HANA. You can:
Assess through a comprehensive review of key SAP HANA migrations steps, plans, and
roadmaps
Prepare with OS, database management system (DBMS), and hypervisor upgrades,
system preparation, and migration tests
Migrate using complete deployment, production migration, SAP certication, and
acceptance
Manage via training, knowledge transfer, transition to operations, and decommissioning
of legacy systems
HP High Availability Service for SAP HANA Keep business running
With HP High Availability Service for SAP HANA, you can automate and simplify SAP HANA
System Replication through the implementation of HP Serviceguard solution for SAP HANA.
Achieve high availability (HA), faster time to disaster recovery, and eciencies in
configuration administration, as well as:
Achieve up-to-date backup, connection, SAP HANA System Replication, and system
readiness
Integrate HP Serviceguard with SAP HANA System Replication
Deploy the SAP HANA cluster packages
Transfer knowledge covering the use and operation of HP ConvergedSystem for SAP
HANA in an HA environment.
HP Disaster Tolerance Service for SAP HANA
Simplify the process of implementing and conguring system replication for HP
ConvergedSystem with HP Disaster Tolerance Service for SAP HANA, accelerating time to
disaster recovery. In addition, you can:
Gather and validate SAP HANA System Replication requirements
Enable up-to-date backup, connection, and system readiness
Congure and test SAP HANA System Replication in a DT (disaster-tolerant)
environment.
Knowledge transfer for HP ConvergedSystem for HANA conguration, networking and
system replication for SAP HANA.
Note that while support for the SAP HANA software requires a separate support agreement
with SAP, HP and SAP collaborate to resolve your issues around SAP HANA. You get a
dedicated, single point of contact for the whole solution
Proactive Care Service includes proactive support as well as hardware and software
support to provide an additional level of support for organizations that are managing complex
IT environments. Geared for converged, virtualized, and cloud-based environments,
Proactive Care Service features remote and onsite support, proactive scans and reports, and
regular consultations with HP technology experts. You can purchase an option that includes
an assigned local HP specialist who delivers an Account Support Plan customized to t your
needs. Each customized plan includes delivering updates to your hardware rmware and
operating system, regular system health checks, and setup of remote monitoring. For
hardware and software support, HP delivers enhanced support from trained specialists in its
Advanced Solution Center. With a connection to SAPs support operation, HP can take the
rst call on any SAP HANA support issue. Based on this well-established process, HP is able
to deliver industry-leading support and help improve performance of SAP HANA solutions.
For SAP HANA deployed in large complex, datacenter environments that need a
customized approach to support, HP recommends Datacenter Care that increases datacenter
eciency and resolve interoperability issues faster by providing environmental, customized
support.
Business Solutions for SAP HANA based on business outcomes
HP provides end to end services to help you identify your strategy, quantify your business
opportunity, computing your ROI, and implementing SAP HANA into your SAP landscape. They
include the following services.
The HP Business Intelligence Master Plan Service is an overarching BI strategy-
development service designed to help you dene a BI strategy and a landscape to enable
your organization to realize that strategy. This service includes a roadmap for
implementation.
The HP Impact Analysis for SAP HANA helps you understand the technical feasibility of
introducing SAP HANA to meet your real-time and high-volume data analysis
requirements. It is highly recommended for each SAP HANA implementation.
The HP Financial Assessment for SAP HANA provides granular information to support
your decision-making process. It is formatted to be suitable for use in supporting
budgeting processes.
The HP Solution Assessment for SAP HANA is an engagement during which HP
consultants will assess your existing information landscape in detail, identify data sets
for use with SAP HANA, detect any gaps in the current environment, and create a
solution blueprint based on the findings.
The HP Landscape Preparation Service for SAP HANA is designed to ensure that the
surrounding solution landscape is in place and is optimized to allow for the inclusion of
the SAP HANA appliance and to speed time-to-value of the SAP HANA solution. This
service includes upgrading or installing SAP and non-SAP components in the landscape.
HP Fast Start Service includes required services that accompany the appliance to ensure
that the appliance is properly installed; database connections are made; and the
replication and extract, transform, load (ETL) of data from the source systems have been
tested and confirmed as fully functional.
The HP Implementation Service for SAP HANA is a complete end-to-end SAP HANA
implementation based on a solution blueprint designed by a team of HP consultants.
These consultants follow the HP Global Implementation Methodology for Business
Intelligence for all SAP HANA implementation projects
Implementation services for rapid-deployment solutions covering a wide range of
business reporting and analytics.
HP Migration Services HP is oering a number of migration services to SAP HANA.
These include
Business Warehouse (BW) migration services to SAP HANA
Business Suite migration services to SAP HANA
Enterprise Edition migration services to SAP HANA
Business analytic solutions for SAP HANA
Use case development for industry and horizontal business processes supporting
improved business reporting, business processes and analytics
HP As-a-Service Solution for SAP HANA
This oering provides clients with a complete solution that includes the SAP HANA product,
management of your SAP HANA environment, initial and ongoing costs, and the SAP HANA
license. This means you can be connected to SAP HANAs revolutionary in-memory database
platform in weeks instead of months. This oering also supports the as-a-service payment
model and the client pays for the service via a monthly subscription rate eliminating the need
for the client to make capital investments for their HANA solutions. These offerings include
Business Warehouse on SAP HANA Provide single source of truth for all your SAP data
and provide real time business analytics with your enterprise data warehouse based on
SAP Netweaver

Business Warehouse (BW)

Business Suite on SAP HANA Provide real time access to your transaction data
enabling faster business processes and innovative solutions not possible until now.
Enterprise Edition on SAP HANA Provide single source of truth for all your enterprise
data and provide real time business analytics with your enterprise data warehouse based
on Enterprise Edition for SAP HANA
HP Financial Services
HP Financial Services can make your transition to SAP HANA easy and cost eective, and it
can help you get started even sooner. You can expand your organizations SAP HANA
initiatives by taking advantage of an ecient, eective way to maximum return from IT and
BI solutions, while minimizing risk and aggressively managing costs. HP Financial Services
oers new HP hardware leasing and SAP software license loans plus a complete, global
solution that recovers value from older assets. This solution also helps safeguard privacy,
and it complies with applicable environmental regulations for disposing of SAP infrastructure
assets that are displaced by your new HP AppSystems for SAP HANA. For further information
please go to: www.hp.com/go/asset_recovery.
Migration Assistance
For existing SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator software customers, HP
and SAP recognize that to migrate your environment to SAP HANA will involve extra eort
and incremental costs. To help ease the transition, HP and SAP oer a migration-assistance
package that features a combination of HP nancing options and a portfolio of migration
services you can use to clear the path to faster data analysis.
HP Leads the Way with another #1 Benchmark Results for SAP HANA
SAP partnered with HP to co-develop the new SAP standard application benchmark for the
SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse application, called the enhanced mixed load (EML)
benchmark. SAP standard application benchmarks are designed to represent customer-
relevant scenarios in many dierent business contexts. This new SAP EML standard
application benchmark simulates the current demands of typical SAP NetWeaver BW
customers. These demands are shaped primarily by three major requirements: near real-
time reporting, ad-hoc reporting capabilities, and reduction of TCO.
Continuing with HPs commitment to deliver innovation, in March 2014, HP once more
achieved an excellent outcome on the SAP NetWeaver

Business Warehouse-Enhanced
Mixed Load (BW-EML) standard application benchmark. Utilizing the new HP
ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA

, which includes the ProLiant DL580 Gen8 Server and

the latest Intel Xeon processor technology, the system achieved a remarkable result of
126,980 ad-hoc query navigation steps with 2 billion initial records on the SAP HANA

platform (certication 2014009). The system accessed twice as many initial records as its
previous generation system, the ProLiant DL580 G7.
The result demonstrates the ability of HP ConvergedSystem 500 for SAP HANA to meet
evolving market and customer needs, highlighting HPs understanding of market conditions
from managing analytics and data warehousing workloads to running mission-critical
business applications. Simply put, HP gets similar performance with double the data footprint.
In addition, the system is optimized to deliver the highest levels of performance and
availability for in-memory computing, which signicantly improves analytics processing
speeds by delivering outstanding, scalable analytic performance in seconds versus hours on
massive, multi-dimensional databases.
Customer Success Stories
Velux Group
The VELUX Group is a Danish manufacturer of windows and skylights that runs 15 production
and 39 sales companies, and employs 10,000 workers worldwide. The VELUX Group aimed to
render its data capabilities more agile and accessible. Since 2005, the VELUX Group has
worked with HP partner Accenture as its IT outsourcing provider. The company also was a HP
customer, running its SAP infrastructure on HP Superdome servers. When SAP began
replacing its Integrated Planning (IP) application with Business Planning & Consolidation, the
VELUX Group saw this as an opportunity to move to a more dynamic forecasting model.
We had three main drivers: Bring more data to more users, faster; move from a
static to a rolling forecasting model; and leverage advanced tools such as predictive
analytics.
Anders Reinhardt, head of global business intelligence, VELUX Global Financial
Management
To get the most out of Business Planning & Consolidation, the company decided to
implement SAP HANA, running on HP AppSystems for SAP HANA scale-out conguration, as
the underlying database.
HP didnt just deliver hardware and leave; its been an integral part of the project
throughout and still brings value in relation to HANA operations.
Anders Reinhardt, head of global business intelligence, VELUX Global Financial
Management
T-mobile
An example of the outstanding results that can ow from an HPSAP collaboration, consider
the case of T-Mobile. The U.S. wireless operation of Deutsche Telekom AG, T-Mobile provides
more than 33 million customers with customized wireless plans that reect their smart phone
and data needs. A key component of the companys marketing strategy is to conduct highly
targeted customer communications concerning mobile phone services and oers.
Unfortunately, its previous analytics solution was too complex and could not track customer
offers in a timely way.
The solution built on HP Converged Infrastructure in collaboration with SAP AG and
deployed in just two weeks enhances T-Mobiles ability to deliver targeted marketing
campaigns to customers by transforming the way it delivers, manages, and measures its
wireless plan offers.
T-Mobile needed faster and better customer insight from its varied data systems,
explained Paul Miller, vice president of Converged Systems at HP. HP and SAP quickly
delivered a turnkey solution that provides simplicity, performance, and faster time-to-value.
SAP, in cooperation with HP, worked to support the creation and delivery of a unique and
dierentiated customer-tracking solution for T-Mobile, revealed Steve Lucas, executive vice
president and general manager of Global Database and Technology, SAP. With SAP HANA,
T-Mobile can more effectively track its marketing campaigns success.
Nongfu Spring
Another illuminating example is Nongfu Spring, an established and expanding national
consumer brand in China with a vast scope of operations encompassing production, sales,
planning, dispatching, logistics, and marketing. As the company expanded and constantly
added new branches in dierent cities, it needed to implement a database solution that could
keep pace with its impressive growth while providing the real-time, accurate data its
executives needed to make informed business decisions. To accomplish this task, Nongfu
Spring chose HP AppSystems for SAP HANA due to the stable, powerful performance of its HP
ProLiant DL980 server and the professional services provided by the HP team.
With the new system in place, Nongfu Springs manufacturing environment now runs more
smoothly and with more accurate data. For example, the increased computing speeds
enable the company to analyze data 200300 times faster than with their previous database
platform. Another benefit: Financial reporting times have reduced from seven to three days.
The market today is changing constantly, and companies and the market environment
have more new IT requirements, asserts Nongfu Spring CIO Patrick Hoo. By cooperating
with HP on SAP HANA 1.0, we have proven that HANA is a high-speed in-memory computing
column-storage database product that is mature and practical. It fundamentally solved the
problem of slow computing and presentation of data caused by having too much data, which
had aected our business. It also built a solid foundation for our IT department to provide
strong support for the companys rapid future business development.
Contact information for inquiries
For more information, visit http://www.hp.com/go/sap/hana or contact your HP sales
representative.
Huawei SAP HANA Solutions
The SAP HANA is a data platform that can be deployed either as an appliance or in the cloud.
It is a revolutionary platform that is ideally suited to run real-time analytics and to develop
and deploy real-time applications. It enables real-time processing of massive amounts of
data in the main memory of a server.
Huawei has partnered with SAP to create an appliance based on Huaweis high-end Tecal
RH5885 V2 rack server. This appliance provides outstanding performance when it is used in
combination with SAP HANA. It oers solutions ranging from entry-level supporting 128 GB
of memory to large-scale supporting up to 100 TB of usable memory with 100 nodes.
The RH5885 V2-based appliance for SAP HANA is able to deliver the fastest write
performance in the industry for SAP HANA write patterns. It has less than 15% latency as
well as 20% more bandwidth.
RH5885 V2 is a high-end 4-socket rack server that is expandable to 8 sockets. It supports
Intel

Xeon

E7-8800/4800 series CPUs, and it can accommodate up to 80 cores with 4 TB

of memory. RH5885 V2 oers enhanced system reliability thanks to its 35 RAS features.
These features combine with scalable I/O to make RH5885 V2 an ideal choice to deploy
mission-critical applications such as large-scale databases, business intelligence, and ERP.
Highlights
100100,000x faster than disk-based DB; No.1 writing performance with 15% less
latency and 20% more bandwidth
Pre-optimized and one-stop maintenance
Powered by RH5885 with 35 RAS features; No. 1 in 12 SPEC tests
Infrastructure
The RH5885 V2 for SAP HANA oers a preinstalled, precongured, optimized appliance
ranging from XS to L Size that supports the SAP HANA application stack in a single host.
Figure 1: Tecal RH5885 V2 Front View
Figure 2: Tecal RH5885 V2 Rear View
Model Specifications
Table 1: Tecal RH5885 V2 for SAP HANA
Included Software and Driver
SLES for SAP Applications 11.2
SAP HANA Appliance software (license is sold separately by SAP)
Huawei Tecal ES3000 driver
More information
http://enterprise.huawei.com/en/products/itapp/server/rh-series-rack-servers/hw-
145982.htm
http://enterprise.huawei.com/en/products/itapp/server/high-performance-pcIe-card/hw-
194918.htm
IBM Systems and Services Solutions for SAP HANA
IBM Systems and Services Solutions for SAP HANA
SAP HANA deployed on IBM System x Workload Optimized Solutions with the IBM General
Parallel File System (GPFS) oer simple, seamless scalability for your SAP HANA
environment. In addition, IBM oers installation and managed services to help you manage
your SAP HANA infrastructure cost-eectively. IBM Global Business Services (GBS) can help
you extract the business value out of your SAP HANA implementation.
IBM and SAP team for long-term business innovation
With a unique combination of expertise, experience and proven methodolo- gies and a
history of shared innovation IBM can help strengthen and optimize your information
infrastructure to support your SAP applications.
IBM and SAP have worked together for over 40 years to deliver innovation to their shared
customers. Since 2006, IBM has been the market leader for implementing SAPs original in-
memory appliance, the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA). Hundreds of
BWA deployments have been successfully completed in multiple industries and countries.
These BWA appliances have been successfully deployed in many of SAPs largest business
warehouse implementations, which are based on IBM hardware and DB2 optimized for
SAP.
IBM and SAP oer solutions that move business forward and anticipate organizational
change by strengthening your business analytics information infrastructure for greater
operational efficiency and offering a way to make smarter decisions faster.
IBM eX5 and X6 Systems with GPFS Power SAP HANA
SAP HANA, delivered on IBM eX5 and X6 enterprise servers with fth and sixth-generation
IBM

Enterprise X-Architecture

technology (eX5, X6), help transform the enterprise by

addressing current needs while delivering the robust scalability and performance needed to
accommodate growth. SAP HANA running on powerful IBM eX5 and X6 enterprise servers
with the Intel Xeon processor E7 and E7v2 family combines the speed and eciency of in-
memory processing with the ability to analyze massive amounts of business data enabling
companies to eliminate barriers between real-time events and real-time business decisions.
IBM System x servers with Enterprise X Architecture technology enable SAP HANA
customers to benet from a shared vision that delivers simplicity and automation designed to
help organizations accelerate business outcomes while lowering TCO.
IBM eX5 and X6 enterprise servers with Intel Xeon processors oer extreme memory and
performance scalability. With improved hardware economics and new technology oerings,
IBM is helping SAP realize a real-time enterprise with in-memory business applications. IBM
eX5 and X6 enterprise servers deliver a long history of leading SAP benchmark performance.
These System x servers are equipped with processors from the Intel Xeon processor E7
family, which combine exceptional raw compute power with increased memory bandwidth and
support for signicantly greater memory capacity to deliver superior performance to
previous-generation processors. With up to fteen cores in each processor, the four-socket
x3850 X6 can be scaled to 60 cores and 120 threads with the use of Intel Hyper-Threading
Technology. Organizations can achieve extreme scaling within each node for running
demanding workloads on a compact system.
SAP HANA is a business-critical technology and requires a robust and reliable enterprise
computing platform. Sophisticated eX5 and X6 features such as Predictive Failure Alerts
warn ahead of potential hardware failures, trigger preemptive action, and help maintain
application availability. In addition, features such as eXFlash solid-state disk technology can
yield signicant performance improvements in storage access, helping deliver an optimized
system solution for SAP HANA.
Workload Optimized Solutions
IBM oers several Workload Optimized Solution models for SAP HANA. These models, based
on the 2-socket x3690 X5 and 4-socket x3950 X5, 4 socket x3850 X6 and 8 socket x3950 X6
are optimally designed and certied by SAP and can be ordered as a single appliance part
number. They are delivered precongured with key software components preinstalled to help
speed delivery and deployment of the solution.
The IBM System x3690 X5 is a 2U rack-optimized server. This machine brings the eX5
features and performance to the mid tier. It is an ideal match for the smaller, two-CPU
congurations for SAP HANA. The x3690 X5based congurations oer 128 to 256 GB of
memory and solid-state disk. The x3950 X5based congurations leverage the scalability of
eX5 and oer the capability to pay as you grow starting with a 2-processor, 256 GB
conguration and growing to a 8-processor, 4 TB conguration. The X6 models include the 2
or 4 socket x3850 X6 and the 8 socket x3950 X6 provide a modular design which nearly two
times the performace over the eX5 system, simplies maintenance, and provides on-going
investment protection.
These systems are designed for maximum utilization, reliability, and performance for
compute-intensive and memory-intensive workloads such as SAP HANA.
IBM also oers a virtualized implementation using VMware. This implementation, intended
for non-production environments, enables you to optimize your hardware investment. Now,
you can install multiple HANA virtual machines (VMs) on a single system and quickly deploy
those VMs for non-production workoads.
IBM and SAP have worked closely together to validate each of the work-load-optimized
configurations and have also collaborated on performance testing.
Outstanding results like this are founded on years of joint product development which
allows IBM and SAP offerings to be integrated for simplified implementation.
Simple and Seamless Scalability
Using the workload-optimized solution models you can combine multiple models together to
create multi-node scale-out configurations. These multi-node scale-out configurations enable
you to achieve larger SAP HANA memory sizes simply by adding compute nodes. IBM was the
rst vendor to have multi-node scale-out congurations and currently has 56-node x3950
X5, x3850 X6 and x3950 X6 solutions validated. You can start with one 256GB node, upgrade
to a 512GB or 1TB node, and grow your environment to 56 x 2TB nodes. This modular
approach enables you to invest in a Workload-Optimized solution for SAP HANA and grow
your infrastructure as your SAP HANA environment grows. In addition, you can handle
unplanned outages by including an additional seamless High-Availability (HA) node in your
configuration.
These multi-node scale-out congurations do not require an external Storage Area
Network (SAN) or multiple SANs. The IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) software
in these congurations has the unique capability to use the storage contained within each
node helping to simplify the infrastructure required for SAP HANA. Only IBM has a High-
Availability concept which allows customers to seamlessly extend their installation to enable
High Availability using GPFS replication and an additional stand-by node.
GPFS, with its high-performance enterprise le management, can help move beyond
simply adding storage to optimizing data management for SAP HANA. High-performance
enterprise file management using GPFS gives SAP HANA applications:
Performance to satisfy the most demanding SAP HANA applications
Seamless capacity expansion to handle the explosive growth of data SAP HANA
environments
High reliability, availability and disaster recovery to help eliminate production outages
and provide disruption-free maintenance and capacity upgrades
Seamless capacity and performance scaling along with the proven reliability features
and exible architecture of GPFS help your company foster innovation by simplifying
your environment and streamlining data workows for increased eciency for SAP HANA
applications.
By implementing SAP HANA on eX5 and X6 enterprise servers with GPFS, you can realize
faster performance, less complexity and greater eciency from a powerful and proven
converged infrastructure environment of integrated technologies. These workload-optimized
solutions for SAP HANA can help simplify operations, consolidate resources and dynamically
migrate functionality as business changes, while delivering the ability to quickly change the
way users look at mass amounts of data without compromising data integrity or security.
For more information about the IBM Systems solution for SAP HANA and the IBM System
x Workload Optimized Solutions for SAP HANA, please read the IBM Redpaper: SAP In-
Memory Computing on IBM eX5 and X6 Systems.
Services to speed deployment
To help speed deployment and simplify maintenance of your Workload Optimized Solution for
SAP HANA, IBM Lab Services and IBM Global Technology Services oer quick-start services
to help set up and congure the appliance and health-check services to ensure it continues to
run optimally. In addition, IBM also oers skills and enablement services for administration
and management of IBM eX5 and X6 enterprise servers. IBM oers Quick Start
implementation services to help you install and congure your SAP HANA appliance and
HealthCheck services to help you manage and maintain your SAP HANA appliance. In
addition, IBM also oers skills enablement services to provide technical training to your
teams that need to manage the HANA appliance. IBM Total Solution Support and Remote
Managed Services for SAP HANA provide a single point of contact and focal point for all SAP
HANA issues. If you determine that you do not want to manage the SAP HANA appliance, then
IBM oers a Managed Service that can provide 24x7 monitoring and management of the SAP
HANA appliance enabling you to off-load the maintenance and management of the appliance.
A trusted service partner
Many clients require more than software and hardware products. They need a partner to help
them assess their current capabilities, identify areas for improvement and develop a strategy
for moving forward. This is where IBM Global Business Services (GBS) provides
immeasurable value with thousands of SAP consultants in 80 countries. GBS combines its
SAP implementation experience and skills with the broader IBM business intelligence
competencies to create an unparalleled opportunity for our clients to not only implement SAP
HANA solutions, but to then take that implementation to new heights and identify
transformational opportunities.
The GBS HANA team within IBM has leveraged the experiences gained to date on SAP
HANA oerings and grouped eorts into two main opportunities for clients who wish to deploy
SAP HANA Do New Things and Run Existing Things Faster.
The GBS Consulting Practice offers a broad range of services for SAP HANA such as:
Discovery and assessment services to maximize business impact
Architecture assessment and benchmark services
Proof of concept services
Express deployment offerings, including industry best practices
These services have been grouped into four key offerings as shown in the table below:
Combining the strengths of GBS with IBM System x Workload Optimized Solutions for SAP
HANA allows our customers to gain the maximum benets of their investment in SAP HANA
and to bring those solutions to life to address immediate information needs and identify
the transformational opportunities that can bring the organization to the highest levels of
insight and action.
IBM can also oer nancing options helping clients to acquire IT solutions that are
tailored to their individual goals and budget.
For more information
To learn more about the IBM Systems and Services solutions for SAP HANA and IBM System
x eX5 and X6 Workload Optimized Systems, please contact your IBM marketing
representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit: www.ibm-sap.com/hana.
NEC SAP HANA Solutions
NEC delivers SAP HANA as a key platform to realize a world where people can reach all the
information they need or want and to discover something new and worthwhile from the
massive amount of data produced daily.
The NEC High-Performance Appliance for SAP HANA incorporates the truly innovative in-
memory computing technology of SAP and the truly dependable hardware platform of NEC,
which has kept the No.1 market share in PC-servers in the Japan market for 18 years.
In the beginning of 2014 NEC launched the 6th generation of Intel architecture based
scalable enterprise server, Express5800/ A2040b, which succeeds the previously very
successful lineup of NEC HANA appliances. It is designed to optimize performance, scalability
and reliability for mission critical workloads. This enterprise server uses the Intel Xeon
processor E7 v2 product family and will be available starting from the middle of 2014 as
appliance certied for SAP HANA in dierent sizes. The HANA appliance entry model starts
with 128GB of RAM and 2 CPU sockets, scaling up through dierent sizes to a 4-way 2TB
RAM top of the line model. Scale out congurations up to 16 nodes with multiple aggregated
10 GB internode links will be available later.
All the NEC SAP HANA appliances include the EXPRESSSCOPE

Engine SP3 integrated

into the server, which provides superior remote control and system management capabilities.
Why Express5800 is ideal platform for SAP HANA
High-performance Express5800/A2040b Scalable Enterprise Servers, which leverage NECs
long heritage in the development of supercomputer and mainframe technologies to achieve
highly reliable and flexible system expandability, are leveraged as the platform for SAP HANA.
The agship NEC Express5800/A2040b model has capabilities to mount up to 4CPUs and
4TB RAM within a single 4U chassis.
One noteworthy hardware feature is its EXPRESSSCOPE

Engine SP3, a uniquely

developed device by NEC based on our experience in UNIX servers, enables to monitor and
control Express5800/A2040b with a remote and centralized interface regardless of the
power status of servers. It signicantly increases maintainability and reduces downtime of
SAP HANA.
Support Infrastructure
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is a ne-tuned and supported
operating system based on fully open source technology towards the nature of SAP
applications workload and its system lifecycle. Its priority support provides unlimited 24hx7d
technical support from SUSE, and its extended support oers additional 18 months for
package maintenance. It also maximizes system uptime with highly-selected package-
updates; only packages that affect SAP system shall be upgraded.
NEC High-Performance Appliance for SAP HANA uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for
SAP Applications, including its priority support. NEC has a lot of experience providing
mission-critical grade support on Linux systems, and has contributed various kind of open
source community including Linux kernel development. Through the long-standing
partnership with SUSE, NEC provides mission-critical class support for SAP HANA.
Additional software supported
NEC ESMPRO ServerManager is server management software that provides
administrators a centralized view to manage or monitor distributed multiple nodes.
It leverages the EXPRESSSCOPE

Engine SP3 of Express5800/A2040b servers and an

installed ESMPRO Agent on the system to collect the run-time information of both hardware
and software; which enables administrators to identify issues quickly if and when something
should happen.
Support and Additional Services
Through the longstanding partnership with SAP and SUSE, NEC will oer mission-critical
grade support service from hardware to applications, for the global market.
NEC was one of the rst distributors of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI)
solutions in Japan market, which is the front-end tool for visualization and analytics for SAP
HANA, and NEC has experience supporting more than 500 installations with help of our sales,
support and consulting organizations.
In addition, NEC has established an evaluation team of SAP HANA to make the latest
technology commercially available as soon as possible.
Support Service
For more information, please contact a NEC sales representative in your region or email
nssc-cs@sap.jp.nec.com.
VCE Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA Software
VCE Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA

software delivers faster timeto-value and

the highest levels of availability and application performance. Incorporating best-of-breed
compute, network, and storage components from Cisco and EMC, this Vblock Specialized
System is optimized for SAP HANA software and certified by SAP.
The optimization of the VCE Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA

software brings
together all of the necessary components for SAP HANA

into a single, standardized,

converged infrastructure system. This ensures maximum performance at scale, even with
high data volumes. This allows you to deploy SAP HANA into production with trusted and
predictable performance, one-stop customer support, security and pain-free deployment.
VCE
VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, accelerates the
adoption of converged infrastructure and cloud-based computing models that dramatically
reduce the cost of IT while improving time to market for our customers.
VCE, through Vblock Systems, delivers the industrys only fully integrated and fully
virtualized cloud infrastructure system. VCE solutions are available through an extensive
partner network, and cover horizontal applications, vertical industry oerings, and application
development environments, allowing customers to focus on business innovation instead of
integrating, validating and managing IT infrastructure.
Vblock Systems
VCE Vblock Systems have revolutionized the IT infrastructure by providing a datacenter in a
rack.
By consolidating all the components into a single system, Vblock Systems improve
eciency, speed, and reliability all while driving down costs. Sprawling, complex hardware
is replaced by a smaller footprint x86-based Vblock System.
Figure 1: A Vblock Syst em wit h t hree cabinet s
With Vblock Systems, IT sta no longer needs to spend an average of 70% of their time
maintaining infrastructure, they can focus on activities that add real value to the business.
Business continuity is a key requirement for companies whose success relies on robust
operations. VCE solutions enable high availability and rapid recovery, ensuring mission-
critical applications are there when you need them.
All Vblock Systems are built the same based on validated best practices. This is why they
have a shorter time to deployment and deployment provides less room for human errors. All
are built to lower facilities costs. Vblock Systems provide reduced complexity with
standardized infrastructure, are pre-integrated, pre-tested and pre-validated. As a result you
do not have to worry about rmware releases, management tools, conguration settings and
if they will integrate with each other VCEs engineering team will.
Building a Vblock System
Each Vblock System is designed, engineered, built, and installed by a global team. This team,
brought together by VCE, brings their specialist expertize to ensure a robust and optimally
engineered solution. When the system arrives for installation at your facility it has been
configured for your environment including configuration for your network.
Figure 2 illustrates the process for building a Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA
Software. Each Vblock System is sized, built (both physically and logically), installed, and
validated to ensure optimal performance.
Figure 2: Creat ing a Vblock Syst em from request t o final inst allat ion and t est ing
The rst step in the process is sizing. At this stage, the amount of memory required is
determined. For a SAP HANA appliance, the number of servers and amount of storage
required is determined based on the memory requirements.
Once a Project Manager has been assigned, the Logical conguration survey is completed.
Examples of the extensive logical configuration requirements are IP addresses and VLANs.
The Site survey addresses issues related to the physical space into which the Vblock
System will be installed. This survey includes items such as door heights and available power
supply.
The survey process allows you to benefit from VCEs extensive experience.
Once onsite, VCE specialists will complete any physical installation tasks, connect it into your
network and execute an onsite test plan to ensure that your Vblock System is operating
optimally.
Architecture
VCE has developed the Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA, a scale-out appliance that
has undergone SAPs rigorous performance and stability tests and is an SAP-certied
solution.
The VCE datacenter in a rack brings together servers, network, storage and virtualization
into a well-defined package.
The architecture of the Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA is shown in the diagram
below:
Figure 3: Vblock Specialized Syst em for SAP HANA archit ect ure
The Vblock System provides a highly scalable and available infrastructure leveraging the
EMC VNX Storage and Cisco UCS to help organizations best utilize the big data analytics
capabilities in SAP HANA and make better real-time business decisions. The built-in fault
tolerance of Cisco UCS blade servers and EMC VNX ensures the infrastructure will be
available through hardware failures.
Each Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA has one hot-standby node for High
Availability. The SAP HANA scale-out design incorporates high availability that is managed
and operated at the application level. Each system includes a standby node that provides
failover capability.
Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA delivers the server and storage infrastructure
needed across block or le data access and allows seamless growth to enable real time data
analytics. The data storage requirement determines which Vblock Specialized System for SAP
HANA configuration is applicable in a given situation.
Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA leverages advantages in server technology, in-
memory databases, and cloud computing. In the scale-out scenario, the SAP HANA database
instance is distributed over multiple servers allowing you to incrementally add Cisco B440 M2
blade servers, each with 512 GB memory with four Intel

Xeon

Processors.
Figure 4: Connect ivit y for Vblock Specialized Syst em for SAP HANA wit h four nodes
Thoroughly tested and certied by SAP and VCE, key components and features of the
Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA include:
Pre-integrated and pre-validated Vblock System infrastructure that simplies and
optimizes deployment and management
Pre-installed and congured SAP HANA appliance hardware, operating system (SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server), and SAP HANA Platform Edition software.
Pre-congured storage platform, EMC VNX, with centralized management for le and
block data services.
High availability is provided to ensure that a node failure does not cause the system to
fail
Scales up to sixteen blades across one to four EMC VNX platforms
Common power solution across cabinets with domestic and international options
Single-purpose environment with all server resources dedicated to the SAP HANA
appliance
Easy maintenance
Choosing the Vblock Specialized System for SAP HANA signicantly reduces your
maintenance overhead. Supporting a SAP HANA environment requires management of these
components:
Firmware patches
Operating system patches
Patches for the SAP HANA platform components
Patches for peripheral components
By choosing VCE, you gain access to a solution that assists you with this management
through support or extended support oerings. This aligned with VCEs proven methodology
of delivering and supporting converged Infrastructure throughout its lifecycle makes VCE a
safe choice for your SAP HANA project.
Seamless Support
It can be dicult to determine if your issue is caused by your hardware platform or SAP
HANA. VCE provides a single point of contact support to take responsibility for all issues.
With VCE, if you are an existing SAP customer, you can submit issues using the SAP
Service Marketplace exactly as you do now. The ticket is reviewed by SAP who conducts
initial analysis on the issue. If at any point during their analysis the issue appears to relate to
the Vblock System, SAP contacts VCE. The VCE Support team will convert to a standard
service request and follow standard support processes and B2B processes to engage partner
support, for example from SUSE, EMC or Cisco, as needed.
Services
VCE oers a comprehensive suite of professional services to accelerate your IT
transformation. Select from a full spectrum of service options, available through both VCE
and our extensive ecosystem of worldwide partners. Get the expertize you need, at any phase
of your journey, to transform your infrastructure, lower their costs, and achieve greater
flexibility and agility.
All VCE Professional Services leverage the combined expertise of ecosystem technology
experts in networking, compute, information management, virtualization, and cloud
computing.
Further reading
www.vce.com/sap Additional information about how VCE can address the requirements of
SAP environments
www.vce.com/products/specialized/sap-hana Detailed information and documentation
about the Vblock Specialized Systems for SAP HANA
http://www.vce.com/asset/documents/sap-hana-use-case.pdf Additional information
about the benefits of the Vblock Specialized Systems for SAP HANA
Chapter 11
SAP HANA Projects and Implementation
He who fails to plan is planning to fail.
Winston Churchill
Introduction
So, youve decided to move forward with SAP HANA. Great! But how do you get started? SAP
HANA is a new technology, so your organization may lack the in-house expertise to
implement it on their own. Fortunately, whatever your situation, expert project planning,
implementation, and development services are available that can help ensure that you get
the maximum business value from SAP HANA, as quickly as possible.
Selecting the Right SAP HANA Service Partner
Its important to choose a partner who can help you be successful with SAP HANA. A recent
IDC report found that four of the top six impediments to implementing in-memory
technologies lack of skills, risk, organizational barriers, and return-on-investment
concerns highlight the need for a service provider who is highly experienced with in-
memory technologies.
10
Such a partner should be able to help your company plan, deploy,
and use SAP HANA to create value across the organization harnessing the power of big
data, delivering real-time analytics and business processes, and managing a robust
architecture complete with system landscapes and solutions. The right partner should also
provide you with access to experienced, certied experts in areas such as architecture,
deployment, and development. Throughout the implementation process, youll need to think
about how SAP HANA ts into your overall IT strategy now, and how it can serve as a basis
for growth and innovation in the future.
Listen to how USHA International, a leading Indian consumer products company, with the help of SAP
Services, utilized SAP Netweaver Business Warehouse, powered by SAP HANA, to improve supply chain
productivity and provide real-time insight to respond quickly to consumer demands. Usha International:
http://youtu.be/B3TRsEpw-I0
It All Starts with Good Planning
The more attention you devote to planning your implementation, the more you will benet
from your SAP HANA investment. First and foremost, a good implementation partner should
help you develop a comprehensive roadmap detailing how in-memory computing can help
your company run at maximum speed and solve specic business problems. To accomplish
these goals, that partner must ask the critical questions that mean the dierence between
success and failure and be able to answer these questions correctly.
Although the specic questions will vary by engagement, you should start by identifying
the right business use case for SAP HANA in your company. At SAP, we often distinguish
between business intelligence and technology intelligence. The best technology in the world
will not necessarily create value if it isnt aligned with the proper business scenario. Thus, the
rst question to consider is: Where can an in-memory solution create the most value for the
least investment in the shortest timeframe, with the least disruption for business users? The
answer to that question will help you align desires (what you want) and needs (what you
actually need). At that point you can begin mapping the solution back to a technical
landscape.
Proper risk assessment is also crucial. Ask yourself:
How can we realize the solution in the shortest time with the least risk?
Does either SAP or its implementation partners oer any predened services or
application solutions that can help?
What does the high-level project plan look like, and how well does it align with our
business requirements and expectations?
What personnel do we need to ensure successful planning and delivery?
Everyone Wants a Low-Cost, Rapid Implementation But How?
Once youve documented and received signo on the planning phase, its time to identify the
expertise and skill sets you need, whether internal or external (or both). The goal: an
efficient, low-cost implementation that mitigates risk to both business and IT.
Your solution partner should be able to oer a wide range of solution scenarios including
end-to-end project implementation experience coupled with a holistic delivery methodology.
For many projects, prepackaged xed-price oerings based on globally compiled best
practices, such as SAP Rapid Deployment solutions, can accelerate deployment while limiting
costs. Such solutions include precongured software, implementation services, content, and
end user enablement that together can radically accelerate time to value delivering
benefits in weeks rather than months.
What about Highly Complex Projects?
If your business problem is really complex for example, you need to manage large
amounts of data, work with highly-customized systems, extend existing solutions, or build
new solutions specic to your needs you may want to consider specialized services. If you
choose this option, its especially important that you select a partner with deep knowledge
and skilled resources, one who understands your unique issues and has a track record for
delivering custom solutions that successfully address their clients needs.
How Will We Ever Get up to Speed on This New Technology?
It is imperative for you to learn as much as possible about SAP HANA in order to fully reap
the benets of this new technology. In addition to educating your technical and IT sta, you
need to make certain that your business users know the full extent of what is now possible
and how to best adapt for your environment. To accomplish these tasks, you should select a
service provider that offers skills-transfer opportunities.
Want to get the most from your SAP HANA platform? The SAP Education organization oers courses and
certications to give technical consultants and internal IT sta the knowledge and skills they need to fully
leverage the power of SAP HANA. For more information visit the SAP Learning and Software Services for
HANA website: https://training.sap.com/us/en/curriculum/hana-g-en
Service Provider Selection Checklist
The right service provider for your project should be able to:
____ Ensure appropriate due diligence during planning
____ Build a bridge between business and technology
____ Contribute the necessary resources and skill sets
____ Validate the value attained from your investment
____ Ensure that your SAP HANA installation fits well into your overall IT landscape
and architecture
____ Identify additional business benefits that might be gained with a SAP HANA
installation
____ Execute completely on the selected strategy, on time and within budget
____ Ensure skill transfer to in-house stakeholders
____ Execute installation so as to reduce risk
To learn more about ARIs SAP HANA implementation project, click here: ARI:
http://youtu.be/TE0ZDgckXYQ.
Weve just discussed the importance of selecting a qualied solution implementation
partner. The next step is to determine how best to use SAP HANA within your current
environment to deliver maximum value in your organization.
SAP HANA Use Cases
Weve reviewed many of the key factors that you need to consider when you select an SAP
HANA implementation partner. Now well turn our attention to how best to use this powerful
new technology to generate the most business value for this investment.
SAP HANA is incredibly versatile. It can add value to a wide range of business scenarios,
and it can be deployed in myriad ways to meet your project expectations and technical
requirements. SAP HANA can also complement existing landscapes and replace outdated
solutions.
With that versatility in mind, well review four typical use cases for SAP HANA
deployments today, as well as some of the potential scenarios for the future. These use cases
are:
Agile data marts
SAP Business Suite accelerator
Primary database for SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse
Custom application development
Learn how the experts from SAP can assist you with all aspects of your SAP HANA Project with their end-to-end
services. They can help you to:
Design and plan your roadmap or solution
Implement and migrate SAP HANA into your environment
Innovate and develop new and exciting solutions to your unique business issues
Support the technical and business environment and educate your technical and end users
Link: http://www.sap.com/community/ebook/2012_05_HANA_Services/en/index.html#/page/1
For More information, please visit the SAP HANA Services website:
Agile Data Mart
One way to quickly get the most value from in-memory technology is to use SAP HANA as a
standalone data mart for a specic use case. In this scenario, SAP HANA acts as a central
hub, collecting source-system data from multiple sources via in-memory technology and then
displaying focused reports and analytics via a reporting front end. The data can then be used
in multiple ways, depending on the organizations reporting requirements and formats.
This arrangement has the advantage of providing a focused solution to an immediate
business problem while minimizing disruption to the existing landscape. Such projects are
usually completed quickly: The business problem is understood, and the required data and
source systems are easily identied. Such installations oer instant value making
previously difficult and time-consuming tasks fast and easy.
SAP Business Suite Accelerator
SAP HANA is frequently used to accelerate transactions and reports inside the SAP Business
Suite. As with the agile data mart scenario, SAP HANA is set up as a standalone system, side
by side with the database under the SAP Business Suite applications. In this scenario,
however, SAP HANA is used to ooad some transactions or reports that typically take
hours or days to run, though it is not used as the primary database under the application.
As we explained previous chapters, certain transactions or reports inside the SAP
Business Suite can run slowly, primarily due to the slow I/O of the underlying disk-based
database and the huge data requests required by these transactions or reports. To run its
calculations and present a result, a typical budgeting or planning transaction in SAP must
collect data from many dierent tables in the system. Reports can also be very data-
intensive, requiring extensive data from many tables dispersed throughout the database. In
both of these cases, the application must request the data from the database, load it into a
buer table in the SAP application server, run the algorithm or calculation, and then display
the results to users.
To overcome system latency that slows down these common reports, SAP has developed
HANAed versions of several existing reports. These reports consist of three precongured
reporting dashboards and 23 reports from the following business areas:
Financial reporting
Sales reporting
Purchasing reporting
Shipping reporting
Master data reporting
These dashboards and reports leverage existing reporting capabilities from SAP ERP.
However, they ooad the physical processing of the reports to a dedicated SAP HANA
system that sits beside the live SAP ERP system. All relevant tables for each dashboard or
report are physically copied from the SAP ERP system onto the SAP HANA system, which is
then used to generate the reports and display them to users in a variety of user interfaces.
Lets review the key elements of each bundle.
Accelerated Sales & Distribution Reporting
The SAP HANA business content for Sales and Distribution (SD) enables sales managers and
sales representatives to check basic key gures for sales in real time. Whereas sales
managers use sales analytics to access instant overview information regarding the various
performance indicators for their sales teams, the sales representatives focus on detailed
information relating to the results of their sales activities.
Model Type Details
Sales Dashboard Sales Dashboard on Sales Volume with Top
Customers, Top Products and by distribution
channel.
Sales Crystal Report Sales Order Fulfillment Rates
Sales Explorer View Sales Organization Analysis display all
sales order line item status is a single view
(Sales, Logistics, and Billing) with related
quantity and value.
Sales Explorer View Sales Order Item Analysis
Sales Crystal Report Order Time Schedule Analysis
Sales Crystal Report/Explorer
View
Credit Memo Analysis
Sales Explorer View Billing List Analysis
Sales Web Intelligence Sales Analysis by Top 5 Customers
Accelerated Financial Reporting
The SAP HANA Financials content package provides the prerequisites for building reports
that provide the following analysis data:
Real-time analysis of the subledger for Accounts Payable (FI-AP) and Accounts
Receivable (FI-AR)
Flexible analysis of customer and vendor items based on the single line items from the
back-end ERP system
Calculation and analysis of the days sales outstanding (DSO)
Note that currently only General Ledger Accounting (new) is supported.
Model Type Details
Finance Dashboard Dashboard on Revenue Trend, EBIT Trend,
Operational Expenses, Overdue and DSO
Analysis.
Finance Crystal Report New GL Line Item Reporting (drill down from
Revenue Trend)
Finance Crystal Report Due A/R items (drill down from Due Date)
Finance Crystal Report TOP X (for example 10) New GL
Transactions
Finance Crystal Report Open Items Report
Finance Crystal Report Overdue Items Report
Finance Explorer View Flexible Customer Open Item Reporting
Finance Crystal Report Flexible Vendor Open Item Reporting
Model Type Details
Purchasing Dashboard Vendor Spend based on Financial Data
Purchasing Web Intelligence Finance Spend per Vendor (return rate for
purchase orders)
Purchasing Web Intelligence Top Vendors by Invoice Spend (logistics
invoice)
Purchasing Web Intelligence Purchase Orders
Purchasing Web Intelligence Goods Movement and Service Entries for
Purchase Orders
Purchasing Web Intelligence Order History Overview
Accelerated Procurement Reporting
The purchasing content package for SAP HANA enables procurement managers to analyze
key procurement processes in real time. Procurement managers use spending key gures
along dierent dimensions including Material Groups, Vendors, Plants, and Purchasing
Organizations to gain instant insight into ineciencies that may point to savings potentials or
internal and external process improvements.
Accelerated Master Data Reporting
Master data are essential for nearly all business transactions, irrespective of the business
area. The master data in this package concentrate on master data objects that are available
in SAP ERP, such as material, customer, and vendor.
Model Type Details
Master Data Explorer View Vendor List
Master Data Explorer View Customer List
Master Data Explorer View Material List
Accelerated Shipping Reporting
The SAP HANA content for Shipping enables shipping and warehouse managers to check
basic shipping and stock key gures in real time. Managers use shipping analytics to obtain
instant information for planning and monitoring outbound delivery-related activities. In
addition, the managers can get an up-to-date overview on materials stock at any time.
Model Type Details
Shipping Explorer View Stock Overview
SAP HANA Accelerates Reports
Imagine a long-running ABAP report within a particular business function, one thats been an ongoing
problem for users. As a result of system latency, many reports could not provide real-time data analysis
and therefore could not be used to make proactive business decisions. SAP HANA can reduce a reports run
time from several hours to minutes or even seconds, making the information much more current and valuable.
Primary Database for SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse
In our third use case example, SAP BW is powered by SAP HANA. In this scenario a company
replaces the previously underlying database for their SAP BW system with SAP HANA. The IT
team can perform a standard DB migration over to SAP HANA and then enable specic
objects to be in-memory optimized as necessary depending on the companys requirements.
SAP BW is the rst SAP application that was optimized to run with SAP HANA as its
primary underlying database. With SAP HANA, SAP BW can leverage in-memory capabilities
for improved performance, without the need for any sidecar accelerators or extensive
modeling workarounds. The entire database physically sits under the SAP BW system,
eliminating the need for in-memory aggregation. This arrangement simplies the data
modeling and query design, which in turn greatly enhances system performance while
lowering IT ownership costs.
Replacing an old database with SAP HANA generates speed and exibility for two key
reasons. First, keeping the entire database in memory eliminates the need to send large
amounts of data between the application and DB servers, thereby reducing latency. In fact,
running SAP BW on SAP HANA eliminates most of the problematic issues that slow down the
system, from both a user and an administrator perspective.
To watch a video of Home Trusts BW migration project, click here: Home Trust:
http://youtu.be/Q6057Cpr8V4
Custom Applications for SAP HANA
As stated earlier, SAP HANA is a full-blown, do-just-about-anything-you-want application
platform. It speaks pure SQL, and it includes all of the most common APIs, so you can literally
write any type of application you want on top of it. There are a few rules and guide rails that
are designed to keep things from going wrong. Overall, however, the sky truly is the limit
when it comes to imagining what to build with SAP HANA.
Although SAP HANA is valuable for a broad range of applications, it shines particularly
well in a few unique situations. If youre building an enterprise-scale application for a
business scenario that has high data volumes, needs detailed/granular data analysis, needs
to search or aggregate huge data volumes, requires complex algorithmic or statistical
calculations, or suers from latency between transactional recording and reporting, SAP
HANA is a great choice.
Future Use Case Scenarios
As SAP HANA matures and SAP updates its portfolio of solutions to take advantage of the
extensive horsepower of SAP HANA, you can expect to see nearly every SAP product
supported natively on SAP HANA as a primary database plus many more native SAP
HANA applications.
By now you should have a good understanding of how typical use cases take advantage of
SAP HANA. The next step is to ensure that you understand the best ways to deploy this new
technology in your environment to drive maximum value.
SAP HANA Implementation Scenarios
As weve discussed, there are many dierent ways to use SAP HANA, and it stands to reason
that there are also many dierent implementation scenarios. However, there isnt a one-to-
one correlation between a use case and an implementation scenario. Rather, for each use
case, you need to look at the business problem you are trying to solve, which will typically
dictate the most appropriate implementation scenario. If, for example, your use case is for a
specic need not addressed by an SAP application, youll likely need a custom development
project. In contrast, if your business issue is a more common or typical one, then SAP may
have already created a new SAP HANA application to meet your needs. For many repeatable
business issues, SAP has created SAP Rapid Deployment solutions. These solutions contain
precongured software, technical content, and implementation services, and they are priced
and scoped for rapid implementation.
Rapid-deployment solutions
Do you have to address an urgent business need? Do you want a fast start with a xed scope?
SAP Rapid Deployment solutions can help you implement SAP HANA using a package of
precongured software, content, and end user enablement plus implementation services.
Clearly priced and scoped implementation services help you speed up time to value and limit
risk.
The available SAP Rapid Deployment solutions for SAP HANA can help you to nd your
path to realize a full IT landscape running on SAP HANA quick, without risk and at
predictable costs. You can start into SAP HANA as you like e.g. with a quick win,
implementing an accelerator or with a holistic approach, migrating your SAP Business Suite
to SAP HANA. If you want to leverage your landscape with SAP HANA step by step, the
following approach could fit to your wishes:
Start smart with implementing some accelerators and gain immediate performance
improvements without disruption for the end users, e.g. by implementing the SAP HANA
Accelerated Finance and Controlling rapid-deployment solution.
Then, try out new analytics with the HANA content that is delivered. The SAP HANA CRM
analytics rapid-deployment solution could support your CRM users with new reports.
Besides this you might explore new reporting options with SAP NetWeaver BW powered by
SAP HANA by speeding up existing scenarios or by implementing new ones. Rapid-eployment
solutions that are based on SAP NetWeaver BW powered by SAP HANA support many
different scenarios e.g. in the area of ERP, CRM or EPM.
Also, if you are looking to adopt SAP HANA as database for your SAP Business Suite, the
Rapid Database Migration of SAP Business Suite to SAP HANA package supports the
migration of an existing SAP Business Suite installation to the SAP HANA database system
without disruption of the existing Business Suite scenarios. Reporting scenarios within the
SAP Business Suite can be enhanced as well with the SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment
solution. The SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment solution provides pre-built reporting content
for easier and faster analysis based on virtual data models with best practices enablement
content and fixed-scope and fixed-timeline service offering.
SAP is continuously adding more rapid-deployment solutions. To see whats available
today, visit SAP Store or www.sap.com/solutions/rds or the SAP Service Marketplace for
customers and partners.
In todays competitive global economy, businesses must adopt technology solutions that
provide an immediate advantage over their competitors, but time-to-value is key.
With the SAP HANA rapid-deployment solutions, customers can benet from the power of
SAP HANA within a few weeks.
Custom Development
Although there are standard best practices that must be considered when developing custom
solutions, there are also many possibilities when it comes to imagining what to build with SAP
HANA.
SAP HANA aligns well with several specic requirements and situations. Are you building
an enterprise-scale application for a business scenario with high data volumes? Do you need
detailed or granular data analysis? Do you have to query large data volumes? Do you require
complex algorithmic or statistical calculations, or suer from latency between transactional
recording and reporting? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then SAP HANA is a
great choice.
SAP Application Deployment
SAP is delivering a new class of solutions on top of the SAP HANA platform solutions that
combine real-time insights into big data with state-of-the-art analysis. These innovative real-
time solutions can help organizations transform their business by making smarter and faster
decisions, reacting more quickly to events, and unlocking new opportunities. Companies can
utilize these solutions to take advantage of new, data-driven business models and processes
options that would be dicult or even impossible with disk-based databases. These
solutions include:
SAP Sales Pipeline Analysis, powered by SAP HANA
SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail, powered by SAP
HANA SAP Smart Meter Analytics, powered by SAP HANA
Packaged Solutions
Do you have to address an urgent business need? Do you prefer working with a xed scope?
SAP Rapid Deployment solutions can help you implement SAP HANA using a package of
precongured software, content, and end user enablement plus implementation services.
Clearly priced and scoped implementation services help you speed up time to value and limit
risk.
The available SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions for SAP HANA can help you to nd your
path to realize a full IT landscape running on SAP HANA quick, without risk and at
predictable costs. You can start into SAP HANA as you like e.g. with a quick win,
implementing an accelerator or with a holistic approach, migrating your SAP Business Suite
to SAP HANA. If you want to leverage your landscape with SAP HANA step by step, the
following approach could fit to your wishes:
Start smart with implementing some accelerators and gain immediate performance
improvements without disruption for the end users, e.g. by implementing the SAP HANA
Accelerated Finance and Controlling rapid-deployment solution.
Then, try out new analytics with the HANA content that is delivered. The SAP HANA
Operational Reporting rapid-deployment solution could support your ERP users with new
reports.
Besides this you might explore new reporting options with SAP NetWeaver BW powered by
SAP HANA by speeding up existing scenarios or by implementing new ones. Rapid-
deployment solutions that are based on SAP NetWeaver BW powered by SAP HANA support
many different scenarios e.g. in the area of EPM, CRM, or Demand Signal Management.
Also, if you are looking to adopt SAP HANA as database for your SAP Business Suite, the
Rapid Database Migration of SAP Business Suite to SAP HANA package supports the
migration of an existing SAP Business Suite installation to the SAP HANA database system
without disruption of the existing Business Suite scenarios. Reporting scenarios within the
SAP Business Suite can be enhanced as well with the SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment
solution.
The SAP HANA Live rapid-deployment solution provides pre-built reporting content for
easier and faster analysis based on virtual data models with best practices enablement
content and fixed-scope and fixed-timeline service offering.
SAP is continuously adding more Rapid Deployment solutions. To see whats available
today, visit www.sap.com/solutions/rds or the SAP Service Marketplace for customers and
partners.
Taking a Systematic Approach for Your Implementation
You may be familiar with the traditional ASAP methodology used by SAP and the fact that a
complex ERP implementation can last for months, if not years. Because SAP HANA is a new
technology, to stay on top of its learning curve you need to work with a solution
implementation partner who has a deep understanding of the technology, the capabilities,
and best practices for implementation.
To successfully implement SAP HANA, you must follow a structured implementation
methodology. Your solution partner should approach the solution with a phased, deliverable-
oriented implementation plan based in project and organizational change management. The
goals here: to streamline implementation, minimize risk, and reduce the total costs of
implementation.
A robust methodology should include templates, tools, questionnaires, and checklists,
including guidebooks and accelerators to support team members and increase project
predictability.
There are six basic steps that need to be a part of any SAP HANA implementation. The
amount of emphasis you place on each step will be dictated by the type of SAP HANA project
you are implementing.
1. Customer education. Education is especially important for an SAP HANA project. The
technology is new, so the relevant knowledge is not yet widespread. The technology is
also rapidly evolving, with new use cases being created almost daily. Both the project
team and the executive sponsors must be educated so they understand what SAP HANA
can do and how it works. (Hint: Give them a copy of this book!)
2. Use case identication. Workshops can help determine where to apply the power of SAP
HANA within the organization. Ask yourself: What are the possible scenarios for SAP
HANA, and where might the company make improvements? Where could the technology
have the biggest impact on corporate objectives or unlock deeper insights into the
reported data? Once you have dened a use case, you should perform a comprehensive
requirements gathering to ensure that the end solution addresses all of your companys
needs and maps back to your original use case expectations.
3. Solution approach. The SAP HANA solution must be designed and documented so that if
your personnel or solution partners change, the new resources will understand how to
support the solution. Most likely, this will be an iterative process, looking closely at use
cases and their supporting infrastructure. As new information becomes available, the
solution approach will evolve into a comprehensive deliverable.
4. Modeling / Development A key task to implement your SAP HANA solution is creation of
the data models and the dierent views to it. These models are adapted, modied, and
enhanced to improve performance. For packaged applications this content is delivered
by SAP, but can be adapted to your specic needs. Custom development projects will
include both traditional application development and modeling aspects.
5. QA/testing. This is the nal test of all front-end reporting, data quality, data integration,
and performance. The production system is up and running, and business processes
begin to operate in the new SAP HANA environment. Quality assurance continues, along
with end-user training and support.
6. Go live. SAP HANA is delivered as a production solution.
Common Scoping Pitfalls to Avoid
If changes are required for front-end reports or analytics, then expectations must be managed. Often, as a
result of dependencies, even small changes to a report can have a large impact on underlying systems; for
instance, a change to a field may require changing a data model.
Because of this factor, it is important to fully dene requirements and to ask about any proposed report
modications. Reviewing the original form of a current report can be very helpful because you can see what
the business user is accustomed to seeing, as well as how it might be improved. You should also perform a
proper data decomposition to document how the current report is built and how it is working. In addition,
identify any custom code within the business rules that may be dicult to replicate inside the SAP HANA
modeler. Finally, map the sources from which the data are drawn, and how the data are imported into a
formal deliverable for signoff.
The right services partner can provide the needed level of due diligence in this area during planning.
After youve outlined a systematic approach to implementation, you need to identify the
key timelines and activities for your SAP HANA implementation.
Timelines and Key Activity Considerations
Just as there is no one size ts all, there is no single timeline for an SAP HANA project. Each
project is dierent; each has distinctive contributing factors and characteristics. It is SAP
best practice to use a standard project methodology, such as the SAP ASAP implementation
methodology, to ensure that a project addresses all of the critical activities, phases, and
deliverables that are necessary for success.
The SAP ASAP methodology has been updated to incorporate the SAP HANA activities
required for a standard in-memory project. Accelerators, best practices, and implementation
tools have also been updated or developed to shorten the project timeline and reduce risk.
Methodology, timelines, and key activities vary based on three considerations:
Current technical landscape. Depending on the current landscape, the customer may
have to consider prerequisites for delivering in-memory solutions. For example, data
quality may need to be addressed, or the organization may rst need to upgrade some
applications that work in conjunction with SAP HANA.
Expectations for in-memory functionality. As customers learn more about the
capabilities of in-memory solutions, they may want to introduce additional functionality.
It is important to manage this need and to consider it during the initial requirements
phase.
Original requirements per use case(s) identied during assessment. A key component
of the successful delivery of SAP HANA is ensuring that the nal solution meets the
companys requirements and expectations, as identied in the original use case
scenario.
In addition to dening an implementation methodology, youll need to identify the key
skills required to ensure your implementation of SAP HANA is a success.
Critical SAP HANA Skills Needed for Successful Projects
Because SAP HANA is a new technology the success of any implementation will depend in
large part on your ability to locate experts who can ll any skill gaps on your team. Critical
resources for an SAP HANA project will also vary depending on how you choose to leverage
the SAP HANA in-memory solution, or which use case you select.
The following roles are specific to agile data mart use case implementations:
System architect/system administrator. This resource is responsible for the physical SAP
HANA landscape, including CPU, memory, and disk usage. He or she performs maintenance
and system monitoring, along with conguration and application of any necessary patches.
The system architect also performs SAP source system conguration and replication, and
manages the SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT) replication server. Finally, he or she
ensures that the SAP HANA database is backed up regularly, and also monitors and
processes backup log files.
Solution architect. As the name implies, the solution architect is responsible for solution
design. He or she gathers requirements for the use case(s) and creates the technical design
documentation.
SAP HANA data modeler. The SAP HANA data modeler is responsible primarily for modeling
solution design and development and unit testing of all SAP HANA models. He or she also
performs SAP HANA model lifecycle management, which includes the various steps contained
in the process of moving from development to production.
Data services/SLT developer. The data services developer is responsible primarily for design
and development of jobs to extract, transform, and load data into SAP HANA via data services
or SLT. The developer also performs lifecycle management, which includes steps contained in
moving from development to production.
Two other roles are specific to implementations of SAP BW powered by SAP HANA.
SAP technology consultant. This expert on SAP HANA technology collaborates with the
project manager to plan technical requirements for the project. He or she then implements
these required technical tasks within the system.
Certied OS/DB migration consultant. This individual is responsible for technical planning
and design of the in-memory infrastructure, including database planning, project
organization, design, audit, and project review.
If you perform a custom development, you will need additional development skills:
SAP HANA developer. This expert builds your applications beyond pure data modeling using
the dierent development capabilities of SAP HANA (SQLScript, Business Function Library,
etc.).
Depending on the specic scope and architecture of your project, you may need
development experts in the specic application domain and advanced technologies, such as
predictive analytics, scripting languages, etc. Implementing SAP HANA is a major step in
dramatically improving your ability to obtain optimal value from your big data. With the right
service provider, use case, implementation methodology, and skilled resources, youll be able
to enjoy the power, speed, and performance of SAP HANA. Lets conclude this discussion by
examining some truly stellar examples of successful SAP HANA implementations.
Putting it All Together Examples of Stellar Projects
Now that we have discussed the SAP HANA technology and how to obtain the best business
value from this technology, we will present some innovative ways that customers have put it
all together. The rst example is a chemicals company that was able to improve compliance
reporting by accelerating its standard SAP system. The second example involves a large
university hospital that successfully implemented SAP HANA as the engine of a new custom
application, enabling it to dramatically increase the speed with which it analyzed medical
records. Finally, a nancial services company used SAP HANA as a primary database for SAP
Business Warehouse, with impressive results.
SAP Business Suite Accelerator at a Chemicals Company
Our rst example is a European consumer chemicals company that specializes in developing
new fragrances and avors. Every one of its hundreds of new recipes each with unique
ingredients and compositions must be checked for compliance with legal regulations. As
the demand for these chemicals increased and their recipes became more complex, the
company simply became unable to scale its compliance checking. To resolve this problem,
the company collaborated with SAP to build an application that enables it to quickly check
new recipes while they are still in development to ensure that they comply with a vast array of
local legal regulations. Using SAP HANA to augment support of existing processes, we have
demonstrated how the new application can cut processing time from 20 minutes to less than
4 seconds. This vastly improved performance enhances their scientists productivity while
simultaneously driving down the costs of new product development.
Custom SAP HANA Application in Use at a University Hospital
With a mature analytics program in place, the biggest university hospital in Europe provides
150,000 inpatient and 600,000 outpatient treatments every year. The hospital invested in
SAP HANA to harness the big data associated with its vast inventory of patient data, medical
records, and study results and make a positive impact on patient care and healthcare
research. For example, the hospital now uses SAP HANA Oncolyzer to search for and examine
information involving cancer patients, such as tumor types, gender, age, risk factors,
treatments, and diagnoses. This information enables the hospital to quickly identify the best
candidates for each clinical study. In the future, when DNA is added to the data set, the
Oncolyzer will analyze up to 500,000 data points per patient in real time. SAP HANA analyzes
both structured and unstructured data and greatly accelerates the identification process.
Primary Database for SAP Business Warehouse in Use at a Financial Institution
A leading North American mortgage lender has successfully completed proof of concept,
migrating a half-terabyte of data from a competitive database to the SAP HANA database and
upgrading to SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, powered by SAP HANA. The result has
been a dramatic improvement in reporting runtimes in the data warehouse and business
intelligence environments. Data query speeds have increased on average 8-12 times, simple
queries run up to 450 times faster, and data store object activation is 19 times faster. Based
on these impressive results, the customer is re-architecting its entire reporting environment
to leverage the power of SAP HANA.
Final Words of Wisdom on SAP HANA Implementation
Weve reviewed the importance of selecting the right SAP HANA services partner one who
can help you plan and implement your solution and provide the right set of skill resources to
ensure your implementation delivers on the value of SAP HANA. Weve also reviewed
common use cases, including the agile data mart, SAP Business Suite accelerator, primary
database for SAP Business Warehouse, and custom SAP HANA applications. SAP HANA
implementation scenarios can vary depending on your business need from custom
development to SAP application development to rapid deployment solutions. Next we
reviewed the importance of taking a systematic approach to your implementation and the
benets of following a methodology built on education, use case identication, solution
approach, modeling, QA and testing, and go-live best practices. Prior to implementation,
youll also need to identify your timeline, key activities, and skilled resources needed to
implement SAP HANA. The key is planning and ensuring you understand the entire scope of
the implementation, while remaining exible enough to leverage the latest in SAP HANA use
cases.
In conclusion, wed like to leave you with a short list of six key takeaways to ensure a
successful SAP HANA implementation:
1. Make certain that business requirements are completely understood and that the use
case complements the technical requirements. Remember, technology intelligence
doesnt necessarily equal business intelligence!
2. Establish ROI metrics early in the scoping process. Build them into the project/solution
to ensure that success can be properly measured and quantified.
3. Ensure proper collaboration across application delivery teams (EPR, BW, CRM, reporting,
etc.), depending on project requirements.
4. Start with a focused use case to demonstrate business value, and then expand across
other functional areas of the business. Establishing a quick win helps with sponsorship
and funding for additional in-memory projects.
5. Make sure that data quality is considered as part of overall SAP HANA solution planning.
Acquiring data quickly cant help the business if the data are not accurate.
6. Dene (or redene) specic in-memory terminology with all users to make certain that
each term is understood by and means the same thing to IT, developers, business
users, and executive sponsors. Small clarications on such terms as real-time and
self-serve can go a long way toward preventing misunderstandings concerning both
the functionality to be delivered and the value it brings.
7. Bonus Advice: Encourage everyone involved with the project (Technical & Business) to
download and read a copy of this book. It really helps get everyone on the same page
and ensures youre all speaking the same language.
For more information about SAP HANA services oerings, subscribe to SAPServices on
Twitter band review the details on the SAP HANA services website.
Top Advice from SAP Mentors for SAP HANA Projects
SAP Mentors are the most inuential community participants in the SAP ecosystem. They
comprise a super-smart and engaged global cohort of nearly 110 bloggers, consultants, and
technical wizards nominated by SAP Community Network peers and selected by SAP. All SAP
Mentors are hands-on experts of an SAP product or service, as well as true project
champions. The majority of SAP Mentors work for customers or partners of SAP.
The following three SAP Mentors are experts in SAP HANA implementations. They provide
their best tips and tricks for a successful SAP HANA project. Pay attention, these guys really
know their stuff!
Vijay Vijayasankar
Associate Partner
IBM Global Business Services
Twitter: @vijayasankarv
1. Find the best data modeler you can for your SAP HANA projects. That is the make-or-
break issue for most SAP HANA projects.
2. Do not jump into a POC (Proof-of-Concept) just to prove loading/reporting works faster
in a data mart. SAP or IBM can easily show you how quickly their systems can report and
load data.
3. Spend a lot of time rening your use case oine before you start the project. An
important part of this step is to accurately dene success up front. This helps reduce
wasteful scoping eorts during the project, and it will help the project team focus on
specific targets.
4. Size the hardware correctly. If you do not, then you will not see the expected results.
Even if you want to scale out and buy new boxes, you should be aware that these boxes
are not available off the shelf. Consequently, they will require some lead time to acquire.
5. Each HW vendor has some secret sauce on what makes them special for SAP HANA.
Make sure you understand that before investing in HW.
6. Check SAP HANA performance under a variety of situations reporting performance
while heavy loads happen, while multiple people are working on system, logging on from
different parts of network, etc.
7. Engage closely with your SI (system integrator) and SAP while the project is going on.
SAP HANA is fairly new, and it will probably need a few workarounds. Your SI and SAP will
probably have seen your issues before, and they can advise you and help minimize time
spent reinventing the wheel.
8. If you are going to migrate to SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse on SAP HANA, test
as you go when migrating objects to their in-memory versions so that you can spot
challenges sooner. Denitely consider re-engineering the design of SAP BW to take
advantage of SAP HANA and avoid doing only an en-masse migration and leaving it at
that.
9. SAP HANA security/administration is a specialized skill, and a good design is needed to
make it work for all your use cases consistently. Plan to spend time refining the model.
10. Last but not least poor data quality is even more damaging when the data come at you
in lightning speed. Garbage In/Garbage Out still applies. Prole the data, and x them
at the source or as close to the source as possible before sending them to SAP HANA.
Harald Reiter
Senior Manager SAP
Deloitte Consulting
Twitter: @hreiter
1. Rethink what is possible
a. Revisit analytics that previously were not possible or were too difficult to
perform.
b. Processes can now actually change, be simplified, or be minimized because you
dont need as big a staff to conduct the analysis.
c. Eliminate the data volume and speed barriers from the equation, and focus on the
real business needs.
2. Develop a roadmap
a. Move from theory to reality real-time BI delivers true value.
b. Make it dynamic to adapt quickly to new capabilities and integration options.
c. Align business and IT goals.
d. Be proactive to influence the product development, and make your voice heard to
ensure timely delivery of new capabilities.
3. Pilot early
a. Get used to rapid development cycles and capabilities.
b. Dont get caught up in all the hype and excitement be pragmatic, and dont
forget basic due diligence. Focus your efforts, define what is really important,
achieve success, and build on that success iteratively.
c. Dont try to throw all the data into the database just because you can.
4. Start with the hard stuff
a. Be realistic dont assume you go through fewer cycles of data analysis to find
the best answer (or question); you will be able to do the cycles faster, though.
This allows you to change your assumptions, quickly run scenarios, and ask
different questions to uncover anomalies in your data.
b. Embed statistical models and predictive analysis into your daily operations to
detect risk, negative trending, and anomalies.
c. Make sure there is a measureable ROI
5. Establish priorities
a. Define what you really want, and make certain your objectives have a positive
impact on your organization
b. Dont forget to look at unstructured data in your organization; these data can
provide a new perspective. Incorporating unstructured data and rapid processing
enables meaningful and timely analysis to minimize risk, losses, or negative
exposure.
c. Dont underestimate the importance of data quality. Revisit your data quality
initiatives using SAP HANA to quickly identify issues that result from processing
massive data sets in one pass. Correlation of results without complex
partitioning and staging areas can uncover skewed results.
6. Begin cultivating talent
a. Team composition is key for successful implementations.
b. Dont forget about change management. Focus on changes for end users
because they can be empowered to do agile reporting as well as on changes for
administrative staff due to technology and implementation tools.
c. Resources can now be assigned real value-added tasks instead of time-
consuming administrative tasks just to obtain basic information.
7. Incorporate mobility
a. Continuous monitoring of key metrics is a reality using mobility and SAP HANA
8. Revisit your technology architecture
a. Examine your overall landscape, and identify all areas that can benefit from
technology modernization.
b. Understand the database operations capabilities of SAP HANA.
c. Identify your must-have requirements, and address any shortcomings.
d. Identify the best tool for each job.
9. Size right
a. One size does not fit all
b. Data composition and data source impact the compression rate and thus the
sizing estimation.
c. When in doubt, move up one T-shirt size.
d. Scale-out capability mitigates the risk of not sizing correctly, but it should not be
relied on.
e. The quality of the data model impacts the available size for data versus
workspace.
10. Establish metrics and plan for tuning and performance testing
a. Dont forget about SLAs (service-level agreements).
b. Tuning and performance testing can make the fast even faster.
c. Reveal bad data model designs.
Vitaliy Rudnytskiy
Lead BI Architect
HP Enterprise Information Solutions
Twitter: @Sygyzmundovych
1. Accept nothing less than excellence from your project team and partners
a. Technology makes things faster, better, and cheaper; but technology itself is still
just a tool. Make sure you assemble an excellent team: business, project team,
partners, and SAP support.
2. Understand the technology
a. If you are reading this book, you are already on the right track.
3. Think about details, but always consider them in the context of the big picture
a. The devil is in the details, so think them through. At the same time, however,
never lose sight of the complete picture of where all the details fit into.
4. Open your mind to the New World
a. Question your old habits; forget about your 15 years of technical/project
experience under the belt. Old techniques do not necessarily work well or at all
with new paradigms.
5. Dont build the solutions for Go Live
a. Your solution will live a long time after the go-live date and will need to
accomodate new requirements, unexpected cases, and a surrounding
environment that is in constant transition. Build for the long run.
Ranjeet Panicker
Practice Manager
SAP Next Generation Services
HANA/In-Memory Center of Excellence
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) & Return on Investment (ROI) Analysis
Do not limit analysis of TCO and ROI to technical, IT, or infrastructure savings. Too often,
when customers generate a business case to justify the acquisition of SAP HANA, they apply
only those savings related to infrastructure items such as storage and hardware. Avoid this
mistake! Be bold! Explore the holistic value of SAP HANA to your business processes. For
example, reducing the time it takes to run a BW analytic report from 4 hours to 5 minutes
means something to the business. Apply metrics to these savings. Engage SAP Value
Engineering teams who can help translate the speed of SAP HANA into true business value.
The well-known adage You cant manage what you cant measure is especially relevant to value
management. If you dont identify, track, and ensure the ongoing value of a project, youre unlikely to achieve
its nancial and operational objectives. Learn more about how strategy management helps you track and
realize the full value of your organizational objectives by reading this article:
http://scn.sap.com/community/services/blog/2012/08/23/the-value-in-value-management
Cutting-edge Technology
SAP HANA represents a paradigm shift in how we know and use an RDBMS. It is also a new
database technology one that is evolving as SAP customers nd new ways to challenge the
speed and performance of the database. The SAP HANA platform is evolving very quickly, and
SAP continuously adds new and innovative functionality. To enable customers to take
advantage of this new functionality quickly and eciently, SAP has made the process of
upgrading very simple.
HANA Should Not Be Only an IT Project
Recognize the business drivers which catalyzed the decision to make SAP HANA the platform
for your business. Although switching the database underneath BW is part of the formula for
success with SAP HANA, the full value of a BW powered by SAP HANA solution is realized
through additional activities such as optimizing in-memory objects and examining processes
to re-architect the information layers. Such activities will help you save not only on the
maintenance of these objects, but also on storage, resources, and memory. Ultimately they
will enable your business to report more quickly and efficiently.
Executive Sponsorship
Buy-in at the highest level brings the authority and credibility that can mean the dierence
between success and failure for your SAP HANA project. Executive sponsorship helps drive
the vision for SAP HANA in your organization, and it facilitates the change management that
is required when you adopt a new technology. To secure and maintain this sponsorship,
include the executives in project reviews at regular intervals to keep them up to date on
project status. Also, make certain they are involved in all follow-on endeavors.
Size Does Matter
Do not rely purely on the size of the data set on source systems to predict the size of the SAP
HANA appliance. Instead, analyze ways to reduce redundant data before loading/migrating
into SAP HANA. Examine solutions like near-line storage (NLS) that may help mitigate rapid
data growth in SAP HANA. Invest in hardware that can be scaled instead of being replaced.
Adopt realistic goals on sharing an SAP HANA appliance between applications. Finally, look
into items such as backup and restore, patching, and performance when you are considering
sharing a single appliance.
S
The rest of the story....
ince the SAP HANA Essentials book is being written in real time, it will be continuously
updated as new chapters are completed and content revisions are added.
Make sure to register for the mailing list on www.saphanabook.com to be informed when
new chapters are available and follow the book on twitter @EpistemyPress and @jeff_word.
Please share the website and voucher code with your colleagues so they can benet from
the information in this book as well.
Notes
1
Markides, C. (2002). Strategic Innovation. In: E. B. Roberts (Ed.). Innovation. Driving
Product, Process, and Market Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
2
Woods, D. and Word, J. (2004), SAP NetWeaver for Dummies, Wiley Publishing Inc.,
Indianapolis, IA.
3
With the SAP HANA RDS migration package customers can migrate in ~7 weeks, if they are
already on BW 7.3 SP7, with Unicode, and 7.x data flows and authorizations.
4
Magal, S. and Word, J. (2013), Business Process Integration with SAP ERP. Epistemy Press
5
People always ask if all the data is in volatile storage like RAM, what happens if the power
goes out? Well talk about that in more detail later, but basically, SAP HANA has some very
sophisticated backup tools to prevent data loss from disasters.
6
Plattner, H & Zeier, A. (2011). In-memory data management: an inection point for
enterprise applications. Springer.
7
As of SP7, theres another deployment option for SAP HANA. Aimed at large customers that
have invested in and manage their own storage environment, the SAP HANA tailored data
center integration was added.
8
The SAP HANA RDS for database migration takes ~7 weeks for most customers who are
already running SAP BW 7.3.
9
Meaning Powered by SAP HANA and renovated to natively take advantage of SAP HANA.
*
As of January 2013, the SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM) application was
not available with SAP HANA. However, SAP plans to integrate them at some point in the
future.
10
Gard Little and Elaina Stergiades, IDC, Help Rethinking the Art of the Possible with SAP
HANA Services, March 2012.
J
About the Author
Jeffrey Word, Ph.D.
Follow Jeff on : @jeff_word
erey is responsible for creating and communicating thought leadership on SAPs In-
Memory database strategy globally. His newest book book, Business Process Integration
with SAP ERP, was released in early 2013. He is also the co-author of the bestselling books,
Integrated Business Processes with ERP Systems (2011), Essentials of Business Processes
and Information Systems (2009), Business Network Transformation: Strategies to
Recongure Your Business Relationships for Competitive Advantage (2009) and SAP
NetWeaver for Dummies (2004).
Jerey has more than 18 years experience in IT strategy and business consulting working
with Fortune 1000 companies. Over the last 15 years at SAP, he has worked on technology
strategy with focus on corporate innovation initiatives and enterprise architecture design.
Prior to joining SAP, he worked in the high tech industry for several hardware and software
vendors throughout the Americas and Europe in a variety of leadership roles.
Dr. Word earned his PhD in Information Systems at Manchester Business School in
England. His research focus was on event-driven business process design and next-
generation enterprise architecture. He also earned an MBA in International Management
from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and a BA in European Studies/Spanish
from the University of Oklahoma.