Table of Contents

Copyright
About the Cover Image
Note from the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
How to use this book
Foreword
Chapter 1: SAP HANA Overview
Chapter 2: SAP HANA Architecture
Chapter 3: SAP HANA Business Cases
Chapter 4: SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA
Chapter 5: SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Powered by SAP HANA
Chapter 6: Data Provisioning with SAP HANA
Chapter 7: Data Modeling with SAP HANA
Chapter 8: Application Development with SAP HANA
Chapter 9: SAP HANA Administration & Operations
Chapter 10: SAP HANA Hardware
Chapter 11: SAP HANA Projects & Implementation
Chapter 12: SAP HANA Resources
The rest of the story
About the Author

Copyright 2013 Epistemy Press LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted
under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher. For
reproduction or quotation permission, please send a written request to info@epistemypress.com.
Epistemy Press LLC makes no warranties or representations with respect to the content and specifically disclaims any implied
warranties or guarantees of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. Epistemy Press LLC assumes no
responsibility for any errors or omissions that may appear in the publication.
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge SAPs kind permission to use its trademarks in this publication.
This publication contains references to the products of SAP AG. SAP, the SAP Logo, R/3, SAP NetWeaver, SAP HANA and other
SAP products and services mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other
countries all over the world. Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Decisions, Web
Intelligence, Xcelsius and other Business Objects products and services mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other products mentioned in this book are registered or unregistered
trademarks of their respective companies.
SAP AG is neither the author nor the publisher of this publication and is not responsible for its content, and SAP Group shall not be liable
for errors or omissions with respect to the materials.
This material outlines SAPs general product direction and should not be relied on in making a purchase decision. This material is not
subject to your license agreement or any other agreement with SAP.
SAP has no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this material or to develop or release any functionality mentioned in
this document. This material and SAPs strategy and possible future developments are subject to change and may be changed by SAP at
any time for any reason without notice.
This document is provided without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. SAP assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in this
document.
ISBNs:
978-0-9856008-0-8 (ePub)
978-0-9856008-1-5 (Kindle)

About the Cover Image

The 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 first). In
terms of SAP HANA, we selected this image because SAP HANA allows your company to run at top
speed with no artificial 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.

Note from the Author

Since this book is about the shift to real-time business, its fitting 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 finished 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
ossified 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
finished and then release the remaining chapters as they are completed later. Since this is a digitalonly 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 details
2 SAP HANA Architecture
3 SAP HANA Business Cases
New Chapter
4 SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA (NEW)
5 SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Powered by SAP HANA (NEW)
6 Data Provisioning with SAP HANA
7 Data Modeling with SAP HANA
8 Application Development with SAP HANA (NEW)
9 SAP HANA Administration & Operations
10 SAP HANA Hardware
Updated PAM, Huawei, Fujitsu & NEC sections
11 SAP HANA Projects & Implementation
Updated RDS section and new advice section
12 SAP HANA Resources

Acknowledgments

Although 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 Neff, 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
SAP Mentors
Thomas Jung (SAP), Harald Reiter (Deloitte), Vitaliy Rudnytskiy (HP), John Appleby (Bluefin),
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)
Production
Robert Weiss (Development Editor)
Roland Schild, Holger Fischelmanns, Daniela Geyer, Markus May (Libreka/MVB)
Michelle DeFilippo (1106 Design)

How to use this book

May you live in interesting times

This book is designed to provide an introduction to SAP HANA to a wide range of readers, from Clevel executives down to entry-level coders. As such, its content is necessarily broad and not-tootechnical. 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 find 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 find in this book is the first 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 Experience SAP HANA 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.

Foreword
By Vishal Sikka, Ph.D.
Executive Board Member, SAP AG

Time 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 amplified 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 inefficiency 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 inefficiency got dissolved. By putting 3000 songs in our
pockets, the iPod liberated our music from the housings that confined it. The iPhone has a highdefinition 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 inefficiency 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 benefit from such renewal and simplification 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 cofounder 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 simplification 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 fly, 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 benefits non-disruptively, without forcing a modification 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 off 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 finances, 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 member of the Executive Board of SAP AG and heads the technology and
innovation areas.

Chapter 1

SAP HANA Overview

Significant 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 Markides1

Every 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 specifically, 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 sufficient 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 NetWeaver Business Warehouse to copy the transaction data over to a separate server
and offload 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 flooded the database with requests. Similarly, as the amount of
operational data in the SAP NetWeaver 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 profitable 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 significant: (1) internet use and the proliferation of data from outside the
enterprise, and (2) the regulatory pressures on corporations, generated by laws such as SarbanesOxley, to be answerable for all of their financial 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 first step in the transition to a new in-memory architecture
for enterprise applications and databases. SAP HANA flips 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 specific 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 significant 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 memoryresident 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 significant 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 different 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 final 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 first in-memory database prototype for
SAP (the direct ancestor of SAP HANA).
In the mid-1990s, several researchers at Stanford University had performed the first 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 verification 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 certified 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 first 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.

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-proofing 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 first live customers on SAP HANA and that SAP HANA was now
generally available. SAP also introduced the first 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
NetWeaver Business Warehouse customer could immediately 3 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 difficult 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 first 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 effectively4. It had to
enabled them to track their inventory more accurately, sell their products more effectively,
manufacture their products more efficiently, 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 effective 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 effort 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 benefits 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 fingertips. Thus, companies that employ in-memory systems are operating in real
time. Significantly, 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 flexibility. Over the years, SAP had become
adept at automating standard business processes for 24 different 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 flexibility to modify, extend, and adapt their
core business processes to reflect 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 flexible and much easier to modify. However, none of that flexibility was
going to benefit 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 afford to sit by and watch these problems
continue to get worse for their customers. SAP needed to engineer a breakthrough innovation in inmemory databases to build the foundations for a future architecture that was faster, simpler, more
flexible, 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. Geoffrey Moore has some great thoughts on how gamechanging 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 fits the faster, better, cheaper model perfectly. I/O is hundreds to thousands
of times faster on RAM than on disks. Theres really no comparison in how rapidly you can get
memory off a database in RAM than off 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 diskbased database on the appropriate metric cost per gigabyte 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 first MP3 player on the market. The
key innovation was that Apple was able to fit 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 flash memory. (This is a classic illustration of changing the rules of the game.)
I/O speed wasnt a significant 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 difference. It wasnt significantly 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.
Significantly, 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 fill 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 effect 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 sufficient 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 early 2012, 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 off of them, but do you know

anyone whos bought a hard-drive based iPod in the last five 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 once the SAP Business Suite is supported 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 or analytic database entirely in RAM as the primary persistence layer5. 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, multicore 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. Significantly, 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 difference 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 differences 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 book6 on all those conceptual differences 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 diskbased 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 flood 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 fields 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 deltainsert 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
specifically 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 different 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-configured, pre-installed
appliance on certified hardware. This eliminates many of the typical activities and problems you find
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 offers
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 offers scripting
capabilities that allow application-specific 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 specific 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

Business Function Library

SAP has leveraged its deep application knowledge from the ABAP stack to port specific 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 configuration, 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-fly 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-fly calculations.
In traditional databases, users experience bottlenecks when changing business requirements
requires modifications to the existing data model, which required 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. These raw data are constantly available in memory for analytical purposes,
and they are not pre-loaded in cache, physical aggregate tables, index tables, or any other redundant
data storage.
Data Provisioning for SAP HANA
SAP HANA offers 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 benefits 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, file formats, and unstructured data. It provides the modeling environment to
model data flows 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 notified by an alert mechanism when critical
situations arise. Analytics and statistics on historical monitoring data are also provided to enable
efficient 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
In the event of disaster scenarios such as fires, 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 Hardware
SAP HANA is delivered as a flexible, 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 certified 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 specific best-practices and configuration. The vendor finalizes the
installation with on-site setup and configuration 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 configuration 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 effort significantly,
but it does not eliminate it completely.
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 NetWeaver 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 specific 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 identified. 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 satisfied 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 off 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 different 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 buffer 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 reflect the changes.
Imagine a scenario where every time the transaction or report runs, it takes one hour to finish (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. Significantly, 99% of the time the system took to generate that list
came from simply retrieving the records off 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 nondisruptive. 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 first 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 configuration 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 fixed-price, fixed-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 fulfillment 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 unified 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 first enterprise performance management
(EPM) application to support the SAP NetWeaver 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 financial data in ERP for faster and more efficient profitability cycles. The solution
helps finance departments to perform real-time profitability reporting on large scale data
volumes and to conduct instant, on-the-fly analysis at any level of granularity, aggregation, and
dimension. Furthermore, finance teams can run cost allocations at significantly faster processing
time and be empowered with easy, self-service access to trusted profitability 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 significant 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 offers 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 financial professionals to perform faster reporting and analyses, accelerate periodend 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 fly 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 significantly increase profits and sales effectiveness.

SAP Customer Segmentation Accelerator

The SAP Customer Segmentation Accelerator helps marketing departments build highly specific
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 offers across every customer
segments, tactics and channels. The power of SAP HANA combined with SAP Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) empowers marketers to maximize profits 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 offering, and predefined best practices, meeting typical
business requirements to address the customers immediate needs. Even as customers benefit from
prebuilt functionality, these solutions provide a platform designed to evolve and extend as the
customers business grows.
SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions are available through SAP as well as SAP partners by
traditional licensing or subscription pricing, transparency of price and scope eliminate project risks
for companies. A good example is the SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for operational reporting
with SAP HANA that can help you quickly generate insightful reports from sales to financials to
shipping on high volumes of ERP data.
A second example is SAP rapid-deployment solution for sales pipeline analysis with SAP HANA
that helps you to analyze massive amounts of pipeline data in CRM.
You can view a demonstration of the solution here.
Here are a few of the SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions that are available to enable the accelerated
SAP applications:
SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for accelerated finance and controlling with SAP HANA
Gain access to large volumes of secure and detailed data from cost and material ledgers
quickly and easily. By running SAP HANA, you can improve decision making through
accelerated reporting, analyses, and period-end closings.
SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for operational reporting with SAP HANA Quickly and
affordably generate insightful reports from sales to shipping in real time using our
operational reporting solution with SAP HANA. Rely on in-memory technology to process high
volumes of data quickly, and get ready to transform decision-making business-wide.
SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for profitability analysis with SAP HANA Analyze
massive amounts of profitability data in enterprise resource planning (ERP) (CO-PA) faster than
ever before. Our ERP profitability analysis solution with SAP HANA can help you perform
real-time reporting and conduct instant, on-the-fly analysis for more profitable decision
making across your enterprise.
SAP rapid-deployment solution for customer segmentation with SAP HANA SAP HANA
combined with SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can help you analyze and
segment massive amounts of customer data in real time. You can target the precise audience with
the right offers across customer segments, tactics, and channels.
SAP rapid-deployment solution for sales pipeline analysis with SAP HANA Gain instant insight
into massive volumes of sales pipeline data while performing on-the-fly calculations and indepth analysis on any business dimension.
You can also try out a few of the current accelerated applications running LIVE:
http://hanauseast.testdrivesap.com/copa. Well go into much more detail on the applications and RDS

packages in the Accelerated SAP Business Suite chapter.

SAP offers a specific licensing bundle to utilize SAP HANA for this use case that includes
additional replication tools needed for the connections to the SAP source system.
SAP NetWeaver 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.7
Recall from our earlier discussion of early SAP in-memory projects that SAP BW was the first
SAP application that was renovated and updated to natively run on SAP HANA as its primary runtime 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 specific 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-specific
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 first 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 effort 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 configuration 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 first SAP BW on SAP HANA migrations.
The speed and flexibility acquired by replacing the old database with SAP HANA reflect two
fundamental benefits 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 offers a specific 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 offers 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.

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 simplification 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 nonSAP) 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 first released the App Store, most of the first
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 certified 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
offers prebuilt data models, key performance indicators (KPIs), role-specific dashboards and
customized reports to provide retailers with a deeper understanding of all factors influencing 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 profiles 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 efficiency 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
efficiency programs, improve fraud detection capabilities, and develop new tariffs 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 unified 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 profitably, 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 first 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-certified 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 benefits natively.
Oversight Systems is one of the first ISVs to renovate their SAP-certified 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-fly 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) suffers 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 fits 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 simplification not only makes things even faster than just the
hardware speed boost, it also results in significantly 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 efficiency all the way to
administration and operations. SAP will continue to invest heavily in many areas to make SAP
HANA the cheapest and most efficient database to operate in production environments. These efforts
include innovating in new landscape configurations such as native cloud deployments of SAP HANA.
Significantly, however, SAP isnt satisfied to only be the fastest, best, and cheapest database on
the planet. SAPs goals also include enabling the BIGGEST data scenarios by offering 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 first 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-inOne; 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 benefits 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 flagship 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 efforts 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
efficiently deep inside the database. All of these developments will lead to lower TCO and more
flexibility for customers, which in turn will make their investment in SAP much more valuable.
This exercise is also having an amazing effect 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 firestorm of
innovation within the SAP development group. The coffee 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-fied, 8 SAP will be able to deliver
a vastly simplified 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 flexibility 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 five years
of this journey will be extraordinarily fast and exciting.

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. (2011), Integrated Business Processes with ERP Systems, John Wiley & Sons. Hoboken, NJ
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 inflection point for enterprise applications. Springer.
7 The SAP HANA RDS for database migration takes ~7 weeks for most customers who are already running SAP BW 7.3.
8 Meaning Powered by SAP HANA and renovated to natively take advantage of SAP HANA.

Chapter 2

SAP HANA Architecture

COMING FALL 2013

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 sufficient to justify a purchase. If you cant figure 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 efficiently. 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 benefits 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 effective 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 reflect 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 final 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 difficulty 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 first 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 financial dimension. No matter
how impressive the story, by itself it isnt sufficient to obtain funding for the project. Adding the
financial 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 final 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 benefits, both quantitative and
qualitative. Moreover, there are different levels, or degrees, of business value. The chart below
illustrates a useful model for categorizing these levels. This model identifies three levels: Efficiency,
Effectiveness, and Transformation. Lets take a closer look at each one.

1. Efficiency

The first level of business value, Efficiency, 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 efficiency are the easiest to
quantify. There are two basic subcategories of Efficiency: IT Efficiency and Business Efficiency.
IT Efficiency

Organizations are likely to focus heavily on IT Efficiency when (1) the software investment under
consideration is part of a broader effort 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 floor
space/carbon footprint
Business Efficiency

The Business Efficiency level extends beyond issues that are purely related to the IT department.
However, business efficiency/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 Effectiveness 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 efficiency can deliver a fair amount of business value, effectiveness offers 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., Efficiency) 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 Efficiency level of business value, business performance is improved first 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 benefits it delivers extend far beyond improvements in IT operations. The examination of
effectiveness gains makes the assumption that IT is a strategic enabler and value creator, and not just
an organizational cost center.
Although effectiveness gains are usually more difficult to quantify than efficiency gains, their
monetary value is frequently greater. Instead of precise estimates, effectiveness 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 difficult to achieve.
Transformation goes well beyond Effectiveness by enabling new business models and processes.

Sometimes called innovation or The Art of the Possible, business transformation can generate
extraordinary financial gains. However, the potential monetary value from this level of business value
is the most difficult to quantify. By definition, 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 effective business use cases.
We begin with the first step creating the storyline.
Creating the Storyline
Its likely that you already have at least one specific 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 benefit 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 staff 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 figure below reproduces a sample value map created during the first 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 evergrowing number of example use cases for SAP HANA. In the Resources section of the site, youll
find 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 reflect your organizations needs or strategic direction. You
may not find an exact match, but its extremely likely that youll find 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 benefits measurement and post golive 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 benefit scenarios. The one fundamental difference 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 benefits quantification 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 significant
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 sufficient in the new
environment of real-time data.
IT research firms have already concluded that investing in business analytics technology generates
tangible benefits. 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 efficiencies, returning tens of millions of dollars in
savings. The independant study demonstrates that quantitative benefits are being realized with realtime information. Production yield is an excellent example of benefits quantification. 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 benefits quantification.
Organizations utilize various approaches to business case benefit 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 benefits quantification.
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 benefits that also applies to SAP

HANA. This framework, which is illustrated below, places benefits in one of four categories:
Strategy Enablement
Measurable Benefits
Risk and Compliance
Innovation
Financial measurement, known as hard benefits, typically falls within the measurable benefit
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 flow 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:

Significant 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
Significant 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 different 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 benefit is defined as an outcome that increases revenue in for-profit

organizations and reduces cost in all organizations. In addition, hard benefits can increase the cash
flow that the organization utilizes to generate additional return on investments. An example of a cash
flow benefit is the reduction of aging receivables. Efficiency gains can result in tangible benefits 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 benefits follows a similar approach to other traditional
benefits quantification. The areas of improvement are derived by identifying areas of value within
major business process areas. Common benefit KPIs are broken down within the process areas. A
few of the key business benefit 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 efficiency 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 effort 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 benefits are commonly linked to the tangible benefits measured above. The
strategic benefits impact the organizations overall strategies and can support the tangible benefits.
In some cases, productivity or efficiency 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 staff. The labour budget is not reduced, but the
workforce is able to manage increasing workload. Often, improved employee engagement and worklife balance is another soft benefit outcome. Similarly, improved decision-making can generate
indirect impacts on the organization, such as better execution of the corporate values for
accountability. Many organizations find it difficult 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 offers 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 difficult to quantify because no
baseline data exist. However, first 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 benefits 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 benefits 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 benefits.
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 benefit, 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 benefit. 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 define a benefit beyond the current state
baseline, SAP Value Engineering performs this function by providing a triangulated approach to
benefits quantification. Specifically, 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 benefit 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 benefit as described in the process areas is typically related to its impact on revenue
and expenses. We strongly recommend that when you calculate a benefit you apply a benefit range
with a conservative and likely metric based on the SAP Value Engineering approach described
above.
One final point: It is commonplace to link benefits to an overall initiative involving process
improvements through technology enablement. Benefits 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 benefits calculator to our customers.
The tool covers the most common benefit areas that most organizations would consider. The
calculator provides two or three example benefits for each of five mega-process areas:
Customer Focus
Procure to Pay
Plan to Produce
Record to Report
Quote to Cash
The benefits calculator enables you to customize the revenue include the number of employees, and
key baseline information for your particular organization. The benefit 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 benefits. It generates ideas on
how SAP HANA can impact your business, and it demonstrates how you can calculate these benefits.
Your organization can then continue to develop benefits 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 significant investment by SAP to allow organizations to measure performance
and build benefit cases.

This portal offers 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 finance, procurement, supply chain, and
sales.
More than 700 KPIs
More than 1,000 best practices
More than 300 peer groups

For SAP HANA, SAP offers 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 fits as a starting point. The program provides the flexibility to
create a customized survey to capture the key metrics and best practices identified 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 benefit 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 financial impact have to be communicated effectively 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 significant experience creating successful business cases for SAP HANA, and it can
assist with your final presentation.
Although there is no set format for final 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 define 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
benefit 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 identified 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 offers 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 different 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. Different organizations may follow
widely varying approaches when building their internal justifications 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

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

In 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, 2012, less than two years after the first 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 first software company to provide its
customers with an integrated, real-time business process platform that unifies 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 first moon landing more than 40 years
ago, SAP is simply transitioning into its next phase of innovation and renovation. For the first time
ever, SAP has created an exceptionally performant database platform that was engineered to its exact
specifications 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 flagship
applications such as ERP, SAP has begun a multiyear effort 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 datadriven 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 businesscritical 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 unified, 360degree 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.

Because SAP HANA provides a unique ability to deal effectively 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
different business needs: transaction processing and reporting/analysis. It was simply impossible for
disk-based databases to efficiently 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 inefficiency not only generates significant costs, but it
forces organizations to adopt measures to ensure data integrity and usability between multiple
systems. A final 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 first 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 inmemory, 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 simplification 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 flip 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
significantly 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 20,000
times.
Going forward, SAP will deliver HANA-fied 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 justified by the performance improvements. Significantly,
SAP has made the migration to SAP HANA as painless as possible. All HANA-fied 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 flexibility in the consumption of
these optimizations while minimizing business disruptions for the companies that implement them.
Here are a few of the benefits 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 modification 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 benefits, ranging from increased performance to reductions in cost and complexity. You
might be asking yourself, however, OK, but whats the downside? More specifically, 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 effort 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).

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 specifics 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

New with SAP HANA SPS5 (November 2012): SAP HANA synchronous system replication
(formerly known as warm standby solution).
Further feature extensions are planned for the next service pack.
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 offer the SAP
Business Suite on all currently certified 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-fied 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 HANAbased 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 specific 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 offering contains predefined 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 efficiently 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 benefit 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.

More Details:

http://help.sap.com/hba
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
NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver 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 different countries, with different currencies and
across different and complex financial 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
financial meltdown that require banks not just to report on specific liquidity metrics but also to
simulate these results based on different future economic stress scenarios. SAP HANA allows banks
to consolidate large numbers of cash flows 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 significantly
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 NetWeaver 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 nonprofits 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 fill 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 site:
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 first wave of
innovations, SAP delivers optimizations for 23 business value scenarios across key lines of business
(e.g., finance, sales, marketing, service, procurement, and HR) and more than 400 industry-specific
reports to achieve unprecedented performance. See the details below for examples of scenarios in the
SAP Business Suite that leverage 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.

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 difficult, if
not impossible, to fulfill 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 financial close defines the financial 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 financial
disclosures combine quantitative data with comprehensive qualitative information. A fast financial
close is a core element of financial excellence.
Support for real-time, fast financial close offers a single multi-dimensional database and shared
functionality for accounting and consolidation, providing governance, compliance, and transparency
throughout financial close management. With deeper and faster insight down to the lowest level of
detail, it delivers quality at the source, process efficiencies, a common view across financials
(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 financial 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 efficient process to deliver financial 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 userinteraction 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 finance function to manage the payment of customer invoices. By
reducing the number of days sales outstanding (DSO) and bad-debt write-offs 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 effectiveness of receivables management offers 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 workflows. 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 financial decisions. Real-time and accurate insight into vendor-opened receipts
leads to better scheduling of payment runs and provides flexible and automated payments in real time
through parallelization of different payment runs.
Central Treasury Exposure management

Treasury and financial risk management involves a variety of processes, from cash and liquidity
management to the management of financial 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, efficient, 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 financial risk management. It enables global financial risk management on the
ERP software system at headquarters as the central integration platform. The platform offers a lower
total cost of ownership, central monitoring, data consistency, and traceability of business events for
financial 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 efficient
usage to avoid creating new roles. Business executives can analyze roles to uncover hidden
downsides and reduce the uncertainty of many financial 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 efficiency and effectiveness). 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 offers can be made to fulfill 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
offer 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 efficiency 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 efficiency 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-effective, 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 fingertips. 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 flexible configuration 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 efficiencies
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. Offer companywide search for purchasing business documents to influence actual payment conditions and rebates.
Influence 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 specific 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 definition 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
define 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 efforts to drive HR
efficiencies and introduce agile business processes.
Effective and efficient 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 timeconsuming 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, crossplant 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 identification 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 fly. 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
financials 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 profitability. Progress
monitoring along the project lifecycle can include version comparison, and a combined analysis of
financials 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 financials because of tight integration.

Chapter 5

SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Powered

by SAP HANA
This chapter was contributed by Storm Archer III (@stormarcher3). Product
Expert, SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Product Management
Introduction
SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) is the first SAP application to be HANA-fied 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 benefits 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 NetWeaver 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 influence councils and the global
SAP User groups to define new features and validate content additions
Customers frequently inquire about the differences 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 enterpriseready data warehouse. Specifically, they will need a content-management tool, a metadatamanagement 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
difference 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 offers 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 specifically, they were configured to provide the best performance for row-based
inserts imported from OLTP applications. EDWs are a different 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. Specifically, these additional layers limit the
flexibility 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 offload 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 inmemory indexing for queries as a workaround to avoid the performance penalties that must be paid
when users attempt to read large datasets off a disk-based database. SAP BWA provided an inmemory, 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 difficulties due to the limiting nature of the RDBMS. In many ways, the introduction of
BWA was the first 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.

Figure 1: SAP BW and In-Memory Technology

This description of SAP BWA sounds very similar to SAP HANA. There is, however, one
fundamental difference 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 benefits 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
specific 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 offers a substantial number of improvements over traditional RDBMS
configurations. 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 transactionalbased databases, EDW systems incorporated functionality aggregates, fact tables, and other
features into the LSA model. Today, however, the availability of columnar databases and inmemory 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. Specifically, 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 configuration 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: Migration from SAP BW & BWA to SAP BW on SAP HANA

Figure 3: SAP BW on SAP HANA Architecture

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 Execution 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 Acceleration

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 affecting SAP BW operations. Many IT departments currently have severely limited
windows for regular updates due to the global nature of business operations. By reducing dataloading 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 specific 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 efficient. This process is known as
flattening 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 Data Structures

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 defined. 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 specific 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 specific operations. The lighter LSA model structure that allows for more
flexibility makes data modeling easier and more efficient. This efficiency 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 dataactivation 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-fied 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 efficiency and flexibility 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. Significantly, SAP has configured SAP BW 7.30 SP8 and SAP HANA SP5 to flag
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 first data to be flushed
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 flexibility 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 flexibility 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 find 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 effective 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 benefits 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 configurations 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 fixed, 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 different projects. Project scoping
generally defines 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
specific 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 significantly impacting
their existing system.

Figure 9: SAP BW Migration 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 Certified Migration Consultant execute the production system activities. This
person does not have to be an external, SAP, or consultant. Companies often employ staff who are
certified 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 postmigration review. The PCA tool provides a wizard-style interface that details the post-copy and postmigration steps to deliver an optimized system. Every installation is unique and has specific 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.
Software Prerequisites for SAP BW on SAP HANA

Now that we have defined 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 NetWeaver 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 NetWeaver BW => 7.3x Unicode Only
SAP NetWeaver 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 NetWeaver 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 NetWeaver 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 affect the project timeline and budget cycle.
Project planning should lay out the scope, resources, and TCO benefits. Although some of these TCO
improvements will be soft in terms of business efficiency, they can be categorized as elements of the
overall expected results. These areas will be identified 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 Options

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 affects 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 effective 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 factor 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 benefit 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 flag certain content as not-active. The not-active data are loaded into memory
only when they are needed. They are also the first to be flushed 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 configuration has to be certified by the
hardware partner. In addition, SAP provides extended monitoring for all scale-out projects. Some
elements of the system require specific tuning and configurations 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 NetWeaver BW Powered by SAP HANA Scale-out Best Practices
Customers who create an effective 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 specific
configurations. 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 specifically 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
configurations that SAP often observes at customer sites. From the SAP HANA appliance view, there
are a number of possible configurations. SAP has defined 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 affected. 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 configuration 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 specified as fail-over equipment for production. In this configuration, 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 configure 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-sufficient resources to support business operations.
Customers utilize their hardware vendors SAP competency center to determine the appropriate
configuration. 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 specifically 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 affected, even those that are operating
effectively. 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 Options

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 identifies 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 Data Center Architecture

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 offers 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 NetWeaver BW Powered by HANA

Figure 13: SAP BW on SAP HANA Roadmap

Chapter 6

Data Provisioning with SAP HANA

COMING FALL 2013

Chapter 7

Data Modeling with SAP HANA

COMING FALL 2013

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

Given 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
specifically 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 differences 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 configuration,
and then run them as-is with SAP HANA as their new database layer. The problem with this scenario
is that SAP HANA offers 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 offer 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-specific advantages in mind
will provide you with the maximum opportunities for innovative and responsive applications.

No Constraints
The primary philosophical difference 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 first 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-fly 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 specific database. JAVA, PHP, .NET,
and various other development platforms often utilize very similar abstraction approaches, thanks to
ODBC/JDBC. Unfortunately, these platforms often sacrifice 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-toprocessor, 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 buffer 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 dataintensive 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 flipped 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. Offloading all of the data-intensive operations to the database and calling those
operations as functions from the application makes the entire architecture significantly more elegant
and efficient. In fact, companies that employ SAP HANA have seen their application performances
improve by hundreds of thousands of times.

Figure 2: Paradigm Switch 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 Database

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-specific 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 configure 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 configuration 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 HANAspecific 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-specific 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 significantly 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 benefits 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
t he 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-specific 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 offering, 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-specific 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-specific 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-specific 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 different 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 flight
details from SFLIGHT and also load the carrier details from SCARR. In ABAP we could write an
inner join:

Figure 4 ABAP Open SQL with 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 the App Server

This approach can be beneficial when it is combined with ABAP table buffering. 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
offers, however, we wouldnt notice a huge difference compared to processing in ABAP. After all,
ABAP has full table buffering. Ignoring the cost of updates, if we were to buffer 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 different 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 benefit 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 unofficially 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
differentiating 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 Dot 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-specific 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 flow logic are located so close to the database.
Applications designed specifically 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 significantly 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 Runtime 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 empors 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
specifically 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 Perspective

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 files 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 offline. 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 conflicts, 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 flow 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 offers
developers a syntax that is easier for a person to read and write while still providing a logic flow 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 benefits, SQLScript provides enhanced control flow 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 Definition 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 definition of SQL views. These views have neither parameters
nor a fixed interface. Another advantage of SQLScript over SQL is that it supports local variables for
intermediate results with implicitly defined types. With standard SQL, globally visible views have to
be defined 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 Integration

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 Analytics 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.
Significantly, 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.
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 offers 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 first hello world application or to do any number of other things with SAP
HANA for free.
Additional Resources
Application development with SAP HANA is such a huge topic that it could fill 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 2013

Chapter 10

SAP HANA Hardware Overview

SAP HANA is the first SAP solution that has been built to be specifically run as an appliance and
optimized for a very specific 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 offers 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
benefits 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 off, 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 certification 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 benefited significantly 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 efforts 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
certified 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 inmemory 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 benefitted 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 efforts. Together, researchers from Intel and SAP continually explore and drive the future of
business computing
As a result of these efforts, 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 configuration 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 certified
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 flagship Intel-based servers certified and in production. Hitachi joined the list later that
year, and NEC was certified in early 2012. 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 offerings to fit 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.
General SAP HANA Hardware Specifications
SAP HANA is sold as a pre-configured, pre-installed appliance that is delivered directly from the
hardware partner. SUSE Linux SLES 11 is the only supported operating system, and Intel E7
processors are the only supported chips. Samsung RAM is currently the primary memory used by all
of the hardware partners.
Most partner systems use on-board 15k RPM hard disks (4x ratio for main memory) for datavolume 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 certified systems through a rigorous
process of end-to-end quality testing, performance testing, and continuous early access to nextgeneration technologies from all of its partners.
SAP HANA Product Availability Matrix (PAM)
The latest and most accurate PAM can always be downloaded from the SAP Service Marketplace.
Here is the August 2012 SAP HANA PAM.
Single-Node Configuration

Multi-Node Scale Out Configuration

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 certified 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 first 100TB benchmark for the 16 node scale out solution. The
data set consisted of five 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 certified 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. Significantly, 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 are 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 different 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 defined 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 this note.
SAP Hardware Partner Details
In the remaining section of this chapter, each Certified SAP HANA hardware partner was given the
opportunity to briefly describe their SAP HANA offering 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

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 efforts. Together, researchers from Intel and SAP continually explore and
drive the future of business computing. As a result of these efforts, customer solutions achieve
performance, scalability, reliability, and energy efficiency 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 Intel Xeon processor E7 family 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 family such as 30MB of L3 cache, Intel QuickPath
Interconnects, and quad-channel integrated memory controllers deliver extraordinary capabilities for
businesses of all sizes that implement SAP HANA for functionality such as business intelligence and
data analytics.
Performance Optimizations of SAP HANA with the Intel Xeon Processor E7 Family
SAP HANA benefits dramatically from high-speed Intel QuickPath processor-to-memory
interconnects and the latest processor instructions, Streaming SIMD Extensions. 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 notifications 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 2012 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.

Cisco Systems SAP HANA Solutions

As part of the Unified Appliance Environment, Cisco has developed a full portfolio of SAP HANA
appliances based on Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) spanning from the smallest Tshirt 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 unified system entirely programmable through unified, 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 simplifies operations and lowers costs. The model-based management applies
personality and configures server, network, and storage connectivity resources. Using Cisco service
profiles, which define the model, it is simple to provision servers by applying a desired configuration
to physical infrastructure. The configuration is applied quickly, accurately, and automatically,
improving business agility, staff 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,
configure, 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 simplification 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 efficiency: it helps them become more effective through
technologies that breed simplicity rather than complexity. The result is flexible, agile, highperformance, self-integrating information technology that reduces staff 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.

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. This
configuration 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. This configuration 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 configurations sharing the
same PCI slot.
SAP HANA Scale-out offering
The Cisco UCS solution that has been certified 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 configuration of the Cisco scale-out offering 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 configuration can easily scale by adding up to 3 extension bundles each
providing an additional blade enclosure for up to 4 more Cisco B440 M2 blade servers each and the
correspondent storage from EMC or NetApp.
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 profile to the
spare server. Disaster recovery (DR) scenarios can be easily implemented by using service profiles
to quickly provision servers at the DR site in conjunction with the classical replication
technologies of EMC and NetApp.
SAP HANA Support infrastructure
All Cisco UCS servers are interconnected with a low-latency, high-bandwidth 10-Gbps unified
Ethernet fabric. The unified 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 unified
fabric radically reduces the number of cables, inter-chassis 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 first-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.
Customer Success Story

Medtronic dramatically improved reporting performance, increasing the value of its customer
information, with the SAP HANA platform and Cisco Unified 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 flexibility of this new architecture will increase the value of company data as it continues to
proliferate, increasing employee efficiency 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 addition information on SAP on Cisco UCS please email
saponcisco@cisco.com

Dell SAP HANA Solutions

For more than a decade, Dell has collaborated with SAP to deliver hundreds of solutions to
customers across many industries. Dell helps organizations achieve rapid and sustainable business
results with standards-based solutions that are high-performing and end-to-end.
In addition to innovative, leading-edge hardware platforms, Dell offers access to thousands of
enterprise computing solutions consultants. Our knowledge experts incorporate their vast experience
and the knowledge they have acquired over the course of many years 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 offers 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 helps to reduce IT costs while helping organizations transform their
business. Dells innovative platforms can dramatically increase the availability and speed of business
to insightful decision making using SAP HANA.
Dells Unique SAP HANA Value Proposition
Dell and SAP have teamed up to offer an optimally configured SAP HANA solution that includes a
hardware appliance, preloaded software, and a full range of services. This solution is both reliable
and scalable, and it is offered in multiple configurations to address your specific business needs.
Dells end-to-end solutions give your organization full access to the power of SAP HANA.
Dells SAP HANA appliance solution includes:
Powerful technology Dells PowerEdge R910 incorporates Intel E7 technology, is certified
for SAP HANA, and includes everything needed to support your SAP HANA solution. This allin-one solution includes powerful system-management features that provide for seamless
implementation and management.
Enterprise class SAN storage Dell Compellent SAN Storage offers the Fluid Data storage
system, a virtualized environment that provides tremendous flexibility in storage management.
Automated data tiering 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.
Large-scale enterprise-consulting expertise Dell leverages its experience in delivering
enterprise IT and solving big data issues for global companies to provide actionable and realworld technology, strategies, and solutions. Dells Center of Excellence (CoE) is wellestablished for SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA), and mobile solution
complements.
Established methodology Dells In-Memory Computing and Analytic Methodology
(DIMCAM) incorporates best practices and guides customers through a streamlined and
successful implementation process.
Comprehensive services Dells portfolio of SAP full lifecycle services leverage industry
best practices to provide better business outcomes for SAP clients.
World-class support Dells ProSupport and Mission Critical Services help keep your SAP
HANA solution running smoothly.

The combination of Dells PowerEdge R910 platform and SAP HANA software enables users to
conduct analytics, performance management, and operations in a single system. Together, these
solutions enable a business to respond more rapidly to events that are impacting their operations.
By implementing Dells SAP HANA solution, an organization can position itself to identify and
analyze trends and patterns in order to improve planning, forecasting and price optimization.
Enterprise customers taking advantage of Dells SAP HANA platform get a cost-effective, optimized
in-memory computing solution that can increase availability and reduce risk.
Dells SAP HANA Product
The Dell PowerEdge Server R910 platform has been certified by SAP to run SAP HANA software,
thus offering customers a powerful and flexible way to query and analyze large volumes of data with
great speed. Dell customers running SAP HANA on PowerEdge R910 servers can gain real-time
access to information and analytics, enabling them to best address rapidly evolving market
environments.
Dell has also been certified by SAP to deliver the SAP Business Suite for HANA. This solution
unites business analytics and transactions on a single in-memory platform.
Dells SAP HANA appliance 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 with Intel Advanced RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability)
Technology.
Robust infrastructure, including performance resources, power efficiency, I/O, and memory
scalability.
Processing power using high-performing Intel E7 Series processors, up to 512GB of DDR3
memory, and 2 x 10Gb Optional LOM with 10 PCIe slots.
Energy-efficient system design built with Energy Smart technologies that enable power
capping, power inventory, and power budgeting within your environment. The logical
component layout of the internal components aids with airflow direction, helping to keep the
server cooler.
The SAP HANA appliance from Dell is fully contained in the PowerEdge R910 server, making use
of fast internal disks for storage and solid state cards. Solid state technology from Dell offers high
IOPs and low latency performance for the in-memory SAP HANA database. While solid state drives
are used to maintain the systems logs, a RAID group made up of internally held 15K RPM disks is
used to maintain a copy of the data image.
T-Shirt sizes offered
Dell offers several different sizes of HANA appliances to meet your needs, all of which are based on
the Dell PowerEdge R910 server platform.

Larger Scale-Out Configurations

The linear scalability of the SAP HANA software platform makes scaling to meet larger workload
demands a very straightforward process. In Jan-uary 2013, Dell announced 1, 2 and 4 terabyte scaleout configurations, and in May 2013, Dell further enhanced its SAP HANA appliance plat-form to
support incremental, non-disruptive growth from 1 to 8 terabytes, with growth increments as small as
.5TB. This flexible scalability gives customers the ability buy exactly what they need today with the
confi-dence that their infrastructure can keep pace as their needs increase.
Using the same PowerEdge R910 servers, Dell combines the superior scalability and RAS features
of this platform into a multi-node configura-tion, utilizing 10GbE networking, and sharing data across
Dell Compel-lent SAN Storage.
To supplement the power, performance, and manageability of the Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell
Compellent SAN Storage offers the additional benefit of the Fluid Data storage system, a virtualized
environment that provides tremendous flexibility 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 that are most necessary for analysis. In addition, it offers highavailability features that simplify backups, expansion, and data migration provide tangible
enhancements to the SAP HANA analytics engine infrastructure.
As always, Dell engineers its components to provide a completely integrated and fully supported
ecosystem for high-performance data analytics.
High Availability
The Dell PowerEdge R910 is a high-performance 4-socket 4U rack server designed for reliability
and scalability for mission-critical applications. Its high-availability features include:

Built-in reliability features at the CPU, memory, hardware, and hypervisor levels
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
Internal Dual SD Module providing hypervisor redundancy
Dells focus on reliability starts with product design and ends only when it has delivered a solution
that meets strict testing and quality con-trol standards. Dells SAP HANA solution leverages SAP
HANA System Replication to deliver high availability SAP HANA implementations within a data
center and disaster recovery for SAP HANA systems be-tween data centers. Disaster recovery is
supported through SAP HANAs Synchronous Replication functionality and provides remote disaster
re-covery capability for any size SAP HANA system. Synchronous Replica-tion fully mirrors the
operations of the SAP HANA system to another platform in a remote location. This ensures the
customers SAP HANA operations provide not only business continuity but also the capacity to
withstand a potentially crippling data center disaster.
SAP HANA Virtualized
Dells platform allows customers to run their development and test envi-ronments in virtualized
instances of SAP HANA. Using the VMware vSphere 5.1 virtualization environment, customers can
deploy multiple virtual machines on a single server SAP HANA platform. Virtualization lowers
development infrastructure total cost of ownership and simplifies deployment for projects and testing.
Support infrastructure
Dells SAP HANA appliance is designed to be an all-inclusive solution that comes as a preintegrated unit with all of the 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.
Support Services
Dell is an expert in SAP HANA system support. Dell has a strong systems management and support
practice as well as an in-depth understanding of SAP hardware and software solutions.
Dells SAP HANA appliance comes with 3 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 of your
technical problems by ensuring that parts and/or technicians will arrive promptly and by providing
access to Dells Critical Situation Process.
Key support features:
Onsite Response 4 hour onsite 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 as quickly as possible.
Emergency dispatch Onsite service technicians are 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 you develop the Use Case and
Business justification for a SAP HANA solution. In addition, it assists organizations in
determining whether SAP HANA is a fit for their situation.
SAP HANA Proof of Concept Using the Dell DIMCAM methodology and IMPROVE jump
start process, customers can quickly appreciate the value that SAP HANA can bring to the
decision-making process.
SAP Modernization Services Dell has developed a portfolio of Modernization Services for
SAP applications that features cloud computing, real-time analytics, and mobile applications.
Implementation SAP HANA Implementation workshops facilitate the 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
Gesellschaft fr Information und Bildung (G.I.B), based in Siegen, Germany, is an expert in SAP
software. The company builds add-ons for SAP environments, and is experiencing growing success
with its G.I.B Dispo-Cockpit solution, which improves supply chain management. G.I.B customers
want faster access to supply chain data to help them increase efficiency and make better decisions. To
achieve these objectives, G.I.B welcomed the development of SAP HANA, which enables
businesses to analyze SAP data faster and in real time.
The company was looking for a partner with significant SAP expertise, data center credibility,
robust support and consulting services, and an accredited SAP HANA appliance. So, it turned to its
long-standing IT partner: Dell. They specifically needed to meet a very tight deadline to develop a
SAP HANA platform for their new Dispo-Cockpit application for an upcoming customer
demonstration event. Together with Dell, G.I.B installed an SAP HANA appliance based on Dell
PowerEdge servers, and they collaborated with Dell ProSupport to help the project stay on
schedule.
The benefits the new system provided to G.I.B. include:
G.I.B clients can now analyze critical data in seconds, and not minutes, as was previously the
case
Business ensures SAP HANA demonstration is ready for key event
Flexible support helps G.I.B meet its business needs
G.I.B drives SAP HANA success globally with customer support
Dells technical expertise ensures that work stays on schedule

As a result of its collaboration with Dell, G.I.B successfully completed its demonstration
environment to show customers how much faster its Dispo-Cockpit software operates with SAN
HANA.
Our Dispo-Cockpit solution running on a Dell SAP HANA appliance offers customers even
more value. The response of customers has been positive and we are looking for pilot
customers to jointly install the solution. Dell supported us well, highlighting the close
relationship we have with our technology partners.
Nikolaj Schmitz, IT Manager, G.I.B

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 efficient
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 offers customers a complete portfolio of end-to-end solutions in support of SAP HANA
applications that reduce IT costs while helping organizations transform their business. Contact your
Dell Sales or Services Account Executive to learn more.

Fujitsu SAP HANA Solutions

The global partnership between Fujitsu and SAP has functioned as an innovation engine for customers
for decades. In its role as a pioneering SAP HANA partner, Fujitsu offers solutions and services that
deliver optimal support towards a SAP real-time data platform. The features of our broad approach
to support SAPs in-memory technology are:
A smart HANA infrastructure architecture for highest flexibility, scalability, and availability
Rapid time to value and a quick return on investment thanks to a unique high-quality preinstallation and staging process
Dedicated services that go far beyond traditional infrastructure services and that support
decision making, project preparation, financing, and migration.
The Fujitsu SAP HANA Global Demo Center, which customers can access remotely to test and
tangibly experience the business impact of SAP HANA
The innovative FlexFrame Orchestrator, a consistent and uniform management platform for SAP
landscapes, including SAP HANA, that reduces the overall administration work and helps
customers to save money
By combining expertise in infrastructure solutions with BI knowledge, Fujitsu professionally
supports SAP HANA projects in every respect. This outstanding engagement and excellence in
driving in-memory technology has been recognized by the bestowing of several prestigious awards;
for example, SAP Pinnacle Awards in the category Technology Innovator of the Year.
Fujitsu SAP HANA Infrastructure Offering
The Fujitsu portfolio for SAP HANA addresses the requirements of various customer segments
from specific turnkey appliances for small and midsize 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. It comprises both single-node and multi-node configurations that are suitable
for all existing usage scenarios; for example, SAP NetWeaver BW on HANA, Business Suite on
HANA, and the entire set of accelerator options.
All Fujitsu infrastructure solutions for SAP HANA are based on industry-standard PRIMERGY
servers, which represent a unique combination of Japanese-style innovation and German quality
standards. Solid reliability and excellent price performance contribute to the very favorable lifecycle
costs. Fujitsu solutions reduce operational costs through server management; benchmark-proven
energy efficiency; and innovative, market-leading technology.
Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA (designed for SAP Business One in combination with
SAP HANA or SAP Business All-in-One with SAP HANA)
Fujitsus portfolio for SAP Business One or SAP Business All-in-One in combination with SAP
HANA is the product of the companys experience as the exclusive SAP infrastructure partner in the

ramp-up phase of more than 100 successful implementations over a 12-month period. The Fujitsu
offering has been designed based on a building-block principle to ensure optimal flexibility. It allows
more than 100 combinations of certified infrastructures, staging options, and additional services.
Fujitsu PRIMERGY TX300 S7 and PRIMERGY RX350 S7 servers are SAP-certified platforms
for SAP Business One, for analytics powered by SAP HANA, and for SAP Business One on HANA.
The tower and rack systems, which are available with four different main memory options64 GB,
96 GB, 128 GB and 256 GBenable customers to tailor their configurations to suit their distinctive
environments and use cases.
Going further, Fujitsus high-quality pre-installation ensures a ready-to-connect delivery for fast
and non-disruptive HANA implementation. Note, however, that pre-installation is an optional
service. Alternatively, the partner can install the software components onsite. The staging options are:
SAP Business One, analytics powered by SAP HANA SW stack, and SUSE Linux installation
plus all necessary HW settings.
SAP Business One on HANA Appliance software and SUSE Linux installation plus all
necessary HW settings.
SUSE Linux installation only plus all necessary HW settings
The Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA is rounded off by a set of optional services
including SAP Business One Migration, partner coaching, extended maintenance for hardware or the
SUSE Linux operating system, and many others.
Fujitsu Power Appliance Single-Node (Scale-up)
The single-node configurations based on Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX600 S6 and RX900 S2 server
technology represent an attractive TCO-optimized entry-level offering that provides high performance
and capacity. These offerings are ideal for:
SAP HANA proof of concept/proof of value projects
SAP HANA environments for development, tests, quality assurance, and training
Initial SAP HANA implementations with limited scope
Business Suite on HANA
The single-node systems are available in different T-shirt sizes and also as a virtualized system
with VMware vSphere 5.1 ideally suited to drive several development and test projects
simultaneously.

Finally, customers can employ HANA single-node systems as building blocks in multi-node
environments should they decide to shift from a scale-up to a scale-out scenario.

Fujitsu Power Appliance Multi-Node (scale-out)

Fujitsu designed its multi-node offering concept for SAP HANA for productive environments and
mission-critical use. The concept is based on industry-standard PRIMERGY RX600 or RX900
building blocks combined with a shared NetApp FAS storage system.

One major benefit of the multi-node system is that it enables customers to start small and then
easily add and integrate PRIMERGY servers and storage capacity as their requirements expand. The
existing solution is certified for up to 16 TB of main memory. However, the architecture is designed
for almost unlimited scalability.
In developing this system, Fujitsu paid special attention to high availability as a major component
for mission-critical readiness of the overall SAP HANA solution. High availability is thus already
built into the smart concept, thanks to the differentiation between the worker nodes and the standby
nodes that take over when a productive server fails. The second pillar ensuring high availability is
the Network File System (NFS) and the shared NetApp FAS storage system, which ensure that all
data are constantly mirrored. Thus, if the main memory experiences a data loss, then the data can be
copied back from the storage system. Significantly, customers can satisfy their greatest system
availability demands by expanding the infrastructure to a two-site concept, in which all of the
infrastructure components and data are mirrored in a second data center. This architecture guarantees
disaster resilience with continuous operation, even in the event of a complete data center failure.
Support Infrastructure
As an additional, certified component, the Fujitsu SAP HANA infrastructure solution always includes
a PRIMERGY RX 100 Infrastructure Management Server (IMS). This mono-socket rack server
supports the following functions:
Efficient SAP HANA software maintenance: initial installation and upgrade
Seamless integration into the customers systems management landscape
Easy remote support access as a key element of the solution-maintenance offering
(SolutionContract)
System administrators benefit from the IMS component when software updates are required in
multi-node environments because the update needs to be started only once from the IMS. It is then
automatically distributed within the entire server environment.
Additional Required Software
The AISConnect software enables customers to remotely access to the SAP HANA landscape. It is

therefore a prerequisite component for the solution-maintenance offering (SolutionContract).

Support Services
Fujitsu offers its customers a complete set of infrastructure-related services that cover all project
phases from a customer-specific solution concept to continuous solution support ensured by the
Fujitsu SolutionContract. All of these services are based on proven methods, and they 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
values a sophisticated and unique approach that goes well beyond the mere assembly of hardware
components and the pre-installation of the HANA software stack and the SUSE Linux operating
system. Customer-specific settings such as IP addresses and switch configurations are also prepared
in the dedicated Fujitsu staging center. The installation is steered by dedicated scripts that help to
avoid human failure and ensure the highest possible quality. The Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP
HANA is delivered as a completely installed, individually staged, and comprehensively tested
system on the customers premises. Consequently, it can be implemented and integrated rapidly using
proven methods. Single-node implementations are generally completed within 48 hours. Multi-nodes
typically 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 specific Fujitsu solutions. It
represents a mix of proactive and reactive services that ensure that malfunctions are solved before
they can have any impact on the customers operations. This concept takes into account the fact that
Fujitsu solutions consist of hardware, software, and network products provided by multiple vendors.
However, Fujitsu is the single-point-of-contact for all of the infrastructure components involved in a
Fujitsu solution as well as their interactions. The SolutionContract offers several service level
options depending on individual requirements. One caveat: SAP software support is not part of this
contract.
Additional SAP HANA Services
The SmartStart Toolbox is a Fujitsu service portfolio that helps customers answer typical questions
such as: How can SAP HANA help me solve specific problems in my business enterprise? How can
we migrate our existing data securely? How much will the SAP HANA implementation actually cost?
The portfolio includes demos, test offerings, and professional database optimization and migration as
well as decision-making support based on cost estimates and financing 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 remotely accessible environment comprised of a system landscape for
SAP HANA applications that is maintained by a professional team of developers and consultants for
solution, database, BI, and business process matters.
Smart Start Toolbox Overview

This offering is under constant development and extension.

Innovation Uniform Management for All SAP Environments including SAP HANA with
FlexFrame Orchestrator
This new Fujitsu platform solution is based on knowledge accumulated from more than 300 projects
that successfully utilized the Fujitsu FlexFrame for SAP solution. FlexFrame for SAP increases
efficiency and reduces costs by more than 50% when it manages environments running SAP
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications. FlexFrame Orchestrator supports consistent and
uniform management of all SAP landscapes, including SAP HANA infrastructures, thus adding even
more comprehensive high-availability and disaster-recovery capabilities. This solution is designed
for all enterprise environments and for every kind of IT provisioning model, regardless of whether
the applications are run in the customers data center, delivered as a managed service or a hosting
service from an external provider, or deployed from the cloud.
Customer Success Story
Publiacqua

Since January 1, 2002, Publiacqua S.p.A. has been contracted to manage the integrated water services
for Italys Local Authority Water Board No 3 Medio Valdarno. The company has 648 employees
and turnover of 160 million. It provides services across four Italian provincesFlorence, Prato,
Pistoia, and Arezzoand 49 municipalities. Overall it serves roughly 1,277,000 people across more
than 380,000 properties.
Publiacqua launched a technology audit with an eye to building a business intelligence environment
that is flexible, fast, and helps optimize business processes. The projects primary goal was to
consolidate operating and management reporting together with strategic planning within a single
data warehouse architecture that was capable of handling a growing number of users.
After considering a number of alternatives, Publiacqua opted to integrate SAP HANA into its
existing SAP infrastructure. The company was convinced that SAP HANA was the perfect system to
create an environment that would ensure maximum infrastructure stability while providing the most
flexible and rapid processing functions.
The process of updating Publiacquas business services required a major effort from the IT
Systems Department, which had to perform to extraordinary standards while maintaining a tight focus

on the principles outlined in the business plan. With this in mind, Fujitsu and TAI (Top SELECT
Expert Partner of Fujitsu) were the perfect technology partners to help Publiacqua successfully
complete this phase of its development. Thanks to the updated infrastructure provided by Fujitsu and
TAI, an ever-increasing number of users can now utilize the businesss data assets. In addition, all
levels of management have easy, fast, and flexible access to all of the necessary reporting functions.
Furthermore, the new architecture has reduced the TCO of the business intelligence infrastructure. In
sum, then, the project has achieved all of its investment containment goals.
The choice was made to go with SAP HANA technology and Fujitsu Technology Solutions
systems, which ensure simple and certified native recovery of environments in the event of
failure, says Mauro Cacciafani, Technology Infrastructure Manager at Publiacqua.
SAP Internal Project: SAP NetWeaver BW Powered by SAP HANA
The new SAP Internal SAP NetWeaver BW powered by SAP HANA performs a central role in the
corporate analytics architecture; for example, for the combined and integrated planning with BW IP
and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation.
For this system, SAP decided to implement a Fujitsu Scale-Out HANA solution based on
PRIMERGY servers. The solutions key features are:
The HANA scale-out infrastructure is designed so there is no single point of failure.
Consequently, any failure in the infrastructure server, storage, network will be corrected
automatically with minimal, if any, downtime.
If a server fails, its functions are taken over by a standby node. More than one standby node can
be configured as an option.
The storage is designed for highest availability many disks or even a storage controller can
fail without causing operations to stop.
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
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 Unified Compute Platform Select for SAP HANA is an SAP-certified, 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 Unified 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 benefits from Hitachi Unified 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 benefit from flexible server management
capabilities and scalable architectures.
Faster time-to-value: Quicker, simpler deployment offered from a single source for ordering
and for providing services for planning and implementation. Pre-configuration 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 configuration 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
offers 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 Unified 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 effective 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 Unified Compute Platform Select for SAP HANA Small, Medium, Large meets
varying performance requirements. All three options come with Hitachi Unified Storage 130 storage
subsystems and with SAP HANA pre-loaded.

Hitachi supports SAP HANA from the smallest configuration with a single Compute Blade and 256
GB of RAM to the largest configuration 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 offers the large I/O capacity and onboard memory
required for effective implementation of SAP HANA

Figure 1 Hitachi SAP HANA Appliance Architecture

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) offers 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 Unified Compute Platform Select for SAP
HANA tailored to our customers specific 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 benefit. Hitachis full breadth of capabilities delivers one fully integrated, highlyoptimized environment that ensures the desired results in a lower-cost, lower-risk, high-businessvalue 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
find
additional
information
at www.hds.com/go/sap
or
Hitachi
Consulting:
http://www.hitachiconsulting.com/hana.

HP SAP HANA Solutions

Through a close, collaborative partnership that spans more than 20 years, HP and SAP have worked
together to offer an innovative and comprehensive portfolio of products and services that help more
than 25,000 joint customers around the world of all sizes, in all industries, solve their business
problems. This strategic partnership has ultimately resulted in product offerings like HP AppSystems
for SAP HANA as well as value-added services to implement rapid-deployment solutions for SAP
HANA.
During this partnership, HP received numerous SAP Innovation and Impact awards across all three
geographic regions, with the most recent ones being:
Technology Partner of the Year/SAP HANA Impact Award (APJ)
Innovation Partner of the Year Award (EMEA/DACH)
North American SAP Services Partner of the Year for SAP HANA
SAP Services Partner of the Year, SAP HANA
HP has also recently received the following Pinnacle awards:
Run SAP Partner of the Year winner
Global Software Solution Partner of the Year finalist
Global Technology Partner of the Year finalist
HP AppSystems for SAP HANA are built on an HP converged infrastructure for purpose-built,
integrated solutions that address the growing and complex needs of our customers. This solution
portfolio incorporates hardware, software, and services into predefined configurations for a powerful
and comprehensive set of solutions that are designed to work together. The portfolio includes:
Multiple single-node configurations (XS, S, M, M+, L) based on industry-leading HP ProLiant
DL580 and DL980 G7 Servers
An XL scale-out configuration, based on industry-leading HP BladeSystem Servers, with fully
automated failover for high availability
HPs Unique Value Proposition for SAP HANA
HP has collaborated with SAP on in-memory technologies from the beginning In 2006 it became the
first SAP partner to design and deliver SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator. Based on
that experience, HP has developed the core competencies to deliver successful implementations of
HP AppSystems for SAP HANA. The company offers a portfolio of six configurations (XS, S, M,
M+, L, XL) to meet the needs of any-sized business.
HP has implemented more than 77,000 SAP installations worldwide, and HP infrastructure runs
nearly half of all SAP installations in the world. In fact, HP is a global leader in SAP operations,
supporting 1.7 million users in more than 50 countries. in addition, it has developed a core
competency for designing and building SAP appliance-based solutions, successfully implementing
them on customer sites, and offering industry-leading support services to ensure optimal performance
throughout their lifecycle.

Industry-Leading TechnologyOptimized for SAP HANA

HP designed the HP AppSystems for SAP HANA on industry-leading x86 HP ProLiant DL580 and
DL980 G7 Servers for single-node SAP HANA implementations, and on HP ProLiant BL680 G7
Server Blades for larger scale-out requirements, providing a large contiguous memory footprint for
faster in-memory applications. The scale-out solution in the portfolio of HP AppSystems for SAP
HANA is based on HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Server Blades, the industry-leading blade solution that is
ideal for SAP HANA scale-out implementations.
For the SAP HANA scale-out technology, HP delivers a unique storage platform based on the HP
X9300 Network Storage System that offers unlimited scale-out capability and disaster-tolerant
features. Designed to be extremely scalable, flexible, and cost-efficient, HP X9300 Network Storage
Systems deliver excellent performance and a modular storage infrastructure to accommodate
unprecedented storage growth and performance.
HP AppSystems for SAP HANA
Based on HP Converged Infrastructure products
Multiple configuration choices, sized for your companys needs (XS, S, M, M+, L, XL)
HP ProLiant DL580 G7 Servers or HP ProLiant DL980 G7 Servers for XS to L singlenode configurations
HP ProLiant BL680 G7 Server Blades for XL highly scalable configurations for up to 8 TB
of compressed data
HP Storage for log files and data files
HP X9300 Network Storage Systems for scale-out cluster file systems
HP Networking with HP Virtual Connect and ProCurve
HP ProLiant Service packages and HP Insight Control management software
HP Fast Start Service
HP Technology Support Services
SAP HANA T-Shirt Sizes Offered

Scale-out Offering
HP offers a unique scale-out offering that provides the high availability your business demands today,
as well as a future-ready solution that can grow as your needs grow. This design significantly reduces
the costs, difficulties, and down-time associated with future field upgrades.
HPs scale-out solution is based on proven, industry-leading technology including:
HP BL680c G7 Server Blades are the blade solution that is ideal for SAP HANA scale-out
implementations for balanced computing to handle the most demanding enterprise class
applications.
The HP X9300 IBRIX Network Storage System is a unique storage platform that offers unlimited
scale-out capability and disaster-tolerant features.
HP P6500 Enterprise Virtual Arrays (EVA) delivers high-throughput, mission-critical,
redundant storage for data and log files, SYS files, config files, traces, and more.
HP networking solutions like HP Virtual Connect for simplifying and virtualizing the
connectivity between the HANA blade nodes, the network, and the shared storage.
HPs scale-out solution provides high availability through a stand-by blade with automatic
failover, in addition to disaster-tolerant technology. HP offers both synchronous and asynchronous
disaster-tolerance solutions, available either as standard integrated functionality of the scale-out
solution or as an add-on. These solutions are designed to 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.
High Availability and Disaster Recovery

With HP AppSystems for SAP HANA, HP has delivered a fully automated failover mechanism for
high availability, a stand-by blade that automatically is activated upon a failure of any node in the
cluster. Only one node is needed, regardless of the number of nodes in the cluster.
As mentioned earlier, disaster tolerance is designed into HPs SAP HANA technology today.
Consequently, once SAP HANA software is released with disaster-tolerance capability, HPs scaleout solution is already equipped to enable this functionality.
Storage Infrastructure
HP PCIe IO Accelerator for HP ProLiant Servers is a direct-attach, solid-state PCIe card-based
solution for enhancing application performance. Based on Multi-Level Cell (MLC) and Single-Level
Cell (SLC) NAND Flash technology, these devices are ideal for accelerating I/O performance and
maintaining SAP HANA log file data.
For mission-critical deployments and shared-storage infrastructures, the HP X9300 IBRIX
Network Storage System features an NFS cluster file system and support for single-node high
availability. This system is designed for high availability and extreme scalability while delivering
excellent performance and a modular storage infrastructure to accommodate unprecedented storage
growth.
Additional Software
HP ensures global quality standards by preloading and configuring SAP HANA software at the
factory before delivery. No additional software is necessary for the HP AppSystems 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 HP to further enhance your solution.
HP AppSystems for SAP HANA can be easily monitored utilizing HP Systems Insight Manager
(SIM), available both with HP ProLiant servers and as a free download from HP. This powerful yet
intuitive solution provides hardware-level management for system administrators to improve system
uptime and health. SIM is also available as a component of the Insight Control suite of management
software, which is available for purchase from HP.
HP Insight Control server management software unleashes the management capabilities built into
every HP ProLiant server. The result is superior management of physical and virtual servers, from
any location. Insight Control integrates specific management functionality into HP Systems Insight
Manager to manage server health, deploy and migrate servers quickly, optimize power consumption
and performance, and control servers from anywhere.
Support Services
HP delivers a comprehensive solution that encompasses hardware, software, and services from a
single resource. HP delivers the full lifecyle of services required to progress from the assessment and
design of an SAP HANA solution to the build, implementation, and support of the solution.
Design and Build
With every SAP HANA system, HP includes the resources to assist with the sizing and configuration
of an SAP HANA environment. This includes the sizing of the appropriate system, in addition to
recommendations concerning the configurations 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 we 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 we ship the order to your location.
Implementation
Delivery of the SAP HANA appliance is not the final 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 we deliver. The basic foundational
service includes the following:
Incorporation of SAP HANA in the local network
Connection of SAP HANA to source systems
Implementation of basic security and authorizations
Configuration of SAP BusinessObjects front end or Microsoft Excel to communicate with SAP
HANA
Validation of the integrated environment and the end-to-end functionality of the SAP HANA
system
Review of the access to, and use of, the SAP in-memory computing studio
Installation and configuration troubleshooting
Support
After a successful implementation, HP turns over support of your SAP HANA solution to HPs
support services team, which delivers HP Proactive Care Service. 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
fit your needs. Each customized plan includes delivering updates to your hardware firmware 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 first 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.
Additional SAP HANA services from HP
HP provides services to help you identify your strategy, quantify your business opportunity,
computing your ROI, and implementing an HP AppSystem for SAP HANA into your SAP landscape.
These services were designed exclusively for SAP HANA. They include the following services.
The HP Business Intelligence Master Plan Service is an overarching BI strategy-development
service designed to help you define 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 ServicesSAP HANA Appliance Software Service Pack 3 supports the
deployment of an HP AppSystem for SAP HANA as the database for SAP NetWeaver Business
Warehouse. HP is offering a migration package for current SAP NetWeaver BW customers to
assist them in migrating from their existing database to an HP AppSystem for SAP HANA. In
addition to migration services, this package includes complimentary phone assessment services,
asset recovery services, and financial services, as listed below.
On-site migration assessment workshops
SAP NetWeaver BW upgrade service
SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 migration to a database built on SAP HANA
SAP NetWeaver BW optimization for the SAP HANA database
HP Financial Services

HP Financial Services can make your transition to SAP HANA easy and cost effective, and it can
help you get started even sooner. You can expand your organizations SAP HANA initiatives by
taking advantage of an efficient, effective way to maximum return from IT and BI solutions, while
minimizing risk and aggressively managing costs. HP Financial Services offers 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 migrating your environment to SAP HANA will involve extra effort and
incremental costs. To help ease the transition, HP and SAP offer a migration-assistance package that

features a combination of HP financing options and a portfolio of migration services you can use to
clear the path to faster data analysis.
HP Leads the Way with First-ever 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
different 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.
The results achieved by HP on the standard performance benchmark demonstrate the ability of an
HP AppSystem for the SAP HANA database to deliver on todays new customer requirements. These
systems have revolutionized user access to data, and they deliver outstanding, scalable analytic
performance in seconds versus hours on massive, multidimensional databases.
Posting the FIRST RESULT on the SAP EML standard application benchmark, a single-node,
medium-sized HP AppSystem for SAP HANA configuration achieved an amazing 65,990 ad-hoc
query navigation steps per hour with 1 billion records (certification number 2012023) on the SAP
HANA platform. (These are the results as of May 16, 2012.) Additional details can be found at
http://www.sap.com/benchmark
Customer Success Stories
For an example of the outstanding results that can flow 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 reflect their smartphone and data
needs. A key component of the companys marketing strategy is to conduct highly targeted customer
communications concerning mobile phone services and offers. Unfortunately, its previous analytics
solution was too complex and could not track customer offers in a timely way.
The solutionbuilt on HP Converged Infrastructure in collaboration with SAP AG and deployed
in just two weeksenhances 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 differentiated 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.
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 different 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

smoothlyand with more accurate data. For example, the increased computing speeds enable the
company to analyze data 200-300 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 affected 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 realtime 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 offers 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 HAHA 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 offers 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
100-100,000x 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 offers a preinstalled, preconfigured, 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 M-Size

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

SAP HANA deployed on IBM System x Workload Optimized Solutions with the IBM General
Parallel File System (GPFS) offer simple, seamless scalability for your SAP HANA environment. In
addition, IBM offers installation and managed services to help you manage your SAP HANA
infrastructure cost-effectively. 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 methodologies 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 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 offer 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 Systems with GPFS Power SAP HANA
SAP HANA, delivered on IBM eX5 enterprise servers with fifth-generation IBM Enterprise XArchitecture technology (eX5), helps 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 enterprise servers with the Intel Xeon processor E7 family combines
the speed and efficiency 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 is the first to decouple memory and input/output (I/O) from the processor moving
processing power from whats theoretically possible to whats actually possible. IBM System x
servers with fifth-generation IBM eX5 technology enable SAP HANA customers to benefit from a
shared vision that delivers simplicity and automation designed to help organizations accelerate
business outcomes while lowering TCO.
IBM eX5 enterprise servers with Intel Xeon processors offer extreme memory and performance
scalability. With improved hardware economics and new technology offerings, IBM is helping SAP
realize a real-time enterprise with in-memory business applications. IBM eX5 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
significantly greater memory capacity to deliver superior performance to previous-generation
processors. With up to ten cores in each processor, the four-socket x3850 X5 can be scaled to 40
cores and 80 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 features such as Predictive Failure Alerts warn ahead of

potential hardware failures, trigger preemptive action, and help maintain application availability. In
addition, eX5 features such as eXFlash solid-state disk technology can yield significant performance
improvements in storage access, helping deliver an optimized system solution for SAP HANA.
Standard features in the solution such as the High IOPS MLC Duo Adapter for IBM System x can also
provide fast access to storage.
Workload Optimized Solutions
IBM offers several Workload Optimized Solution models for SAP HANA. These models, based on
the 2-socket x3690 X5 and 4-socket x3950 X5, are optimally designed and certified by SAP and can
be ordered as a single appliance part number. They are delivered preconfigured 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 configurations for SAP
HANA. The x3690 X5based configurations offer 128 to 256 GB of memory and the choice of only
solid-state disk or a combination of spinning disk and solid-state disk. The x3950 X5based
configurations leverage the scalability of eX5 and offer the capability to pay as you grow starting
with a 2-processor, 256 GB configuration and growing to a 8-processor, 1 TB configuration.
The IBM System x3950 X5 is the workload-optimized version of the 4U x3850 X5 server, the new
flagship server of the IBM x86 server family. These systems are designed for maximum utilization,
reliability, and performance for compute-intensive and memory-intensive workloads such as SAP
HANA. This server is ideal for the medium- and large-scale SAP HANA implementations. The
x3950 X5based configurations integrate either the 320 GB High IOPS SD Class SSD PCIe adapter
or the 640 GB High IOPS MLC Duo Adapter. Note: An 8-socket configuration uses a scalability kit
that combines the 7143-H2x* with the 7143-H3x* to create a single 8-socket, 1 TB system.
IBM and SAP have worked closely together to validate each of the workload-optimized
configurations and have also collaborated on performance testing. Performance testing of SAP HANA
running on IBM eX5 enterprise servers and have demonstrated the ability to handle 10,000 queries
per hour against 1.3 TB of data, returning results within seconds.
Outstanding results like this are founded on years of joint product development which allows IBM
and SAP offerings to be integrated for simplified implementation. This is true of IBMs DB2 database
which is tightly aligned with SAP HANA for seamless replication of data when using the Sybase
replication server.
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 first vendor to have
multi-node scale-out configurations and currently has 4-node x3690 X5 and x3950 X5 and 16 node
x3950 X5 solutions validated. You can start with one 256GB node, upgrade to a 512GB node, and
grow your environment to 16 nodes. This modular approach enables you to invest in a WorkloadOptimized 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 High-Availability
(HA) node in your configuration.
These multi-node scale-out configurations do not require an external Storage Area Network (SAN)
or multiple SANs. The IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) software in these configurations
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 file 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 and availability to help eliminate production outages and provide disruptionfree maintenance and capacity upgrades
Seamless capacity and performance scaling along with the proven reliability features and
flexible architecture of GPFS help your company foster innovation by simplifying your
environment and streamlining data workflows for increased efficiency for SAP HANA
applications.
IBM Intelligent Cluster integrated packaging and assembly can help speed installation and
deployment of multi-node scale-out HA configurations as well as reduce implementation risk if you
require all of your HANA server nodes preassembled and packaged in a rack.
By implementing SAP HANA on eX5 enterprise servers with GPFS, you can realize faster
performance, less complexity and greater efficiency 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 Systems
Services to speed deployment
To help speed deployment and simplify maintenance of your x3690 X5 and x3950 X5: Workload
Optimized Solution for SAP HANA, IBM Lab Services and IBM Global Technology Services offer
quick-start services to help set up and configure the appliance and health-check services to ensure it
continues to run optimally. In addition, IBM also offers skills and enablement services for
administration and management of IBM eX5 enterprise servers. IBM offers Quick Start
implementation services to help you install and configure your SAP HANA appliance and
HealthCheck services to help you manage and maintain your SAP HANA appliance. IBM also offers
skills enablement services to provide technical training to your teams that need to manage the HANA
appliance. If you determine that you do not want to manage the SAP HANA appliance, then IBM
offers a Managed Service that can provide 24x7 monitoring and management of the SAP HANA
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
offerings and grouped efforts 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 benefits 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 offer financing 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 eX5
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 massive amount
of data produced daily.
The NEC High-Performance Appliance for SAP HANA incorporates the truly innovative inmemory 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 16 years.
Currently, NEC offers both of scale-up (XS, S and L-size; including OLTP special purpose
configuration) and scale-out high-availability clustered configurations.
All the NEC SAP HANA appliances are constructed on the Express5800 Scalable Enterprise
Server that offers upward scalability to 8 sockets and 2TB memory, fault-management functionalities
through EXPRESSSCOPE Engine SP2, and ViridentTM FlashMax device for high-workload
environments on scale-up configuration.
Speed of inter-node communication network is one of key factors at distributed cluster
configuration. NECs certified configuration aggregates four 10Gb-ethernet channels with a bonding
channel for load balancing and fault tolerant; that has 40Gb/sec theoretical bandwidth.
Also, data and log volumes of clustered configuration is constructed on OCFS2 filesystem that fully
leverages open source technology, on top of NEC iStorage M500 which is highly reliable, scalable
and power-effective storage system.

Why Express5800 is ideal platform for SAP HANA

High-performance Express5800 Scalable Enterprise Servers, which leverage NECs long heritage in
the development of supercomputer and mainframe technologies to achieve highly fault tolerant and
flexible system expandability, are leveraged as the platform for SAP HANA. The flagship NEC
Express5800/A1080a model has capabilities to mount up to 8CPUs and 2TB RAM within a single 7U
chassis, and NEC Express5800/A1040a also has capabilities to mount up to 4CPU and 1TB RAM.
One noteworthy hardware feature is its EXPRESSSCOPE Engine SP2, a uniquely developed
device by NEC based on our experience in UNIX servers, enables to monitor and control
Express5800/A1080a and A1040a with remote and centralized interface regardless of the power
status of servers. It significantly increases maintainability and reduces downtime of SAP HANA.

SAP HANA T-Shirt sizes offered

Support Infrastructure
Virident FlashMax is a Storage Class Memory (SCM) solution that offers enterprises
unconditional performance combined with the industrys highest storage capacity in the smallest
footprint. FlashMAX has been designed from the ground up to fully exploit modern computer
architectures, such as SAP HANA, which leverage many fast CPU cores and the PCI Express
interconnect bus to deliver maximum application performance. It also offers supreme performance
without compromise over the entire lifetime of the device, across all application workloads, even
when the device is full or nearly full.
The scale-up configurations of NEC High-Performance Appliance for SAP HANA leverage
Virident FlashMax to implement Log volume backup which is a key component to achieving smooth
collaboration with existing database tools.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is a fine-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 offers 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 missioncritical 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 EXPRESSSCOPE Engine SP2 of Express5800 servers and ESMPRO/ServerAgent
installed 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 offer mission-critical grade
support service from hardware to applications, for the global market.
NEC was one of the first 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 NEC sales representative in your region.

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.9 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, certified experts in areas such as architecture,
deployment, and development. Throughout the implementation process, youll need to think about how
SAP HANA fits 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/B3TRsEpwI0
It All Starts with Good Planning

The more attention you devote to planning your implementation, the more you will benefit 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 specific business problems. To accomplish these goals, that partner must ask the
critical questions that mean the difference between success and failure and be able to answer these
questions correctly.
Although the specific 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 first 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 offer any predefined 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 signoff 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, lowcost implementation that mitigates risk to both business and IT.
Your solution partner should be able to offer a wide range of solution scenarios including end-toend project implementation experience coupled with a holistic delivery methodology. For many
projects, prepackaged fixed-price offerings based on globally compiled best practices, such as SAP
Rapid Deployment solutions, can accelerate deployment while limiting costs. Such solutions include
preconfigured 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 specific 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
benefits of this new technology. In addition to educating your technical and IT staff, 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 skillstransfer opportunities.
Want to get the most from your SAP HANA platform? The SAP Education organization offers courses and
certifications to give technical consultants and internal IT staff 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 qualified 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 specific 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
identified. Such installations offer 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 offload 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 different 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 buffer 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
HANAfied versions of several existing reports. These reports consist of three preconfigured
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 offload 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 figures 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.

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.

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 figures along different
dimensions including Material Groups, Vendors, Plants, and Purchasing Organizations to gain instant
insight into inefficiencies 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.

Accelerated Shipping Reporting

The SAP HANA content for Shipping enables shipping and warehouse managers to check basic
shipping and stock key figures 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.

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 specific objects to be inmemory optimized as necessary depending on the companys requirements.
SAP BW is the first 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 simplifies 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 flexibility 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 suffers 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 different ways to use SAP HANA, and it stands to reason that
there are also many different 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 specific 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 packaged solutions such as
SAP Rapid Deployment solutions or accelerators. These solutions contain preconfigured software,
technical content, and implementation services, and they are priced and scoped for rapid
implementation.
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 specific 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 suffer 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 difficult 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 fixed scope? SAP
Rapid Deployment solutions can help you implement SAP HANA using a package of preconfigured
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. Examples are:
SAP ERP Rapid Deployment solution for accelerated finance and controlling with SAP HANA
SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for profitability analysis with SAP HANA
SAP Rapid Deployment solution for customer segmentation with SAP HANA
SAP is continuously adding more Rapid Deployment solutions. To see whats available today,
visit: www.sap.com/solutions/rds.

Now that weve reviewed typical implementation scenarios, lets review what a successful
implementation requires.
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 identification. 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
defined 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 different views to it. These models are adapted, modified, and enhanced to
improve performance. For packaged applications this content is delivered by SAP, but can be
adapted to your specific needs. Custom development projects will include both traditional
application development and modeling aspects.
5. QA/testing. This is the final 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 define requirements and to ask about any proposed report
modifications. 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 difficult 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 fits all, there is no single timeline for an SAP HANA project. Each project
is different; 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 first 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) identified during assessment. A key component of the
successful delivery of SAP HANA is ensuring that the final solution meets the companys
requirements and expectations, as identified in the original use case scenario.
In addition to defining 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 fill 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 inmemory 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 configuration and application of any necessary patches. The
system architect also performs SAP source system configuration 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.
Certified 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 different development capabilities of SAP HANA (SQLScript, Business Function Library,
etc.).

Depending on the specific scope and architecture of your project, you may need development
experts in the specific 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 first 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 financial 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 first example is a European consumer chemicals company that specializes in developing new
fragrances and flavors. 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 benefits of following a methodology built on education, use case
identification, 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 flexible 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. Define (or redefine) specific 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 clarifications 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 offerings, 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 influential 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 refining your use case offline before you start the project. An important part
of this step is to accurately define success up front. This helps reduce wasteful scoping efforts
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.
Definitely 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. Profile the data, and fix 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 financial 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/thevalue-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 find 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 efficiently, 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 difference 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.
9 Gard Little and Elaina Stergiades, IDC, Help Rethinking the Art of the Possible with SAP HANA Services, March 2012.

Chapter 12

SAP HANA Resources

COMING FALL 2013

The rest of the story.

Since 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 benefit from the
information in this book as well.

About the Author

Jeffrey Word, Ph.D.

Follow Jeff on

: @jeff_word

Jeffrey 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 Reconfigure Your Business
Relationships for Competitive Advantage (2009) and SAP NetWeaver for Dummies (2004).
Jeffrey has more than 18 years experience in IT strategy and business consulting working with
Fortune 1000 companies. Over the last 13 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.