It’s a now a little over a year since SAP launched its High-Performance Analytic Application (HANA) at its 2011 SAPphireNOW event. And, it seems that many organizations dealing with Big Data – particularly those looking to leverage data at real-time or near real-time pace – are turning to HANA. At the recently held 2012 SAPphireNOW user conference, SAP boasted almost 57,000 HANA end-users and seven different hardware partners.
The buzz around HANA – particularly in the SAP world – is gaining momentum. SAP plans to roll out support for the enterprise resource planning (ERP) module, within its flagship Business Suite product family, on theHANA in-memory database platform. This development is penciled in for the fourth quarter of 2012, with other Business Suite modules to follow.
But what’s the big deal about SAP HANA – what makes it different from a crowd of emergent databases aimed at addressing the proliferation of enterprise data, and which types of organizations stand to benefit from its unique capabilities?
What’s the big deal about SAP HANA?
Well, HANA – a data warehouse (DW) appliance designed for processing high volumes of transactional and operational data in real-time – is able to copy and synchronize data from a DW or other application (ERP for example) in real-time.
Therefore, by running in parallel to a source application, HANA enables end-users to query expansive data sets in real-time – users don’t have to wait for scheduled reports to run before they begin data exploration.
According to SAP, HANA can scan 500 billion Point of Sale (POS) records in just seconds.
Why are solutions like HANA going to become increasingly important?
So why has SAP HANA found such a receptive audience? The reasons are three-fold and part of an overarching trend towards data saturation:
- The cost of technology and techniques for collecting and analyzing enterprise data to produce meaningful and actionable information is dropping significantly. That is, organizations are now collecting more information simply because it’s viable to do so.
- The rapid expansion of existing data sources.
- The emergence of new data sources and types – think social media.
In fact, market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the volume of data generated per year will reach a staggering 35 zettabytes – that’s equivalent to 35 million petabytes – by 2020.
Research and advisory giant,Gartner, predicted in its recent report – Pattern-Based Strategy: Getting value from Big Data – that worldwide data volumes are growing at a minimum rate of 59 percent per year.
What’s particularly noteworthy, is that organizations that collect larger amounts of data are also expected to generate meaningful reports based on that data in shorter timeframes.
Aberdeen Group’s report Big Data, Big Moves found that 78% of organizations reporting off Big Data sets (those organizations reporting off data sets from 6 terabytes to more than 1,000 terabytes) had to deliver reports within a day of a request being lodged, with 27% requiring data delivery at near real-time speeds.
In stark contrast, only 50% of organizations dealing with ‘small data’ (organizations reporting off data sets of less than 6 terabytes) had to deliver reports within a day of a request being lodged, with just 10% requiring data delivery at near real-time speeds.
This marriage, of proliferating volume and demand for speed, represents a significant challenge for many organizations as they attempt to leverage their data assets for competitive advantage, and a vast opportunity for products like SAP HANA.
Where to next?
Centiq’s IBM SAP In-Memory Appliance for High-Performance Analytics (HANA) combines SAP software components with optimised IBM architecture to provision a multi-purpose, data-source agnostic solution in a fully certified black-box appliance.
Expert knowledge combined with innovation through partnership with IBM and SAP delivering rapid time to results.
Centiq’s mobile SAP HANA appliances (256GB and 512GB) are provided for Proof of Value projects within your existing IT environment to assess your specific use-cases.
Request your Proof of Value black box appliance now on 0115 951 9666 or sap@centiq.co.uk or click here to read more