Overcoming the Demand of SAP HANA by Collaborating Centiq, IBM & SAP

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Posted by Matt Lovell

Understanding the demand of SAP HANA

The SAP HANA world can often be misunderstood. With companies taking on large amounts of data on a daily basis, the need for SAP’s software is vital. It’s noted by many who implement business-critical systems, that whilst there is a certain price point surrounding SAP HANA, the general consensus is that the premium-price will deliver value to the set up.

The challenges we hear when working with companies to help design, implement and maintain their HANA environments usually come down to similar worries: cost, implementation time, and the strength of the business case analytics.

Getting the most value from a managed service

At Centiq, we have devoted ourselves to building services around the challenges that organisations face when starting new SAP HANA projects or supporting existing HANA environments. The objective being to enable the customer to make the right decisions, choose the correct infrastructure partners, develop the tools most needed to meet new operational challenges HANA brings and by utilising the huge wealth of knowledge that Centiq have attained focusing on HANA since the first UK HANA installations as a SAP as a Silver Partner and chosen infrastructure vendors.

Infrastructure design

IBM on Power have been a welcomed provider of infrastructure for SAP customers recently, dedicating over 30,000 employees to SAP products. More recently IBM have entered the SAP HANA market just in time for the larger organisations are starting to work out their technology strategy for business critical workloads on HANA. Cenitq are able to help IBM translate their theoretical abilities to working designs with a wealth of real world experience running large HANA deployments with a variety of cluster and replication designs.

The need to drive down costs for customers has been a high priority for both Centiq and IBM on Power. During Centiq’s recent research paper on debunking the myths of SAP HANA, using a poll made up of 250 UK based SAP HANA users, the results showed out of 133 respondents who had SAP HANA in production, that 98% of them came in on budget during their roll out. Making best use of the consolidation strategy for IBM POWER through a flexible TDI design will be key to creating a cost optimised IBM deployment

What does successful implementation look like?

A successful implementation is one that is delivered on time and provides a reliable service for many years to follow. A good design is key to this success.We stand by keeping a completely transparent approach with the customer, highlighting the pros and cons of the proposed HANA design and ensuring the right decisions are made to match the design to the requirements. This leads to and efficient project and a collaborative partnership and positive customer experience.

Successful SAP HANA implementations to drive businesses forward through simplified IT and improved business insite. There are broadly two types of HANA usages, consisting of: OLTP (On Line Transaction Processing), which is handled by Suite on HANA and S/4HANA; OLAP (On Line Analytical Processing) with Business Warehouse (BW) or B/4HANA..

Incorporating analytics

Analytics used to be the main topic when dealing with Big Data, however HANA can work across both transactional processing and analytics. In the SAP HANA research paper completed by Centiq, 96% of respondents confirmed they used SAP HANA for OLTP functions, whereas 92% used the system for more analytical purposes. These worlds are being driven closer together with HANA, giving opportunities for greater levels of innovation, making data create value and not just cost

Whilst the decision around SAP HANA can often be daunting for teams to face, having seamless collaborations and a rich knowledge-base between highly-skilled partners can be a reassuring thought to keep in your back pocket.

To read further insight on SAP HANA and overcoming the demanding requirements it could create, download the latest research whitepaper on Debunking the 3 Myths of HANA.