What is SAP HANA?
SAP HANA is an innovative technology based on In-Memory Computing. In general terms, it involves transferring the management of huge data sets from the disk space into the operating memory.
The basic element of the SAP HANA platform is its unique SAP HANA In-Memory Database. The fundamental feature that distinguishes the SAP In-Memory Database from a classic relational database is that it resides entirely in RAM and uses the disk system for backup. This feature makes the speed of data operations a hundred times faster by eliminating disk input/output operations with database queries. In addition, SAP HANA includes computing accelerating elements that fully uses multi-core processor architecture, multithreading and rapid data access (SAP In-Memory Computing). The combination of the above technologies considerably accelerates access to data and provides results of complicated calculations in real time.
The development of the in-memory technology is enabled by the parallel development of the hardware layer. The SAP HANA platform requires dedicated and SAP certified servers – dubbed the SAP Appliance (SAP In-Memory Appliance). These are open-architecture servers, optimised in terms of capacity and performance (based on Intel processors), which are supplied by leading SAP hardware partners, such as Dell, HP, IBM, Cisco and Fujitsu. The Appliance is equipped with high performance Intel processors (Westmere EX) and RAM (ECC DDR3). It also has a unique disk system, which is necessary for, for example, launching SAP HANA after a downtime.
Operations based on the SAP HANA Database in RAM are ultra-fast. The Appliance must enable an equally rapid data dump from RAM to the disk system to backup transactions processed in RAM. To make it possible, The Appliance is equipped with Fusion-io ioDrive memory cards (using the fastest PCle interface) or SSD sets.
SAP HANA is a new generation IT platform which resides entirely in RAM. It is a combination of the most advanced developments in software and hardware.
Scenarios for using SAP HANA
There are numerous applications of the SAP HANA platform, and, due to its unique character, new ones emerge every day. To facilitate their classification I suggest dividing them into four application groups, hereinafter referred to as scenarios:
- Scenario 1. Standalone SAP HANA Platform
- Scenario 2 SAP HANA for SAP Business Warehouse (BW)
- Scenario 3. SAP HANA for SAP Business Suite (ERP/ CRM/ SCM)
- Scenario 4. Dedicated SAP HANA Applications.
Scenario 1: Standalone SAP HANA Platform
Standalone SAP HANA can be used as an ultra-fast data warehouse. Due to a unique use of hardware resources and unique software, which enables the storage of data in read-optimised structures (column store), SAP HANA based data warehouses can be up to 100 times faster than current solutions. The dramatic, more than two-fold increase in efficiency is useful in every data analysis systems. In many cases, analysing data and responding to changes becomes possible in real-time. Because SAP HANA has no platform of its own, SAP BusinessObjects BI solution is recommended for creating reports.
Scenario 2. SAP HANA for SAP Business Warehouse (BW)
A particularly interesting alternative for companies who have already been using the SAP BW data warehouse is the implementation of SAP HANA to replace the traditional database (HANA DB for SAP BW). This enables a significant acceleration of both loading information into the SAP data warehouse and reporting these data, without incurring costs related to changing the existing solutions.
Migration to the new SAP HANA-based database is a relatively simple and quick operation as compared to traditional projects in data warehouse development in any tool.
The SAP HANA DB for SAP BW solution is available starting from SAP BW v7.3, and many customers will also require a project to upgrade their data warehouse. Apart from a multiple increase in the reporting speed, such a project may result in changes in data structures within the warehouse. Traditionally, in a data warehouse, individual transaction items (individual lines) and aggregated data are stored and maintained separately. With the use of SAP HANA as a basis for the warehouse, in many cases it is possible to give up the aggregated form and store only single data items and report based on them. It significantly enhances the data warehouse management.
Scenario 3: SAP HANA for SAP Business Suite (BW)
On the 10th of January, 2013, SAP confirmed the introduction of the SAP Business Suite product powered by SAP HANA to its offer. Although SAP presents hundreds of novelties every year, this product is unique and deserves special attention. It takes solutions such as ERP, CRM or SCM systems to a totally new dimension of in-memory processing. Even if reporting systems based on this kind of processing are proposed by other manufacturers, until now, transaction processing systems were offered in the classic architecture and based on traditional databases. SAP introduces a revolution and challenges its competitors.
Equipping proven SAP transaction processing systems, such as SAP ERP, with an in-memory processing SAP HANA platform boosts the system performance. This technological change can be compared to changing the means of transport from a coach to a supersonic airliner. In such an example, passengers gain not only time, but also new possibilities to use it. They can fly farther (to another continent); they can make several trips instead of one; they can also materialise plans they have not even dreamt of until now – not to mention the comfort of such trip. This is similar for the SAP HANA platform for SAP Business Suite – enhancing performance is a key that unlocks new possibilities.
Until now, systems for collecting and for analysing information available on the market and based on the traditional relational database (RDBMS) had to be implemented separately. One separate system was used for transaction processing (OLTP) and another system for analytical reporting (OLAP). That stemmed from the fact that the traditional, relational database can be parameterized for effective work, either with OLTP data or OLAP data, but never with both of them.
First of all, effective reporting required extracting data from the transaction processing system and then processing it into a form suitable for reporting before uploading to a data warehouse. The additional RDBMS database for reporting (data warehouse) had to be equipped with structures accelerating access to data, such as indexes and aggregates, which in turn increased IT maintenance costs.
SAP HANA eliminates the above limitations of RDBMS relational databases and combines features of both transactional and analytical databases. Greatly enhanced performance, allows for up to a thousand-fold acceleration in analytical applications, and enables reporting directly from the SAP transaction processing system, without prejudice to simultaneously performed transactions.
By applying the SAP HANA platform in SAP Business Suite systems, it is possible to use processing in real time in cases where, until now, tasks were performed in the background due to poor performance. Growing business requirements and the company’s response time to signals from the market can eventually be efficiently supported by an IT system.
SNP EasyInfoAccess is a ready-to-use product which enables convenient reporting directly from the SAP ERP system. As early as in 2012 – anticipating the upcoming revolution – SNP started to develop the SNP EasyInfoAccess product. This tool is based on the user-friendly SAP BusinessObject BI platform. With predefined information areas. it allows reporting to be launched virtually from the moment when the installation of the solution is completed (the classic implementation is not required). It makes unified, graphic and user friendly reporting tools available within the whole SAP ERP system. It provides an easily maintained portal to manage access to shared analysis and documents. With the SNP EasyInfoAccess for the SAP ERP tool, based on the SAP HANA platform, a professional analytical system can be created within a few weeks.
Scenario 4: Dedicated SAP HANA Applications
SAP AG has independently prepared a set of applications that accelerate SAP HANA-based business operations. In addition, it encourages other companies to create their own applications using this platform. These efforts resulted in numerous products that are useful for business. One of the first ones, using the potential of the in-memory processing architecture, was SAP CO-PA Accelerator.
This tool, powered by the SAP HANA technology, accelerates reporting within Controlling-Profitability Analysis (CO-PA). It enables a limited implementation of the new technology in the area of result analysis, which is usually critical for a company. The implementation of the SAP CO-PA Accelerator applies only to operational reporting in the ERP system and does not force any simultaneous setup of other BI solutions.
Migrations to the SAP HANA platform
For an independent SAP HANA platform, and for dedicated applications based on this platform (scenarios 1 and 4), migration usually involves loading existing data onto the new SAP HANA installation. In the case of SAP BW, ERP, CRM and SCM systems (scenarios 2 and 3), SAP imagines the migration path enabling an easy transfer of the existing solutions to the new platform, without any impact on business operations.
The migration procedure of SAP (ERP, CRM, SCM and BW) systems with a RDBMS database to the system with a SAP HANA database has four steps, with the use of tools delivered by SAP:
- Update of the SAP system with RDBMS database to an edition compliant with SAP HANA (ERP 6.0 EHP6, CRM 7.0 EHP2, SCM 7.0 EHP2, and BW 7.3).
- Export within a heterogeneous copy of the SAP system to a temporary place on the disk.
- Import to the SAP HANA database.
- Adaptation or re-installation of the SAP application server to be connected to the SAP HANA database.
SAP HANA Competence Center at SNP
Since May this year our customers have the opportunity to test SAP HANA at SAP HANA Competence Center at SNP. SNP, as the first Polish SAP implementation partner, has invested in its own hardware and software laboratory for SAP HANA.
SAP HANA laboratory is a dedicated hardware and software platform in the In-Memory technology installed at the Data Processing Center at SNP along with the advanced SAP HANA database (in-memory) solution to cooperate with a set of SAP Business Suite IT solutions.
Our laboratory allows to test the use of SAP HANA to process the data in a specific SAP system that is functioning with the customer and to realisticly assess the benefits, including – if accelerated, data processing thanks to SAP HANA. We estimate that on the average SAP HANA enhances the processing speed for the SAP ERP systems ten times and for the data warehouse SAP BW – it is even a hundredfold acceleration.
The offer of business case SAP HANA projects consisting in testing the use of SAP HANA for processing in a given SAP system is addressed to all companies using SAP, interested in achieving significant progress in the efficiency of data processing.
SAP HANA Competence Center at SNP brings together the knowledge and experience of the SNP experts in the field of Business Intelligence and SAP technology. In our lab you will find out that SAP HANA allows for reporting and analysing data not only faster but also in ways that had previously been inaccessible due to technological limitations.
Hotcakes
Until now, the SAP HANA platform has been regarded as an excellent solution, yet unavailable to many due to its price. The SAP Company decided to change it. The license for SAP Business Suite and SAP BW systems is calculated similarly to traditional databases, as a percentage from the so called maintenance fee basis.
Obviously, the price is higher than for traditional platforms; however, the difference is so insignificant that we suppose that a large part of new SAP ERP, CRM, SCM and BW setups will already be based on the HANA solution. Soon, migrations of the existing environments to the new platform will be initiated by our customers. We anticipate that, due to the very attractive price of this solution, the trend will occur in such a mass scale that, within a few years, it will be difficult to find a SAP customer who would not use the HANA technology.
Clash of the Giants: SAP HANA NetWeaver Suite vs. SAP BW
In the marketing fuss, which usually accompanies new solutions, it is not always easy to guess what is true. Based on many manufacturers’ publications about HANA for SAP Business Suite, one could conclude that the new platform brings an end to the era of data warehouses, including the SAP Business Warehouse (BW) solution.
This is not true. SAP HANA and SAP BW are rather complementary solutions that supplement each other, and their functionalities only overlap partly. Smaller and medium enterprises, for which SAP systems constitute crucial elements of their IT infrastructure, in the future will be able to use the HANA platform to report directly from transaction processing systems.
Data warehouses mean much more than only accelerating the reportng of large data sets. A very important task given to warehouses is data cleaning (ensuring coherence), and consolidation of data from different sources (including sources from beyond the SAP solutions range). These activities often cannot be performed online, while a report is being generated. Data warehouses in medium and big enterprises will remain, but they will be based on… in-memory processing – e.g. SAP BW based on HANA.
Time to fasten your belts
We are on the threshold of change in the IT infrastructure, similar to that which took place when mainframe class computers started to give up their place to “ordinary” personal computers. In ten years, both the hardware market and the software market will be totally different from what they are today. The SAP Company, just like it did in the 1990’s by investing in the then-modern customer-server SAP R/3 architecture, decided to significantly outrival its competitors by introducing SAP HANA in-memory computing.
Estimating, based on the technological capacities of the new platform and its very competitive pricing, we can, in all probability, anticipate its huge success on the market. It is time to fasten your seatbelts and take off in the SAP HANA rocket, to be one step ahead of our rivals.
The SAP BW Data Warehouse, based on SAP HANA;
Illustrated through the Sokołów Company
Wishing to check the SAP HANA solution in practice, SNP Poland, together with one of the largest companies in the meat processing industry – Sokołów SA, and in cooperation with the leader in the server market – Hewlett Packard Polska, carried out a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) project designed to check the usefulness of this platform. Until now, Sokołów SA used SAP BW data warehouse v7.02, installed on the efficient IBM iSeries platform.
Preparing an additional system for the Proof-of-Concept project
To perform the test, an additional application server for SAP BW v7.3 data warehouse was prepared, based on the SAP HANA database platform delivered by HP Polska. Sokołów SA’s data warehouse content was migrated to the server. This enabled reporting from the current system and the new system, and a comparison their operating results.
Business benefits delivered by using SAP HANA platform coupled with SAP BW data warehouse
| Benefit | Description |
| Acceleration of SAP BW performance in reporting | Reporting accelerated tenfold, assuming that there is no SAP BW optimisation based on SAP HANA.(not needing to optimise delivers other benefits related to the enhanced self-service, and reduced administrative costs)). If we were to optimise the warehouse based on the SAP HANA platform we could even achieve an acceleration improved a hundredfold. |
| Increase in employees’ self-service in creating reports | Providing the possibility to create reports directly at the level of single items ,and with no necessity to create aggregates – optimising performance allows business users to create ad-hoc reports, without any need to work together with the IT Dept. |
| Changed approach to reporting | It is no longer necessary to create rigid reports to analyse data. Data Analysis (e.g. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer tool) facilitating the discovery of data in the area can be used without creating reports. |
| Lowered database warehouse administration costs | Since usually, when deploying the SAP HANA platform, it is not necessary to optimise data structures in regards to their efficiency; the data model is simplified. The data warehouse is easier to manage, which reduces administrative costs. |
| Enhanced cooperation of SAP BW data warehouse with SAP BusinessObjects reporting tools | Due to the increase in SAP BW data warehouse performance, it is not necessary to optimise requests for reports created in SAP BusinessObjects tools. This enables the creation of generic requests on the SAP BW side at the data area level, and the creation of detailed analysis using only SAP BusinessObjects tools (without the need to create requests in both systems). |
| Faster and more frequent updates of analytical data | Due to the significant increase in efficiency of loading data to the SAP BW system (a measured five-fold acceleration), data synchronised with data source systems can be made available earlier (which is particularly important at the month closure periods). In addition, it is also possible to increase the frequency of loading data to the warehouse, to ensure the most up-to-date data. In cases where it is necessary to load data again (e.g. data reorganisation), periods of system unavailability can be minimised. |
Findings
Applying the SAP HANA platform as a data storage layer for SAP BW data warehouse has numerous advantages. Apart from a clear performance improvement (over tenfold), simplified database warehouse administration is important, too, as it enables a significant enhancement of employees’ self-service. Business users no longer need to work with the IT support to create a report, which is delivered in a reasonable time.
Better cooperation between a fast, SAP HANA-based data warehouse with SAP BusinessObjects tools may also be considered a big advantage. Instead of creating requests for every single report in SAP BusinessObjects, there is finally a possibility to create generic requests, which make the entire data areas available on the reporting platform. The increase in data loading performance enables a faster and more frequent refreshing of analytical data.
Any possible administrative work related to data model changes can be performed in the new system in a shorter time and with a lesser impact on users. Essentially, the very process of migrating to the new platform does not require pauses in the operation of analytical systems; It can be performed in several ways – in stages, so that users notice only positive changes, and all the solutions applied until now continue to operate, possibly even better than before.
Sokołów SA accelerates transactional and analytical processing
Sokołów SA, a leader in the Polish meat industry, has decided to implement the innovative SAP HANA platform to speed up transactional and analytical processing within their SAP systems. This is the first contract in Poland for the purchase and implementation of SAP Business Suite solutions from the SAP HANA portfolio. The implementation will be carried out by SNP Poland, a partner company of SAP.
Sokołów SA is one of the most recognised food brands in Poland. The company has been using SAP solutions for several years to support the management of its multi-site structure, production processes, and business analyses. Significant improvement of processing and availability of data for Sokołów employees is a deciding factor for the transfer of SAP solutions onto the SAP HANA platform. For Sokołów, the aim of the SAP HANA ‘revolution’ is to radically accelerate and streamline work with the SAP ERP system and business analytics.
“We are confident that SAP HANA will significantly raise the quality of our business analysts’ work. Reduced response times within the system and rapid access to data are not only more comfortable for our employees, but they also allow for a greater efficiency in reporting and enable us to use our time more productively." – said Bogdan Biłas, IT Director, Sokołów SA.
At first, the implementation of SAP HANA in Sokołów SA will involve the migration of SAP ERP systems and the SAP Business Warehouse to the new platform. The migration project will be carried out by SNP, an SAP implementation partner. The decision to implement solutions based on SAP HANA in Sokołów SA was preceded by a Proof-of-Concept project, in which SNP tested the operation of SAP HANA on real data from Sokołów. The tests showed at least a tenfold acceleration of system operation, among other things. According to the schedule, it is planned for Sokołów employees to begin using the new platform by the end of this year.
“We decided to implement this innovative project with SNP Poland because of the positive experiences we’ve had from previous projects, including the implementation of the SAP ERP system. Another factor for this decision was the high evaluation of the competence of SNP experts we worked with during the Proof-of-Concept project for SAP HANA.", adds Bogdan Biłas.