The June SAPinsight SAP Super User Breakfast Huddle in Dallas/Fort Worth covered the question “What does HANA mean to the Super User?” The Breakfast Huddle was, once again, well attended by Super Users from a cross-section of industries. They all shared great ideas and experiences on this very timely topic.

NTT Data sponsored the breakfast and SAP hosted the event at their offices in Los Colinas. Devin Williams, GTM Sales Programs Manager at SAP, provided a detailed presentation on the SAP HANA database. Devin kept the focus on the business benefits of HANA, which are so important to the Super User.

The questions discussed during the meeting ranged from “What does HANA stand for?” to “How is HANA implemented in our organization?”

Addressing the first question, HANA stands for High performance ANalytical Appliance. This is a term that has lost its relevance over time because SAP has expanded the role of HANA to be so much more than a database used for analytics, commonly referred to as OLAP (Online Analytic Process). SAP is positioning HANA as a completely re-imagined platform for real-time business transactions, commonly referred to as OLTP (online transaction processing). SAP sees HANA as the way to reduce days into minutes for mission critical business processes,

As SAP states “SAP HANA combines database, data processing, and application platform capabilities in-memory. The platform provides libraries for predictive, planning, text processing, spatial, and business analytics.”

The business value the HANA platform provides the customer is far-reaching. The SAP representatives presenting at the meeting provided examples. For instance, an Oil and Gas company is using the added speed available from the use of HANA to interpret the hundreds of measurements fed back from the drilling process in minutes and real time rather than overnight through batch type processing. Additionally, attendees shared their experiences with business processes that needed to be scheduled for over the weekend processing being now available in hours using HANA. This means that business decisions would no longer be made on data that is days or more old, but instead, using data that is current and timely.

The impact of being able to report on data that is current can also be used to improve customer service. An example that was discussed in the meeting was a utility company that could provide timely text messages to their customers when there was a spike in their water usage. A customer being made aware of a water leak immediately rather than at the end of the month could save the customer hundreds of dollars.

The SAP representatives stated that implementation of HANA in a production environment does not have to be all at once. They referred to the suggested process as a ‘side car’ method. This is a way to describe exporting data to HANA for select business processes when the increased speed in transaction processing or analytics can have a significant business benefit.

There should be no misunderstanding of SAP’s commitment to building the future of SAP on the HANA platform. This may be the most significant change SAP has made since going from R/2 to R/3.

Don’t miss the next SAP Super User Huddle being held in your city to engage in ground-breaking topics such as this. The Dallas Fort Worth Breakfast Huddles are on the second Thursday of each month and Houston is held the third Thursday of each month. Meetings are held at different companies. Location and topic details are shown on the SAPinsight calendar.

Breakfast Huddles are coming to more areas every month. Watch for communications. Sign-up to SAPinsight, subscribe to this Blog, or friend us from your favorite popular social media channel to stay updated.

SAPinsight arranges these Breakfast Huddles around the United States. If you are interested in hosting an event in your city, contact us.