How to Get HANA Now

November 30, 2011 | SAP News | Clare Plaisance | 0 Comment

Photo of Panel Members at SAP TechEd

At SAP TechEd, we saw the new rapid deployment solutions for SAP HANA in action. Here, we explain how you can quickly and easily experience the benefits of in-memory technology.

Theoretically, SAP HANA is capable of revolutionizing the way companies do business. Realistically, implementing a radically new technology can be a rather daunting task. SAP, however, bridges the gap between possibility and reality with a new offering: rapid-deployment solutions (RDS) for SAP HANA.

We got a glimpse at RDS for SAP HANA in action at TechEd in Madrid and were duly impressed; even more so when we heard that SAP customer Provimi completed the implementation in just two-and-a-half weeks. In this article, we provide you with the roadmap of current and planned RDS offerings for SAP HANA, and we tell you how they work.

The RDS approach

Rather than spending several months or longer to determine current and possible future business needs, choose a solution, customize functionality, and finally implement the software, SAP rapid-deployment solutions enable companies to get started with a software solution quickly and easily by delivering pre-configured content and pre-defined services.

Because businesses implement only certain, pre-packaged functions to start, it is possible to deploy these solutions in a matter of weeks at a fixed price. As companies grow, they can expand their solution scope.

SAP HANA is well-suited to the RDS model, since in-memory computing requires not only completely new software (SAP HANA), but also the corresponding hardware (high-performance servers). Companies that aren’t ready to make such a big investment all at once will likely find that RDS for SAP HANA – with its fixed scope and price – is an affordable way to get the benefits of real-time analytics right away.

RDS for SAP HANA is the newest addition to SAP’s rapid-deployment offerings. Currently, SAP offers rapid-deployment options for different business functions in these solution areas:

SAP HANA
SAP ERP and SAP ERP Financials
SAP customer relationship management (CRM)
SAP supply chain management (SCM)
SAP product lifecycle management (PLM)
SAP NetWeaver master data management
SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions
SAP solutions for sustainability

Roadmap: RDS for SAP HANA

SAP has already delivered two rapid-deployment solutions for SAP HANA with two more planned for delivery by the end of this year:

SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for CO-PA with SAP HANA (currently available)
SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for Operational Reporting with SAP HANA (currently available)
SAP rapid-deployment solution for customer segmentation with SAP HANA (planned for release in Q4 2011)
SAP rapid-deployment solution for sales pipeline analysis with SAP HANA (planned for release in Q4 2011)

In total, there are around 20 SAP HANA rapid-deployment packages planned for various line-of-business and industry solutions. These include the following solutions, which are scheduled for release as indicated:

Version 2 of SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for Operational Reporting with SAP HANA (planned for release in Q1 2012)
- will deliver additional reports
SAP Deposits Management rapid-deployment solution for transaction history with SAP HANA (planned for release in Q1 2012)
SAP Bank Analyzer rapid-deployment solution for financial reporting with SAP HANA (planned for release in Q1 2012)
SAP ERP rapid-deployment solution for Financial Accelerator with SAP HANA (planned for release in Q1 2012)

The structure of an RDS for SAP HANA from the frontend (left) to the backend (right). (Screenshot: SAP)

Instant SAP HANA

Companies that choose to deploy RDS for SAP HANA must be running the relevant SAP Business Suite application in the backend. To implement SAP ERP RDS for Operational Reporting with SAP HANA, for example, businesses need to have SAP ERP 6.0. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer provides the user interface on the frontend.

All the analytics, on the other hand, come with the RDS. SAP has determined the most commonly-used reports for each business area or function, like sales or controlling-profitability analysis (CO-PA), and has included those reports in the respective RDS package.

In SAP ERP RDS for Operational Reporting with SAP HANA, for example, customers can get real-time analytics on 21 different operational reports for financials, sales, shipping, purchasing, and master data. Each RDS package also comes with the SAP HANA appliance, which includes Data Services, Replication Server, SAP HANA Studio, and SAP HANA database.

To start getting real-time insights into business data, you simply need to open the SAP HANA Studio and select the report you want to analyze. Let’s say you want to perform analyses on your sales data. You open the report, which likely contains millions of records, and select the specific information you’re interested in: net sales, customer name, country, year, quarter, month, and so on. With a single click, you complete your custom report and get instant business insights.

Most importantly, the SAP Landscape Transformation tool ensures that everything that happens in the backend is replicated in real time into SAP HANA, where it is analyzed using in-memory technology. Your report is instantly updated with new data, and it all happens automatically.

Like the full version of SAP HANA, the rapid-deployment solutions for SAP HANA enable you to perform analyses on the fly and get results in real-time. The only difference is that, to start, if you are using the RDS, you can perform analyses only on the most commonly-used reports. As your company grows, however, you can always expand the solution to full functionality.

To get your own live look at RDS for SAP HANA, check out this video.

This article was originally published by Heather McIlvaine at SAP.info on November 29, 2011.