The use of in-memory technology marks an inflection point for enterprise applications. The capacity per dollar and the availability of main memory has increased markedly in the last few years. This hassled to a rethinking of how mass data should be stored as well computed.
This blog would be divided into two parts :
Part 1 :comprises of what is HANA and what has brought HANA into the Big-picture .
Part 2 :comprises of more of a deeper technical understanding of in-memory data management and how does it help the customers.
What is In-Memory Solution ?What are its immediate benefits as Industry solution?
In-memory computing is a technology that moves data from disk to local memory so that the results of complex analyses and transactions are available at your fingertips – and business decisions can be executed without delay.
With in-memory technology integrated in your business, you’ll see immediate benefits
- Immediate answers – with 3600x faster analytics
- Real-time access – when it happens, you know it
- Deeper insight – interrogate more granular data
- Simpler and more cost-effective – manage large data volumes while reducing IT complexity
What is the rational and history leading up to HANA?How does it help the customer to transform his business without changing its existing model?
HANA is not the first product in in-memory technology by SAP.TREX and SAP Enterprise search and BWA were the first solutions to use this concept. Building on the strength of these early products, SAP then released the very successful SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA).
The high performance in-memory computation engine of HANA is the next generation of BWA.Customers who leverage BWA to accelerate BW can deploy HANA (with its BAE component) in HANA (with its BAE, Data Services, security and client runtime components) can be deployed in place of the prior BWA based engine to provide Explorer accelerated version the in-memory acceleration it requires.
HANA is the key foundational component for SAP’s next-generation application platform for delivering analytics, planning, and transactional applications.
Sybase IQ will be a foundational component of SAP’s data management platform i.e for building a data warehouse or data mart solutions and which is not already running the SAP BusinessSuite or SAP Business Warehouse. HANA, on the other hand, is the preferred solution for customers with the SAP BusinessSuite and SAP Business Warehouse.
How is HANA different from other In-memory solutions?
As the industry moves from “after event driven analysis to real-time decision making’ SAP co-innovates with its partner(eg. Intel, EMC, Cisco, VMWare ) to leverage in-memory capabilities in a non-disruptive manner to deliver solutions of today and tomorrow. On a competetive basis HANA is an answer to Oracles In-Memory Product Exadata.
The next generation high performance in-memory computing engine(HANA) will leverage SAP ‘s latest in-memory technologies such as columnar databases, massively parallel processing (MPP), in-memory computing, and data compression techniques. HANA enables organizations to analyze business operations based on large volumes of detailed information in real-time - as it happens.
The ‘Heart’ of HANA is :
- a powerful and flexible data calculation engine
- supports access via SQL and MDX for clients like SAP BusinessObjects and Excel
- access data from virtually any data source, including SAP BW
- unified information modeling design environment
- a data repository to persist views of business information
However ,the value proposition that is derived by the customers from HANA is that Delivered without disruption
- No need to change IT roadmaps
- Preserve investment as new versions of applications are in-memory enabled
For example if customer has built a Oracle based data warehouse or staging area .HANA shall be process a large sample data from multiple sources at real tome without disrupting any of the systems.
A Few offerings that are available by HANA are
Available Today
- SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator (BWA)
- SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated
- SAP CRM Customer Segmentation
- SAP Business ByDesign analytics
- SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer
- SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search
Thus HANA is a ground-breaking solution to accelerate sustainable trough timely and granular insights through faster response .The next blog would provide an in depth understanding of technical nitty-gritty of in-memory computing .
