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Author's profile photo Maya Bahar

SCN runs SAP!

SCN being the vibrant community we all know and love has millions of transactions taking place continuously. We have many data sources (Forums, Blogs, Wiki, Point, Web traffic etc.) which lead to a  huge data volume needing to be captured.

We analyze this information to help us run the community more efficiently. Through this we learn what content is most interesting to you, our members. What are you searching for? Who should we be awarding points to? What articles are most viewed etc.

Earlier this year, we decided to adopt the latest In-Memory technology: SAP HANA, and to implement a new business intelligence system based on that technology. We felt, this would improve performance and help us take SCN to the next level.

 Rather than supplying a reporting system, we would create a business analytics program that will enable us to better understand our communities needs, spot trends and provide business value. This was especially imperative as we decided to Jive 5 and SCN: The Right Content to the Right Person at the Right Time .

For the past few months, we focused our energy on migrating data, building the cubes, designing reports and implementing a SAP HANA solution with Business Objects tools as the front end.

We launched the first phase of this project earlier this month and immediately experienced a dramatic improvement in performance. Creating new reports, filtering, slicing and dicing is not only incredibly easy, it is also quick as lightening.

Leading this project has been and continues to be an exciting journey and I am eager to see this evolution take place. As we progress I will be happy to continue sharing our experience and get your feedback as well.

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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member
      Hi Maya,
      When you said building cubes, are you talking about BW? If so, is it on top of HANA?
      Can HANA have text data like blogs?

      Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.

      Cheers,
      - Ali Q.

      Author's profile photo Maya Bahar
      Maya Bahar
      Blog Post Author
      Hi Ali,
      With SAP HANA, we moved away from BW, building the cubes directly on HANA.
      All data sources, structured and unstructured, can be added to HANA, even blogs :-).

      Maya
      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member
      Hello Maya,
      so you are feeding SCN data into HANA / BW?
      [...]we would create a business analytics program that will enable us to better understand [...]
      Sounds pretty much like a black box.

      This immediately causes me to wonder:
      - Is the access to such data only possible SAP internally?
      - Or do you plan to provde some hitlists, hot topics overviews or the like in the new SCN?
      - Is it more like a specialized tool for some specialists or will it be an integral part of the new SCN?

      Regards,

      Mark

      Author's profile photo Maya Bahar
      Maya Bahar
      Blog Post Author
      As stated, this is the first phase of a large project.
      Once we lay the foundation, we will be moving forward.

      I will be happy to share as we progress.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member
      I would love to see more of the technical details behind the design.  I can see it at a high level.  But the details?  The details would be great!  How did you set up HANA?  BO?  What did you do to make these reports work.

      Also as Mark asked, will we have access to the data?

      Thank you!

      Michelle

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member
      By the way - I love that you are using an SAP tool with SCN.  That is excellent.
      Author's profile photo Maya Bahar
      Maya Bahar
      Blog Post Author
      Thilo Brandt, our architect, will be presenting a technical presentation on this project at Teched Madrid.
      I invite those of you who are there to join this exciting session: "SAP Runs SAP: Web Analytics and Reporting with SAP HANA"

      We will be sharing some of this information after the event"

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member
      Maya:

      This blog really made my day...I was expecting some HANA use on SCN, but I didn't expect it to be delivered that fast...this would really help the new SCN to shine even more...now I'm a more than happy customer -;)

      Greetings,
      Blag.

      Author's profile photo Maya Bahar
      Maya Bahar
      Blog Post Author
      It is very exciting!