Similar to analyst Holger Mueller, I was expecting/hoping for news concerning CloudFoundry at Wednesday’s press conference. Despite my initial disappointment, I still found a variety of interesting aspects that require deeper examination.
A branding shift for the HANA Cloud Platform
The most important change is an expanded definition of “HANA Cloud Platform” (HCP).
This graphic depicts the new enlarged scope of the HCP.
[SOURCE]
Previously, HCP only referred to SAP’s PaaS offer.
The offers now included in the HCP scope existed previously in one form or another. For example, if you look at the archive for the HANA Marketplace, you will see that the Infrastructure Subscription for HANA was already present in December. Both the DBaaS and IaaS offers weren’t really connected to a broader entity – they were often loosely associated with the HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC). These two offers are now placed under the umbrella of the HCP, and along with the PaaS, they have new product names emphasizing their service character.
The relationships between the entities are also tighter as demonstrated in this description of HCP App Services.
SAP HANA App Services builds on the capabilities of SAP HANA DB Services and allows you to build and deploy the real-time applications required to succeed in today’s always-on, mobile, social, and data-driven world. [I added the italics] [SOURCE]
The specific offers for each service are also tightly connected. For example, App Services include the exact options that are present in the lower layers.
This inheritance of options establishes a certain level of structure as well as visual / logical interdependence between the new services.
HANA Enterprise Cloud: Looking for clarity
In the past, the architecture / marketing for the HEC was confusing.
[SOURCE]
It was never clear - how could the HEC be based on a PaaS?
Wednesday’s announcement focused on HCP and indirectly impacts HEC as well.
I hope the resulting clarity will soon be reflected in HEC’s marketing efforts as well.
Note: Some might say that HEC is based on HANA and therefore should also be based on HCP. For me, HCP refers to a distinct set of offerings for customers / partners, etc. Using a HANA in the Cloud does not mean that an application is based on HCP. SAP can’t have it both ways – is HCP a technology stack or is it a set of offerings? Based on the press conference on Wednesday, I’d like to suggest that it is a set of offerings available for purchase on the HANA Marketplace.
Infrastructure Services vs DB Services: More clarity is needed
Let’s take a quick look at the description of the Infrastructure and DB Services to start our comparison.
The SAP HANA Infrastructure Services subscription allows customers who have existing SAP HANA licenses to deploy SAP HANA without capital investments or hardware setup. SAP provides customers access to certified infrastructure that is hosted and managed by SAP. Network access is provided via VPN connection. System sizes range from 128 GB to 1 TB of RAM.
The system comes with SAP HANA (SPS7) pre-installed and includes a web based management console for instance administration, data backup, and life cycle management. SAP HANA Cloud Integration for data services, a cloud based ETL tool, is included with the system to help provision data from SAP backends and heterogenous sources securely.
[SOURCE]
The SAP HANA DB Services offers customers immediate access to SAP HANA on a monthly basis without capital investments or hardware setup. This service includes SAP HANA license, infrastructure, and support. SAP provides customers access to certified infrastructure that is hosted and managed by SAP. Network access is provided via VPN connection. System sizes range from 128 GB to 1 TB of RAM.
The system comes with SAP HANA (SPS7) pre-installed and includes a web based management console for instance administration, data backup, and life cycle management. SAP HANA Cloud Integration for data services, a cloud based ETL tool, is included with the system to help provision data from SAP backends and heterogenous sources securely.
[SOURCE]
The options for the DB Services include that of the Infrastructure Services but the main distinction appears to be whether the customer has a HANA license or not. This difference is also in the evident in the comparison page provided by SAP– just compare the columns for “SAP HANA DB Services” with that of “SAP HANA Infrastructure Services” and you will see that the greatest difference refers to licensing rather than technology.
Note: This is the just the first iteration of this new structure, so greater differences may occur in the future.
In my opinion, the use of the term “Infrastructure Services” is a bit misleading, because the service includes a database in addition to pure infrastructure elements (as are usually the focus in other IaaS offers). Yes, I know that different options for the Infrastructure Service are infrastructure-related but the infrastructure is there to support the installed database rather than to act as a foundation for other scenarios (for example, ones that don’t include HANA).
Logically or commercially, DB Services are based on Infrastructure Services but technically / architecturally, both services have the same result – a HANA database running in the cloud.
Let’s give our diagram a stronger architectural character and adjust it accordingly.
Note: It is very interesting to play with the various configurations in the HANA Marketplace and look at how the prices change with different settings. For example, compare a DB Services (Platform) with an Infrastructure Service offer of the same size and you will see that the price difference is approximately $10,000 – that is the cost of HANA license via monthly subscription.
Migrations and other practical matters
HCP App Services (PaaS) already use HANA DBs. Indeed, the use of HANA XS within the PaaS is currently one of the most popular scenarios in the environment.
For customers wishing to start with the App Services, they purchase a HANA database when making their initial order. There is another possibility, however, one that involves a migration.
This scenario is definitely possible and although the HANA DBs created through both services run in the same Cloud Infrastructure, I have no idea if such a migration would even be possible.
Comparing the new Infrastructure Services offer with that of AWS
There is also an IaaS offer for HANA from AWS. Let’s make a quick comparison of the two offers.
SAP offer
[SOURCE]
AWS offer
[SOURCE]
A direct price comparison isn’t possible, because there are no prices for the AWS offer but a quick analysis show that there are still broad similarities (for example, max size = 1.2 TB vs 1 TB).
Note: Speaking of AWS, HANA One – “a fully-featured SAP HANA hosted in the public cloud” – isn’t getting very much love these days – it has all but disappeared. It is similar to the DB Services but is charged on an hourly basis.
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