HANA: Building Your HANA Knowledge and Network – How Do I Get Started ? (Episode 1 of 3)

You have read the brochure, seen the movie and now are ready to dive into SAP HANA. ASUG recently presented a webcast series focused on helping customers get started on their SAP HANA journey. The intent of this blog is to summarize the first episode in the series and point you at deeper content if you have time to pursue it. There will be two other blogs on the other webcasts to follow.

This first episode was a lively broadcast as it had four speakers moderated by Paul Kurchina, ASUG Community Advocate. After a brief overview of the webcast series, Paul introduced Kevin Reilly, ASUG S/4HANA Community Advocate, who talked about why you would even want to get started with your SAP HANA adoption. His section titled “Why should you care?”, illustrated this with S/4HANA as the example. He showed that it is not just about speed, it’s about business collaboration and innovation. He then continued with several slides showing a broad overview of what you need to think about as you start down this technology path. (Replay the webcast for more details.)

The next speaker on the webcast was Michael Eacrett, VP Product Management for SAP HANA & EPM. Michael showed the all encompassing slide that I really like showing all of areas of capability that SAP HANA has evolved to:

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(Side Note: This is a great slide to bring up any time some one says that SAP HANA is just a fast in-memory database.)

Michael also pointed out that you need to make sure you have the right scope and focus for your individual project as there is so much technology under the hood of the SAP HANA engine. It is also important to know the limitations and strengths of the technology.

The next speaker, Raj Rathee, SAP HANA Global Product Management Team, spoke next of the skills that you will need to get your projects up and running. He broke the skills sets up into the following roles or personas overlaid on the technology:

This seems like a reasonable break down of the different areas you need to consider as you continue down the owner/operator path. Episode 3 of this mini-series is devoted to going deeper into the roles or personas, and builds out the skills and training path to help develop your staff.

Rounding out the speakers, Scott Feldman, Global Head SAP HANA Customer Communities, discussed where you can look to get more background, customer examples, use cases, and become involved in the SAP HANA community. His section was complemented with links to many resources such as:

The webcast was lively and active as the speakers interacted with the moderator throughout the call. Be sure to replay the webcast if you missed it and hear what else they had to say about everything SAP HANA. This was a great introductory call to get you started on your journey.

Replay webcast here.

Presentation Materials on ASUG.com

To support SCN and to extend out the SAP HANA community, ASUG is pleased to launch a new HANA Platform Program – Join today!

The ASUG HANA Platform Program will focus on providing SAP HANA platform education, customer experience and knowledge sharing both from a business and technical perspective. In addition to HANA customer experiences and implementation stories we will host and highlight technical education to meet the needs of a broad set of SAP HANA Platform user roles. In addition, this program will offer ASUG members an opportunity to engage and influence SAP HANA product teams.