Last
post, I introduced you to the Esri+SAP 311 demo to answer the question of “Why Esri + HANA together?” Today, I bring you the
whitepaper from Spatialitics, a partner of both SAP and Esri, to address this same question.
Spatialitics developed this research paper to assist Enterprises in understanding how to leverage the power of Esri ArcGIS and SAP HANA. Based on hands-on experience and industry expertise, Spatialitics identified three key reasons Esri+HANA strengthens abilities; 1) rapid ROI driven by faster decision making, 2) cost savings and operational optimization, 3) improvement in performance and management.
SAP HANA and Esri ArcGIS together change the game. When you unleash SAP HANA as a geodatabase, you take advantage of high performance in-memory spatial processing. While Esri ArcGIS has been able to connect to SAP HANA for years, as of early 2018, SAP HANA can run as the geodatabase. Now you have your business system (e.g. SAP ERP) running on the same platform as your GIS system of record (e.g. Esri). Queries that are natively executed in SAP HANA can be run directly from Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Pro platforms. This means that you no longer need to create or maintain summary tables or indices to maintain query performance. You also achieve reduced storage requirements due to a compression ratio between 5-20x. The results are faster decision making, lower total cost of ownership and improved performance.
To achieve these benefits, Enterprises leverage two common patterns; SAP HANA as a publication database or SAP HANA as the principal geodatabase. Consider an organization that has a large volume of business data stored in SAP HANA and also has its primary geodatabase in ArcGIS. This organization may not be ready to directly combine the business systems of record with their location data. However, they can still harness the processing speed and native spatial capabilities of HANA by leveraging SAP HANA as a publication database. This pattern works with ArcGIS 10.3 and above as customers have the ability to use database access and publishing map services and query layers with SAP HANA.
What about an organization that is ready to directly combine their business systems of record with their location data but is currently managing and maintaining these as two separate systems? By bringing these disparate systems together in a consolidated landscape where the Enterprise Geodatabase is in SAP HANA, the organization experiences even more benefits. In addition to the processing speed and native spatial capabilities of SAP HANA, this organization experiences lower total cost of ownership, seamless integration of business and spatial data and Enterprise-wide collaboration. This pattern works with ArcGIS Pro 2.1 and above and ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6 and above.
Let’s review a real-life example. A leading health system in the US deployed a high-performance Spatial Analytics solution using SAP HANA and Esri technologies. This customer needed a solution capable of conducting analytics on huge volumes of spatial data with fast response times. Previous solutions had required hours or days to develop analytics projects and conduct variation analyses.
The SAP HANA-powered solution integrates data from diverse sources and provides rapid geospatial data processing. This means that key stakeholders no longer have to spend days or months compiling data and doing analysis. The business users are empowered to perform their own analysis as they are no longer dependent on GIS experts. Various teams are able to gain insights, act on these insights and drive more opportunities. The overall analysis time is reduced from days to minutes.
The Spatialitics whitepaper “SAP HANA as a Geodatabase” reinforces the same message delivered by the
Esri+SAP 311 demo. Esri+HANA are better together.
