posted on 11/11/2011 3:52:47 PM
Looking to boost customers’ business intelligence capabilities—and disrupt sales of Oracle databases—SAP rolls out a version of its Business Warehouse software that runs on the HANA in-memory technology.
Making good on a promise announced earlier this year, SAP this week rolled out a new version of a business intelligence software application backed by HANA, its in-memory technology, a move meant in part to disrupt rival Oracle’s customer base.
At its Sapphire conference in Madrid this week, the business intelligence and enterprise apps purveyor announced SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, powered by HANA. The Business Warehouse software acts as the data hub for SAP’s BusinessObjects BI software and other applications. Now, Business Warehouse customers can run the application on HANA, SAP said in a statement, instead of on a traditional relational database. Oracle is a leading provider of relational databases.
The key innovation in HANA is its use of the in-memory technique, which allows for quicker data analysis than traditional business intelligence tools, experts say. HANA acts as a booster for Business Warehouse, according to the company, speeding user queries and allowing for faster data loads.
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HANA can also reduce data complexity, the company said, a key concern in this age of Big Data. SAP customer Red Bull has used HANA to improve the agility of its business, the energy drink company said in the statement. “We've already been able to reduce our database size by 80%, from 1.5 terabytes down to 250-300 gigabytes,” said Christian Stoxreiter, Red Bull’s head of business applications.
The latest version of HANA incorporates both business function libraries and predictive analysis libraries, which SAP said helps improve performance at customer sites. At May’s U.S.-based Sapphire conference, SAP executive board member Vishal Sikka called HANA the “foundation of our intellectual renewal.” Sikka and other officials also promised that HANA would be at the heart of SAP technology in the future, with the goal of eventually running the entire Business Suite ERP system on HANA, too.