SAP HANA: The Need for Speed

SAP HANA: The Need for SpeedThe emergence of in-memory database appliances has turned “big data” into a race for real-time business analytics. Here’s how you can win.

If pilots flew planes the way most corporate executives run their businesses, they wouldn’t know they had taken off until well after the plane reached 10,000 feet and the seatbelt sign had been turned off.

The larger and more sophisticated the organization, the more data has to be processed to actually see where it is going. Comprehensive cost calculations at large complex organizations, for example, could easily take the better part of a day to execute. And that’s under normal conditions. Introduce a stock market crash, a supply chain interruption or a manufacturing boondoggle, and executive management is reduced to flying into the unknown by the seat of its collective pants.

Knowledge is power, and not having it for critical blocks of time is the stuff of CFOs’ nightmares. With the tens of millions of dollars at risk every minute in large organizations, the lack of timely business analytics can lead to logistical, manufacturing, and, ultimately, financial disaster, literally in less time than it takes to pull a comprehensive report.

Information technology today has made it possible to collect staggering amounts of data, both structured and unstructured. The world’s technological per-capita capacity to store information has roughly doubled every 40 months since the 1980s. By 2012, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were being created every day.

The good news is that we are rapidly approaching a point when it will be possible to compile every detail of an organization’s life into a data stream where it can be viewed behind a single pane of glass—a dashboard of real-time business analytics.

Being able to crunch all that data in real time is the promise of “big data.” But we’re not there yet.

Today, all the big database vendors are scrambling to be the first to provide real-time business analytics.

The leading enterprise database vendors are large companies with large customers. They provide the mission critical enterprise resource planning (ERP), financial, logistical and other applications that are used to manage entire organizations. Because the data they contain is so very critical, the market in enterprise databases is characteristically risk averse and change tends to happen slowly.

“Having the right business analytics solution in place is as vital to the overall health of today’s enterprise organization as having air and water are to human beings. Simply put, you just can’t live without it.”

—Malek Khazen, Logicalis Senior Certified Solution Architect

In-Memory SoftwareAdvances in “in-memory” data algorithms in the last few years have got the database behemoths running in uncharacteristically hot pursuit of the fastest calculation times.

In-memory database technology leverages the low cost of computer server memory (RAM), the data processing abilities of multi-core processors, and the fast data access of solid-state drives to deliver better performance of analytical and transactional applications.

The main database players all have their own database appliances. SAP HANA competitors include: Active Enterprise Data Warehouse 600 (Teradata) Exadata Database Machine (Oracle) Exalytics In-Memory Machine (Oracle) Greenplum Data Computing Appliance (EMC) Netezza Data Warehouse Appliance (IBM) Vertica Analytics Platform (HP)

Today, a single enterprise class server can hold several terabytes of main memory. At the same time, prices for server main memory dramatically dropped over the last few decades. This increase in capacity and reduction in cost makes it a viable approach to keep huge amounts of business data in memory. SAP HANA boasts performance improvements over disk-based databases of more than a factor of 10,0000. To put that level of improvement in perspective, Dr. Vishal Sikka of the SAP Executive Board and an internal champion of HANA, likes to point out that improving the pace of an average pedestrian in Palo Alto by a factor of 10,000 would mean that she could walk to New York City in six minutes. Put another way, a consumer products company using SAP HANA was able to analyze current point-of-sale data — including segmentation, merchandising, inventory management, and forecasting information — digesting 50 terabytes of data from 460 billion records at 70 retailers in an eye-popping 0.04 seconds.

That qualifies as “game changing.”

Already the world’s leading provider of enterprise application software, SAP, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, has more than 197,000 customers in 120+ countries and annual revenue in 2012 of €16.22 billion. SAP HANA has energized the SAP market. Positioned at the crest of the wave of “big data,” SAP now says that SAP HANA is its fastest growing software product ever. First quarter sales in 2013 were triple over the same period in 2012.

HANA is where scale meets speed, without compromise“Data scale and processing speed are usually contradictory requirements in analytic and transactional data processing. HANA addresses both, and is able to scan and analyze billions of records in milliseconds – according to internal SAP benchmarks, up to 2 million records per millisecond and 10 million complex calculations per second per core. “

Source: Ovum:

Rising Tide of Big DataThere are several notable undercurrents in the rising tide that SAP HANA is riding. The theme here is that SAP is relaxing it’s need to maintain absolute control of its products.

For example, in the interest of expanding its market as rapidly as possible, SAP has taken a vendor neutral approach to HANA implementation. Currently, IBM, HP, Cisco, as well as Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi and NEC offer SAP HANA appliances. Each vendor has its own proprietary advantages.

A typical SAP HANA Appliance consists of three parts: 1. Intel-based Multi-core Processors – based on standard

CPU architectures including Xeon E7-2870, 4870, 8870, 2800, x86-E7, and x86-E7/blade.

2. Low-cost, Low-latency Memory (RAM ) 3. Data Storage – often SAN, local storage or IBM’s GPFS

file system.

(For a snapshot of SAP HANA appliances from IBM, HP and Cisco, please visit the Logicalis microsite “SAP HANA Turns Data into Decisions.”)

The primary market for SAP HANA today is SAP customers, although the attention it has been getting as the darling of big data is attracting new customers as well. To tap into its expanding market, SAP is also opening the doors to a qualified distribution channel of consultants/resellers.

It’s not cheap, but the savings and increases in revenue that result from direct access to supercharged analytics are often counted in millions of dollars. The very measurable benefits of real-time business analytics, as a result, are attracting organizations in the upper mid market.

When Should You Consider SAP HANA?

When reports or analytic applications run too slowly to provide optimal business benefits making a performance improvement – small or large – material to your business.

When you experience unacceptable downtimes while your data warehouse is loading data.

When you need to see current, up-to-the-moment, real-time data to make critical business decisions.

When you need to create new reports or use analytical applications, but you’re struggling to maintain your business warehouse (BW) and keep it performing under changing user demands.

Analytics PlatformThe agility of SAP HANA — and the fact that it is called an “appliance” — belies the complexity of implementing it into the IT environment.

“Deciding on an analytics platform and then choosing an appliance to run that software is a complex decision that differs with each individual customer organization and its unique needs,” says Brett Anderson, Director of Enterprise Computing Solutions for Logicalis US.

“Logicalis understands the entire converged infrastructure stack and can deliver SAP HANA running on appliances from IBM, HP or Cisco, and packaged with the technical expertise, consulting and services needed to create a complete solution that will yield meaningful business results.”

Responding to interest from its customers, Logicalis has put together a team of cross-discipline specialists who have specific skills and expertise in SAP HANA solutions as well as individual specialties in data center, cloud, storage, or communication and collaboration. This allows Logicalis to help the CIO holistically, taking into account the interrelationships of different technologies in the client’s data center and beyond.

“SAP HANA is an amazing tool that can speed access to very deep levels of data within an organization, but only if the right questions are asked and the right sources of data are connected,” Anderson says. “It takes a company like Logicalis to coordinate the technologies, the people and the business objectives to arrive at the desired result.”

Roadmap to the FutureLogicalis is now offering SAP HANA workshops for individual companies—or groups of companies—to evaluate their business requirements, help them decide if SAP HANA is right for them, and if so, help them decide on the hardware solution that is best for their purposes.

During the workshop, Logicalis SAP expert Malek Khazen also discusses a roadmap for future enhancements. The workshop is designed to help you identify the right business analytics solution for your company, create a long-term strategy that allows for scale-out while delivering the best total cost of acquisition and total cost of ownership positions possible.

“Stepping up to real-time business analytics is a major undertaking for any organization. If you are going to do it at all, it needs to be done right,” Khazen says. “This is a rapidly evolving technology, so you also need to take the long view and look beyond current capabilities and current business objectives. This technology is still in its infancy.”

The SAP HANA WorkshopDuring the SAP HANA Workshop, Logicalis experts ask some common questions with not-so- common answers: Which hardware

appliance vendor is right for you?

Do you need SAP HANA or another flavor of SAP to meet your needs?

Will you need to scale out your business analytics solution in the future?

Converged InfrastructureSAP HANA is a relatively self-contained appliance and, as such exists outside of the general purpose IT environment. As a key technology within the overall IT infrastructure, nonetheless, progressive IT departments are refreshing their SAP datacenters and extending virtualization and the capabilities and best practices of converged infrastructure through their IT environment in conjunction with the adoption of SAP HANA.

SAP HANA may not need to live as part of a validated converged infrastructure architecture, but having SAP products in the datacenter is no longer a barrier to taking advantage of the considerable benefits of a converged infrastructure has to offer an organization.

“SAP HANA may become the new star player in your data center, but it still needs to be supported by the team of people, processes and technology in your IT infrastructure,” says Anderson. “The converged infrastructure model dramatically enhances an organization’s ability to respond to insights and changes in direction that SAP HANA’s business analytics captures. Logicalis has been building and refreshing SAP datacenters for nearly 20 years, so we understand what they need to perform up to their capabilities.”

As organizations continue to shift more of their mission critical applications to the x86 platform, the adoption of ITIL best practices and the development of an effective IT service management (ITSM) strategy provides rapid self-provisioning, automation, capacity on demand and opens up the full range of cloud computing options.

“One of the many promises of converged infrastructure/private cloud solutions is transforming IT from a reactive environment to a highly efficient, optimized, and automated environment,” Anderson says. “Capitalizing on the improved operational efficiencies that result can free up valuable IT experts to work on more strategic efforts. Bringing a business analytics solution like SAP HANA online is a prime example of how those efforts can provide an immediate, positive impact to the bottom line.”

PAST

FUTURE

MobilityBeing able to perform business analytics 10,000 times faster loses its effectiveness if you have to drive to headquarters to act on the analysis. SAP HANA is never going to run on your iPad, but a disciplined mobility strategy can ensure that the insights SAP HANA helps you uncover are immediately available to key personnel wherever they are on the device of their choice.

Real-Time AnalyticsJust because technology advances like SAP HANA promise data retrieval at speeds that only recently would have been considered inconceivable doesn’t mean you should rush to take advantage of it. SAP HANA may exist as an appliance, but the implications of real-time analytics are profound and the considerations it requires are vast.

Information technology has become the nervous system of the modern organization with thousands of hardware and software devices gathering data scattered across the enterprise. High speed data analytics holds the promise of creating a window not only into the inner workings of your organization, but also into its future. Perhaps even more importantly, implemented carefully and intelligently, it makes it possible for executive management to actually see, for the first time, where the enterprise they are piloting is right now.

The Logicalis Process for Mobility for SAP HANALogicalis uses a defined process to guide organizations through the technical, security and policy decisions which need to be considered to provide instant, secure access to your SAP HANA data. They are: Mobile– identify business and employee use case and outcomes Policy – define the rules that make mobility beneficial and secure Network – right-size capacity to ensure a secure, rich mobile experience Device – make sure your users can make the most of their devices Applications – evolve, transition or transform your mobile application

and data environment Services – support a new mobile workforce with new cloud

and managed services.

ResourcesTo learn more about implementing SAP HANA with Logicalis you can:

Visit the Logicalis’ SAP HANA microsite. Download the Logicalis SAP HANA overview data sheet.Download the Logicalis+IBM HANA data sheet.Download the Logicalis+HP HANA data sheetDownload the Logicalis+Cisco HANA data sheet

Related reading —Logicalis eBooks and websites:

“A Cloud of Your Own” — This eBook describes the considerations that need to be addressed in the design and implementation of a private cloud environment. In the process, it provides key insights into what it takes to provide IT-as-a-service.

“A Practical Strategy for Converged Infrastructure” — This eBook helps you build a roadmap to the data center of the future that you can follow at you own pace.

“Elements of Design” — This eBook describes how the data center of today can be the data center of tomorrow. “ME3: Our Formula For BYOD Success” — This website describes the three Es of successful mobility: Educate, Enable, Empower.

What can we do for your organization?Contact Logicalis to learn how we can help you realize the benefi ts of smart IT solutions.Visit us on the Web at www.us.logicalis.com, or call 866-456-4422 today.

© 2013 Logicalis, Inc. Logicalis is a trademark of Logicalis, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of the respective owners.