When SAP HANA came on the market three years ago, there was a collective optimism for SAP customers: Would the days of time-consuming data analysis – and waiting for the results – be over?

Today, SAP HANA is one of the in-memory database platforms for big data analytics, processing massive amounts of real-time data for insight and decision making. But, it’s not just a big data solution anymore. In fact, SAP has announced that the HANA in-memory database platform is the platform they will optimize all their applications to run on in the future.

As a globally certified SAP hosting and cloud services provider, AT&T is already helping customers take advantage of real business opportunities SAP HANA is providing to customers.

In this Q&A, we asked Doug Tuck, Director of Product Management at AT&T, to share his thoughts about what this strategic shift for SAP HANA can mean for customers.

Q: Doug, let’s start by giving readers a little background on SAP HANA.A: Sure. SAP first introduced HANA because their customers needed a faster way to analyze all the data that was being collected in their SAP systems – an early Big Data solution. Taking advantage of server design and cost advancements, SAP HANA was designed to hold and process large amounts of real-time data in the main memory of a server, blowing though the performance barriers of traditional data analysis tools like SAP’s Business Warehouse.

SAP’s co-CEO Bill McDermott has expanded the strategic direction of SAP HANA, stating that it would be the platform for everything SAP will do in the future.1 So, not just as a platform for running analytics, but as a platform for designing and optimizing the SAP applications that run the business.

Q: Are customers using SAP HANA for business applications already?A: Yes, SAP Business Suite customers are now able to use SAP HANA as the database for core business applications and processes. The core benefit is speed – processing transactional data in real time.

We host and support SAP HANA on behalf of our customers today. Think of harnessing all that performance to support mission-critical business operations – from financial and material resource planning to supply chain and customer relationship management.

Now, think about SAP HANA as a single in-memory computing platform for transactional data and analytics, being able to accelerate the lag time between data capture and analytics for insights, decisions and actions based on live data. Over time SAP is likely to add more ‘secret sauce’ to the SAP applications running on HANA that will make it a matter of when and not if.

Q: Do you have any examples for us?A: The SAP website has some examples. One company uses SAP HANA for real-time financial planning and they’ve reduced the reporting process from 40 hours to just 20 seconds. And an airline uses it for route profitability analysis, using up-to-the-minute revenue, cost and customer data to determine where they should fly, when and how often. Even SAP uses SAP HANA for a real-time view in its own customer pipeline, so they know exactly where and when to focus additional resources and planning efforts for the most return.

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SAP® HANA: SAP is all in on the real time business A high performance database platform deserves a high performance infrastructure

Brief

To learn more about AT&T Managed Application Services for SAP,visit www.att.com/sap or have us contact you.

Doug Tuck, Director of Product Management for SAP Services, AT&T

SAP HANA has evolved from running analytics to running the business.

SAP HANA is the fastest growing product in SAP’s history. Customers are asking themselves what they need to do faster, better and with more clarity – and finding answers with HANA. 2014 is the year that we’ll see SAP Business Suite on HANA start to take flight. Since we manage SAP applications and SAP HANA on behalf of our customers, AT&T can help them deliver HANA solutions and help them to get the value they need in the business.

Q: What do customers need to know about running core applications on SAP HANA? A: Needing a specifically architected high performance hardware configuration and new skills in an evolving platform, SAP HANA will put increased demands on IT staffs. Moving to SAP HANA as the platform for a full SAP landscape presents a good opportunity for customers to help reduce TCO by leveraging the expertise and efficiencies of a third party service provider.

You can certainly buy SAP HANA applications for your data center to run SAP HANA onsite, but it may be more cost-effective to let a managed service provider host it for you. A service provider can help turn the capital investment in the equipment required to run SAP HANA into a monthly operating expense, a significant benefit to many customers. And given the business scale that service providers have in hardware buying and shared infrastructure options, it’s hard to imagine a lower TCO option for a customer than third party hosting and support for HANA.

Another key consideration for customers moving to SAP HANA is the expectation of high availability for day to day transactional systems and for disaster recovery. For example, AT&T offers service level agreements, and geographically diverse disaster recovery options leveraging our set of networked data centers. As a leader in managed hosting and an Early SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud partner, we can help a customer create a fully managed SAP HANA solution that helps meet the needs of their business.

Q: What role does the network play in all this? A: The promise of SAP HANA is all about planning and doing business in real-time, and the network is key to enabling that to happen. Since our Internet Data Centers (IDCs) are on the AT&T network backbone,

our hosting and cloud customers can have the high-performance network they need to support real-time business. Certainly it helps to be an AT&T network customer, but even our hosting and cloud customers using other network providers benefit from the connectivity of our IDCs.

These are world-class data centers, with layered security and redundant systems to help protect information from intruders, hackers, outages and disasters. Customers need that peace of mind. And as we see the market embracing a hybrid cloud model that includes integrating systems and data centers to deliver an integrated solution, that network experience and security will become more and more important.

Q: Is there a relationship between SAP HANA and mobility?A: As smartphones and tablets have become the norm, the expectations of users to be able to access information remotely continue to grow. Mobile users in many cases can have even more need for real time information, sitting with customers and business partners. So being able to serve that mobile community with SAP HANA-driven, real time business capabilities will continue to grow in importance.

AT&T and SAP signed an agreement in mid-2013 which enables us to develop mobile applications on the SAP mobile platform that, when used with SAP HANA-powered back ends, can help to significantly enhance what can be done anywhere at any time. Mobility is at the core of everything we do at AT&T, helping customers work virtually from nearly anywhere and on virtually any device, and SAP HANA can help that happen.

AT&T can deliver the responsive performance mobile workers will expect. And with hosted back end SAP HANA-based systems and end users on a single, high performing network, will help you get optimal performance and value being realized in the office or in the field.

When you put the power of SAP HANA together with the network, cloud and mobility strengths of AT&T, customers truly have a fully managed solution to run their business real time.

SAP® HANA: SAP is all in on the real time business ________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2

1. Keynote address at SAPPHIRE 2013.

04/02/14 AB-2902

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For more information on SAP Application Management visit www.att.com/sap.

When it comes to real-time analytics and business transactions, the network matters.

A collaborative relationship between AT&T and SAP simplifies, mobile analytics, interactions and experiences.

To learn more about AT&T Managed Application Services for SAP,visit www.att.com/sap or have us contact you.

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