Why SAP HANA Powers Enterprises
Key Points
- Bradley Knapp, an IBM product manager for SAP‑certified infrastructure, explains that SAP HANA is an in‑memory, high‑performance analytical database (“high‑performance analytical appliance”) designed to be dramatically faster than traditional disk‑based databases.
- He highlights that modern enterprises ingest massive, varied data streams—transactional data, web UI/UX interactions, mobile device inputs, machine‑learning outputs, and IoT sensor feeds—and need a database capable of handling this volume and velocity.
- SAP HANA therefore serves as the core data platform of the digital enterprise, acting as the central repository that all of these sources read from and write to.
- The broader SAP S/4HANA suite builds on this core with three main functional modules (ERP, CRM, and SRM) and the NetWeaver application stack, which enables custom applications to interact seamlessly with the HANA database.
Full Transcript
# Why SAP HANA Powers Enterprises **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXurKENGRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXurKENGRE) **Duration:** 00:05:07 ## Summary - Bradley Knapp, an IBM product manager for SAP‑certified infrastructure, explains that SAP HANA is an in‑memory, high‑performance analytical database (“high‑performance analytical appliance”) designed to be dramatically faster than traditional disk‑based databases. - He highlights that modern enterprises ingest massive, varied data streams—transactional data, web UI/UX interactions, mobile device inputs, machine‑learning outputs, and IoT sensor feeds—and need a database capable of handling this volume and velocity. - SAP HANA therefore serves as the core data platform of the digital enterprise, acting as the central repository that all of these sources read from and write to. - The broader SAP S/4HANA suite builds on this core with three main functional modules (ERP, CRM, and SRM) and the NetWeaver application stack, which enables custom applications to interact seamlessly with the HANA database. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXurKENGRE&t=0s) **Why SAP HANA Matters** - Bradley Knapp describes SAP HANA as an in‑memory, high‑performance analytical database that speeds up data ingestion and processing across traditional business, UI/UX, and mobile sources, underscoring its importance for modern SAP implementations. ## Full Transcript
hi my name is Bradley Knapp and I'm a
product manager here at IBM and I own
all of our s ap certified infrastructure
that runs an IBM cloud and one of the
questions that we get a lot from people
who are at the very beginning of their
sa P journey is what is sa P Hana why is
it important you guys talk about it all
over the place but you never tell us
what it is and so sa P Hana is an
in-memory database and Hana is actually
an acronym it stands for
high-performance analytical appliance
and the idea behind it is that it's a
database that is orders of magnitude
faster than any traditional database
that you can buy that runs on a disk why
does that matter that matters because
you have all of these different pieces
of the business solution that are now
feeding data back and forth right so
you've got a database that's constantly
ingesting data from all these different
sources you've got all the traditional
business sources that you're bringing
data in and out of right so that's going
to be your contracts and sales data all
of the normal stuff things that you've
been bringing in and out but you've also
got UX and UI data right you've got
information that's coming into and out
of your website into and out of your
forms and then you have the
proliferation of mobile data so that
data that's coming out of mobile devices
not just from your customers but also
from your workforce right is our
workforce goes increasingly mobile
you've got more and more information
that's coming from those data sources
and then you've got all of the machine
learning pieces right so what good is
data if you're not gonna do interesting
things with it and so you've got machine
learner that's both reading from and
then writing to that Hana database and
then you've got the IOT sensors right
we've got IOT sensors in everything now
you might have IOT devices in your
factory IOT devices in your warehouses
IOT devices at your points of presence
and points of sale IOT sensors are
everywhere and so you get this massive
amount of data that's all coming in and
you need a database that's able to
handle it
that's why Hana exists Hana is the core
of your digital enterprise it is the
core database that everything feeds into
and why does that matter right so over
here let's talk about s for Hana
so as for Hana is the application suite
the
goes around it you know and so you've
got three fairly normal components that
go into it right the first one is going
to be your ERP the traditional sa P
product the one that everybody knows
about but you've also got the CRM piece
and you've got an SRM PS these are all
important components of that s4 HANA
deployment and then you have the really
neat part right that's the piece that
sits right here in the middle that is
the netweaver stack netweaver is an
application platform that you can deploy
applications on to that talk back and
forth with this Hana database and so not
only do you have the data sources coming
in and out but now you've got all the
applications that go along with it
and so you've got applications that run
on the netweaver platform that come from
s AP directly but also anyone can
develop on top of that netweaver
platform right so a third party a
business partner a consultant to anybody
can develop an application that's
specific to your needs that goes along
with the netweaver platform and why does
all of that matter well what good is
data if you aren't going to do things
with it right otherwise it's just
sitting out there it's data in a
warehouse it doesn't matter and that's
where we start talking about the
analytical pieces and I like to break
the analytics piece up into three levels
right so your first level that's going
to be your tactical level that's going
to be your business objects right that's
a WYSIWYG editor where any employees got
access to the system can go out and put
together a query to get the data that
they need to do their job the second
piece is what I like to consider the
enterprise level right that's going to
be your machine learning your Leonardo
your Watson that's where you're using
artificial intelligence to go out and
actually gain important insight into
your data that otherwise you might never
know about and then that third piece is
what I like to think of is the strategic
level that's going to be your digital
boardroom
so that's your C suite and your board of
directors that want the top-down
enterprise level view of what's going on
in your system what's going on in your
factories but they want to look at it at
a strategic level I want to see all of
my factories at once all of my
warehouses at once and then I want to be
able to drill down into oh alright well
I see that we've got a little bit of an
up time issue at
this particular factory or we've got
some sort of hang-up in this warehouse
or at this piece of our inventory system
or this piece of our logistics trail and
they can take and go from that very high
level and then start drilling down into
it piece by piece
so that they can take the insight that
they need to make those strategic level
decisions so that's kind of a basic
overview of Hana I want to encourage you
to learn more and you can always learn
more by visiting us on IBM's web sites
you can learn more at the IBM cloud
blogs where we get into more detail
around how to architect a solution based
around sa P Hana based around that Hana
database and also you can always learn
more at sa P's website at sapa comm