November 2012

Master Big Data: SAP Del ivers the Database of the 21st Century

An Aviation Week/SAP White Paper

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Master Big Data: SAP Delivers the Database of the 21st Century

November 2012

The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry deals with a large and ever-increasing volume of information — somuch, in fact, that it has acquired a nickname: “Big Data.” The growth of data in A&D has been triggered bya number of factors: the thousands of components and their variants that OEMs and prime contractors manu-facture; the launch of new “e-enabled” aircraft with onboard sensors emitting operational, performance anddiagnostic data; cradle-to-grave track-and-trace requirements for aerospace components; program lifecyclesthat last several decades or more; global supply chains, many of which are necessary to meet offsets andother contractual requirements; regulatory rules that affect operations at home and abroad; and the growingbusiness of aftermarket sales and service.

With the amount of information growing exponentially across all industrial sectors, SAP has developed agroundbreaking in-memory computing platform that gives companies the means to accurately manage, inter-pret and analyze Big Data in real time. Called SAP HANA, the product takes advantage of innovations inboth software and hardware, and the results speak for themselves. Many times SAP HANA delivers a perform-ance boost that is 1,000-10,000 times faster than a traditional disk-based relational database. Customersacross various industries are already leveraging SAP HANA to transform their businesses and are now gettinganswers to business questions that were never thought possible to ask. And the range of applications goesfrom real-time genome sequencing for more precise cancer treatments to passenger recovery planning for air-lines.

SAP HANA is unlike any other database or data management solution on the market in its ability to combinetransactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) capabilities into one system. And by doing so, it both simplifies theoverall data management architecture and radically improves it through the use of in-memory technology.Historically, transactional and analytical data has always resided in two separate databases, with the analyti-cal data represented as an aggregated view of the total dataset and delayed by weekly or sometimes monthly

batch-jobs. Due to the speed of SAPHANA, analysis can now be donedirectly on the granular data without theneed to pre-build analytical views. Thisgives the end user the ability to analyzethe business on a more granular leveland to ask new questions without havingto go to the IT department with a requestfor another predefined report or dash-board.

But perhaps even more important is thatSAP HANA provides the ability to buildradically new solutions that could neverhave been built before. First of all, SAPHANA is not just a database, but alsoan in-memory computing platform capa-ble of performing complex calculations,

functions and data-intensive operations directly on the data without requiring time-consuming and costly move-ments of data between the database and applications. This is part of the secret sauce. Secondly, it gives appli-

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November 2012

cation developers the ability to natively embed these powerful analytical capabilities into any business solu-tion. Imagine how much better decisions a business planner could make if the business planning solutionwould leverage all the mountains of data - to analyze, simu-late and predict. SAP is in the process of leveraging this pow-erful capability across its entire solution portfolio and it is leav-ing the door open for anybody else to do the same. SAP ischallenging themselves and the A&D industry to identify prob-lems that could not have been solved before. SAP has even setup a dedicated team with PhD level expertise in statistics andadvanced analytics, called the SAP PIO (Performance andInsight Optimization) team to tackle these difficult problems.

Several A&D companies are already phasing in SAP HANAand capitalizing on its benefits. One example is HoneywellAerospace, which is using SAP HANA for internal financialreporting requirements. Honeywell acquired SAP HANA,along with a set of SAP tools to analyze business data, late in2011 and began deploying the system throughout the compa-ny in early 2012. To date, SAP HANA is 90%in place at 80-plus global sites, says David Jarvis, Honeywell’s chief informa-tion officer, and will be 100% deployed in 2013. “Ninety percent of our revenue is on this system today,” headds.

Jarvis and colleague Carl Esposito, vice president of marketing and product management, are enthusiasticabout the speed and depth of data that Honeywell Aerospace has been able to mine from SAP HANA, all inreal time. “From an information technology perspective,” says Esposito, “this is clearly transformational.”

Among the tasks the company performs with SAP HANA is analysis of data regarding product lines and mar-kets. This enables managers to develop regional and geographic perspectives about sales and applicationtrends and develop strategies that support growth around the world. “SAP HANA allows us to get ahead ofcustomer needs,” says Esposito. “In high-growth areas we look at local information and at product informationby region and correlate the data. The level of granularity is such that we can use the tool to dig deep and bet-ter understand customer trends and how to stay ahead of them.” All of the data, he notes, is “in the can,”meaning it is consolidated in one location, making it far simpler to access than if the data were in “a wholebunch of cans” (a reference to how legacy systems handle data).

Esposito and Jarvis are also sold on the real-time aspect of data access with SAP HANA. “We don’t have towait for answers,” Jarvis remarks. He notes that when analyzing data with legacy systems, “sometimes mybusiness partners would ask questions and then would have forgotten all about them by the time we got theanswers.”

In fact, everything about data analysis with SAP HANA is on a fast track. Jarvis remarks that HoneywellAerospace once launched a similar internal reporting process using traditional data systems. “It took 15 to 18months to build an environment and create reports.” The initial SAP HANA project was similar in complexity

With the amount of information

growing exponentially across all

industrial sectors, SAP HANA has

developed a groundbreaking in-

memory computing platform that

gives companies the means to accu-

rately manage, interpret and ana-

lyze Big Data in real time.

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Master Big Data: SAP Delivers the Database of the 21st Century

November 2012

and scope, he says, but was set up in six to eight months — less than half the time — and is delivering “rich-er, faster data.”

Data from SAP HANA is now accessed through desktop computers at Honeywell Aerospace, although Jarvissays it will eventually be available on Apple iPads, at which point the “user experience will be expanded.”Mobile access to SAP HANA-generated business intelligence is part of the application roadmap for the system.

For now, a cadre of executives at Honeywell Aerospace has access to SAP HANA, but Jarvis sees this chang-ing in the near future when many more people, including shop-floor personnel with security clearance, will beusing the system. “SAP HANA is a management tool at this stage, but when its penetration increases [through-

out the organization], the financial return from the granularinformation it provides will aggregate,” he remarks.

“We are trying to make this a self-service model,” says Jarvis,“where business users like Carl and others will be able to dotheir own queries and run their own reports. That is when SAPHANA will become transformational.”

Ultimately, SAP HANA “is about understanding how our busi-ness is evolving and how we can serve customers around theworld faster and more efficiently,” says Esposito.

In an environment where defense contractors are being askedto cut costs, and with sequestration in the U.S. and cutbacks inmany other countries looming, managers are increasinglysearching for ways to remain competitive and profitable in thelean years that many see on the horizon. For commercial aero-space manufacturers, the challenge is instead to increase pro-duction rates to deliver against record backlogs. Making oper-ations more efficient and productive will be important ways ofachieving either of these goals.

By enabling A&D companies to offer entirely new forms of rev-enue-generating services and solutions for their customers, SAPHANA’s value can be potentially even more significant as a

top-line growth generator. SAP HANA enables A&D companies to analyze massive quantities of performanceand sensor data in real-time for DOD and airline customers and to offer services to increase reliability andreduce maintenance costs for their aircraft and military assets. And A&D companies can leverage the power ofSAP HANA to build new solutions for the government to guard against cybersecurity threats, process intelli-gence from C4ISR applications, and detect fraud, waste and abuse.

The common denominator in all of these areas is the ability to accelerate the cycle times for accessing, analyz-ing and acting on Big Data problems. A&D companies that upgrade their information systems will be able tomanage Big Data effectively, in effect making it an ally in the battle for market share and growth. SAP believes

SAP HANA’s capabilities are consis-

tent with the computing trend of con-

solidating data in one location to

improve user access and make infor-

mation far more manageable and

relevant than when dispersed among

legacy systems. This real-time, col-

laborative analysis of data reduces

the potential for inaccurate, obsolete

or missing information, thereby

increasing the accuracy of decisions

and other actions by users.

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November 2012

that SAP HANA will provide the computing power and analytical capabilities necessary to meet these chal-lenges and help maintain a competitive advantage.

SAP HANA’s capabilities are consistent with the computing trend of consolidating data in one location toimprove user access and make information far more manageable and relevant than when dispersed amonglegacy systems. This real-time, collaborative analysis of data reduces the potential for inaccurate, obsolete ormissing information, thereby increasing the accuracy of decisions and other actions by users. Companies thathave deployed SAP HANA are seeing benefits in reduced cost of ownership as a result of eliminating thelabor-intensive tasks of dealing with the limitations of traditional database systems. These tasks, which are nolonger required with SAP HANA, have included aggregating and staging data, producing one-off customreports, and maintaining the myriad disparate data-warehousesystems and their interfaces, not to mention the multi-hour waittimes for results endured by the business users.

SAP HANA and In-Memory Computing replace conventionaldisk-based data systems, distributed computing processes andrelational databases, which are inadequate for managing BigData. Chief among the problems with these legacy systems arethe decentralized acquisition and storage of data and theinability to process and access information in a timely and col-laborative manner. When A&D users rely on legacy systems,they face many challenges. These include: blind spots in dataanalysis, which cause companies to react slowly to trends andopportunities, or miss them altogether; developing inaccuratebusiness forecasts and strategies; and lagging in the implemen-tation of regulations and quality specifications throughoutextended and often global supply chains. Ultimately, relianceon legacy computing systems will impact a company’s competi-tive edge by impeding its ability to make rapid decisions basedon actionable real-time data.

Importantly, the wealth of data generated by SAP HANA cre-ates insight by exposing decision-makers and strategists to oper-ational patterns that raise questions or reveal opportunities notpreviously considered. This alerts companies to emerging mar-ket trends and other factors for exploitation ahead of competitors and can have a transformative effect on busi-ness planning. SAP HANA therefore confers an important advantage when it comes to how A&D companiesstrategize, target opportunities, allocate resources and execute business decisions. Moreover, it serves as aplatform for delivering completely new forms of value to their customers.

One interesting new form of business value that SAP HANA makes possible is predictive analytics against vastvolumes of data in real time. With predictive algorithms deeply embedded in the SAP HANA platform andextended into focused business applications and business intelligence content, companies are now mining bothstructured and unstructured data (i.e., text, documents, social media) for insights about the future. By anticipat-

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ing component failure rates, for instance, A&D companies are now able to optimize maintenance schedulesand demand planning for spare parts, a notoriously volatile scenario using conventional deterministicapproaches.

SAP HANA is scalable to company size. SAP supplies versions that meet the needs of all A&D companies,from the largest OEMs to small component suppliers.

Master Big Data: SAP Delivers the Database of the 21st Century

November 2012

SAP Aerospace and Defense

SAP partners with leading aerospace and defense companies to help them address head on the challenges ofcommercial production rate acceleration, reduced defense funding and increased globalization. SAP forAerospace and Defense software solutions help companies design and build high-quality complex products,create and manage responsive supply networks, and deliver profitable aftermarket services. For more informa-tion go to: http://www.sap.com/campaigns/2012_10_aerospace-defense/index.epx

For more information about SAP HANA, visit www.experiencehana.com

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