the fabric for success: sap hana spins up...

S-1

SAPINSIDER SPECIAL REPORT | TAKING THE NEXT STEP WITH SAP HANA

Reproduced from the Apr n May n Jun 2015 issue of SAPinsider with permission from its publisher, WIS Publishing | SAPinsiderOnline.com

This winter, when SAP Co-Founder and Chairman Hasso Plattner introduced SAP

Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA) to the world, he began by offering a

glimpse into SAP HANA’s nascent beginnings. Realizing that his students at the Hasso

Plattner Institute were bored by lectures on stodgy enterprise systems, Plattner cor-

ralled a small team and set out to develop rules and requirements that captured his

vision for the future of enterprise software. Rule number one, Plattner said, was to create

a database with zero response time.

Today, that vision is behind everything SAP is doing to help our customers

run their businesses smarter, faster, and simpler. Organizations all over the world are

asking the same questions Plattner posed to himself, even putting technology aside for a

moment: What if we didn’t have to wait for anything? What if we didn’t have to wait for

information to process, or for reports to run? What if running the entire business in real

time was just the natural order of how things worked?

Just the act of posing these questions is a springboard to innovation because the answers

help a company reimagine its business processes. Present CFOs with the scenario of not

having to wait a week for the books to close and they’ll reel off an extensive list of the

various ways they could use a real-time cash position to drive profit and reduce costs.

And while SAP HANA can help solve such business challenges, it’s so much more than

that. The purpose behind SAP HANA is not just to run one application or line of business,

but to use it to reimagine the business as a whole, from bringing new, innovative products

and services to market, to innovating in the cloud. Four years after its general release, SAP

HANA now represents a fabric, if you will, that can radically simplify how an organization

runs its business applications, runs in the cloud, and capitalizes on macro-trends such as big

data, Internet of Things (IoT), and Industry 4.0.

Blanketed in SuccessOf course, just as fabric is woven into something of higher value, so too can SAP HANA

create further value by being more than a unifying enterprise platform. Customers ulti-

mately care about use cases — how can SAP HANA help them get the most out of the

Steve LucasPresident SAP Platform Solutions

INSIDE THIS SPECIAL REPORT

S-3 IBM: Taking SAP HANA to the Cloud

S-7 Rolta IP Solutions: Maximize Plant and Product Performance with Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence

S-9 Fujitsu and NetApp: Balance Credibility and Costs

S-11 PwC: Analytics Transformation Starts Within

S-13 Red Hat, Inc. and CITO Research: How to Handle Today’s SAP Workloads

S-15 Worksoft Inc.: Ensuring SAP HANA Delivers: The Need for Functional and Performance Validation

S-17 SanDisk: Optimize Your SAP HANA Deployment with Scalable, Flash-Based Storage

S-19 Lenovo: Maximize Your SAP Deployments with Large Memory Capacity and a Common Server Infrastructure

S-21 SGI: A Seamlessly Scalable Single-Node Infrastructure

S-23 Deloitte: The Next Revolution in Analytics: SAP S/4HANA

S-24 Dolphin Enterprise Solutions Corporation: Harness the Potential of Unlimited Data Storage

S-25 Delaware Consulting: SAP HANA Innovations Touch All Aspects of an Organization

S-26 Capgemini: From Business Enablers to Business Catalysts: CFOs Are Empowered by SAP Simple Finance

View this special report at SAPinsiderOnline.com

The Fabric for Success: SAP HANA Spins Up Innovation

http://SAPinsideronline.com

http://sapinsideronline.com

S-2

TAKING THE NEXT STEP WITH SAP HANA | SAPINSIDER SPECIAL REPORT


applications that they want to use? This is the premise

behind SAP S/4HANA, as the natural evolution pro-

gressing from using SAP HANA as the underlying plat-

form to actually building a game-changing application

on top of it.

SAP S/4HANA delivers on the promise of Plattner’s

first rule of thumb for the future of enterprise software:

to run a business with a response time of zero.

Understanding and accepting the fact that SAP HANA

is the underlying fabric, SAP S/4HANA leverages

this concept for the core business suite, for cloud

applications, for all of the macro-trends, and provides

organizations with the ability to achieve that new and

reimagined business model in which latency is a thing

of the past.

Re-Engineered for SimplicityTo understand SAP S/4HANA, it helps to look at it

not so much as a singular product, but rather as the

sum of its parts. To use an analogy, applications such

as SAP Simple Finance and SAP Simple Logistics are

to SAP S/4HANA what Microsoft Excel or Word are to

the Microsoft Office suite. For the back-office end

user, this means ease of use (powered by SAP Fiori)

and simplicity. From a technical perspective, every

application that runs on SAP S/4HANA is predicated

on SAP HANA, promoting simplicity on the backend.

For a truly reimagined business and to put latency

permanently in the rearview mirror, SAP had to look

at changing how applications that run on top of SAP

HANA store data and ultimately discover ways to

increase profit and reduce costs within that data.

SAP S/4HANA was engineered with the intention of

significantly reducing complexity in the data model.

With SAP Simple Finance, for example, thousands of

tables and views were reduced to four or fewer. This

is huge, because the basis for re-engineering the busi-

ness suite is that complex data models produce com-

plex business processes. If the core operational data for

a business is simple to store, manage, and understand,

then the business processes that support it will be

equally simple to work with.

Stitching Together InnovationAnother key to simplification is SAP HANA Cloud

Platform, the in-memory platform-as-a-service (PaaS)

offering that extends the value of SAP HANA to allow

customers to customize the look and feel of their busi-

ness applications. An organization running a mix of on-

premise and cloud solutions can use SAP HANA Cloud

Platform to spin up a custom application on top of,

say, SAP ERP Financials and SuccessFactors data in a

matter of hours. This is just one example of the radical

simplification that SAP HANA is starting to drive, and

not just on the backend as mentioned previously.

SAP HANA Cloud Platform crystallizes this concept

that the fabric is in place to give organizations the tools

they need when they answer the key question, “What

would happen if I run this business process with a zero

response time?” SAP S/4HANA is of course a large part

of helping to make this a reality, but it’s important to

remember that while this builds on SAP HANA as the

foundational fabric, it’s not the only important thread.

SAP has enabled organizations to have a complete end-

to-end, cloud-based business as well as a dramatically

simplified business suite.

The SAP “Run Simple” message is two-fold. On one

hand, it represents SAP’s commitment to create radi-

cally simplified solutions that are easier to adopt and

run. On the other, it is a vision that customers will be

able to leverage this simplified solution set to deliver

new products, innovations, and services to their cus-

tomers. Of course, both aspects depend greatly on

SAP’s trusted and valued partner community; both in

helping customers understand the real business ben-

efits from SAP HANA, as well as leveraging SAP HANA

Cloud Platform to help strengthen the fabric. Simplified

enterprise software also trickles down to the partner

community; now, rather than focusing on integration,

they can be part of the push to innovate with SAP

HANA to drive value.

SAP has put the fabric of innovation in place — we

look forward to seeing the finished products that arise

as a result.

The SAP “Run Simple” message is

two-fold: It represents SAP’s com-

mitment to create radically simplified

solutions, and a vision that customers

will be able to leverage this simplified

solution set to deliver innovations to

their customers.


S-3



Taking SAP HANA to the Cloud How Customers New and Old Can Benefit from SAP’s Latest Innovations

Charles (Chuck) KichlerGlobal SAP Practice CTO and IBM Distinguished

Engineer IBM

Rick FricchionePartner and CTO,

SAP Practice Service Area Leader,

Technology, Infrastructure, and Development

IBM

A primary goal among CEOs today is to run a real-

time business — and this goal is quickly becom-

ing a requirement for organizations that wish to drive

runaway innovation and challenge the status quo. Most

C-level executives recognize that standing pat is not an

option. In the latest IBM CEO report, more than 40%

of CEOs said that they expect their next competitive

threat to come from an organization outside of their

own industry.1 New and unexpected competition is up-

ending entire industries; by running a real-time busi-

ness, a company can redefine how it creates value for

its customers, thus staying one step — or many steps

— ahead of new threats.

For SAP customers, driving innovation with a focus

on running a real-time enterprise often means explor-

ing how SAP HANA can help move the needle. And,

with SAP Simple Finance as the first module in the

new SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA),

finance organizations now have a new solution to

assess when devising strategies for using technology

to innovate.

Over time, SAP S/4HANA will pull in the common

features of the line-of-business on-premise applications

such as supplier relationship management, product

lifecycle management, and supply chain management,

and provide hybrid cloud extensions to SAP and other

software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, all in line with

the overall SAP message touting simplification, innova-

tion, and transformation. SAP S/4HANA is available

on premise, in a private cloud, and on SAP HANA

Enterprise Cloud.

SAP Simple Finance functions and capabilities are

clearly in line with SAP’s intent to deliver a product

that offers the ability to run a real-time finance organi-

zation. By providing a read-only view of data stored in

an SAP HANA database, a user will be able to instantly

create aggregates to discover trends and changes, and

all pre-final close tasks will collapse into a series of rapid

1 IBM, “Leading Through Connections” (2012; www-935.ibm.com/services/us/en/c-suite/ceostudy2012).

pre-close tasks allowing the finance team to instantly

jump to make corrections in the SAP ERP system. SAP

Simple Finance can allow CFOs and finance teams to

close books in a day, centralize finance functions, plan

dynamically, and take the steps toward transforming

finance as a strategic partner to the business.

While on-premise is an SAP Simple Finance deploy-

ment option, many customers have turned to SAP

HANA in the cloud because it offers additional flexibil-

ity and efficiency as well as the potential for real-time

analytics that can turn ideas into action.

Going to the Cloud with SAP HANAIBM cloud offerings for SAP HANA deployments ad-

here to the SAP message of simplify, innovate, and

transform. For both new and existing SAP customers,

IBM has offerings that can help organizations in any

industry reach the objective of having a real-time, inno-

vative platform (see Figure 1 on the next page).

Before looking at specific IBM offerings, it’s worth-

while to develop an understanding of how and where

SAP HANA adds value, because the answer to that

question often depends on the type of organization, its

industry, what it is looking to accomplish, and where it

stands in its overall SAP footprint. A net-new SAP cus-

tomer, for example, is more likely to look at SAP HANA

from the platform perspective, as the foundational

database from which everything else is built.

Existing SAP accounts, specifically global multina-

tionals, are more likely to isolate SAP HANA to attack

innovation in a single area. Starting on the edges in this

manner to accelerate or explore improvements for a

single business process is in line with leveraging SAP

HANA as a sidecar accelerator. Moving line-of-business

applications to the SAP HANA environment, however,

entails much more of a transition. And with the release

of SAP S/4HANA as the successor to SAP ERP, organiza-

tions now have to more carefully weigh when it’s the

right time to make this next transformation for run-

ning the business suite. From an analytics perspective,

most customers by now know that SAP HANA provides


http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/en/c-suite/ceostudy2012

S-4



quantifiable advantages. For many organizations, then,

the question isn’t if SAP HANA can help simplify, inno-

vate, and transform, it’s when is the best time, and what

is the proper deployment option?

Running SAP HANA in the cloud combines real-time

analytics that drive business decisions with the flexibil-

ity and efficiency of the cloud. As a cloud and hosting

partner, IBM stands out for the depth and breadth of its

offerings, the level of management, performance levels,

and delivery of service level agreements (SLAs) of IBM

Cloud Services. IBM Cloud Managed Services for SAP

applications provides full-stack ITIL-compliant man-

aged services with SLAs at the operating system (OS)

level. Additionally, IBM offers unmanaged SAP HANA

One, SAP HANA, and SAP applications available on the

cloud platform from SoftLayer, which is part of IBM

Cloud Services.

IBM Cloud Managed Services is unique in its deliv-

ery model as the only hardware and cloud vendor to

guarantee sub-second SLAs in performance and avail-

ability through the application layer of their enter-

prise applications, including SAP ERP, SAP Customer

Relationship Management (SAP CRM), SAP Business

Warehouse (SAP BW), and SAP HANA.

IBM Cloud Managed Services has transitioned from

the infrastructure and support model of a traditional

hosting model into a cloud model, mirroring in many

ways how a client would run its existing SAP landscape

in its own data center, only in the IBM Cloud. This

allows for clients to maintain choice and control while

providing both security and availability across a multi-

tude of data centers.

Customer ChoiceFor both new and existing SAP HANA customers,

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud offers a low-cost entry

into an enterprise-class platform in the cloud. Last

fall, IBM and SAP announced IBM’s new status as a

premier strategic partner for cloud infrastructure

services to optimize opportunities for customers.2

This certification gives customers the assurance that

their SAP HANA cloud solutions can run production

workloads through a specialized deployment support-

2 See www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/45049.wss.

Without cloud computing

Workload A

• Software • Hardware • Storage • Networking

Service management

Workload B

• Software • Hardware • Storage • Networking

Service management

With cloud computing

• Virtualized SAP resources

• Automated service management

• Standardized services

• Location independent

• Rapid scalability • Self-service portal

Workload A Workload B Workload C

• Software • Hardware

• Storage • Networking

Service management

FIGURE 1 Moving SAP applications to the cloud can transform your traditional SAP environment

For many organizations, the ques-

tion isn’t if SAP HANA can help

simplify, innovate, and transform, it’s

when is the best time, and what is

the proper deployment option?


http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/45049.wss

S-5



ing all SAP HANA use cases. One option for running

applications using IBM Cloud Managed Services is

a PaaS deployment of SAP HANA, where IBM provides

the dedicated appliance, hosting, and administrative

services.

Another option is for the customer to send its exist-

ing SAP HANA appliance to an IBM Cloud data cen-

ter where it will be managed and hosted. The benefit

here is that the supporting architecture is the same at

every IBM Cloud data center, meaning running SAP

S/4HANA in the US, for example, would be the same as

running it anywhere in the world because it would be

managed by the same hardware, software, and global

service delivery organization. Figure 2 provides a map

of IBM data centers around the world.

Organizations that wish to run SAP HANA without

purchasing a license can run SAP HANA One in the

IBM Cloud as a PaaS option through SoftLayer with

SLAs available at the infrastructure level. With this op-

tion, companies can conduct a proof of concept for SAP

HANA, build and deploy SAP HANA applications for pro-

duction, or even get started with in-memory applications.

SAP S/4HANA’s Place in the CloudSAP S/4HANA has arrived at a time when resistance

to the cloud has significantly waned. Hybrid

Singapore

India Hong Kong

China Tokyo

Melbourne Sydney

London Amsterdam

Brazil

Seattle

San Jose Los Angeles

Mexico City Houston Denver Chicago Montreal

New York City Washington, DC

Atlanta Miami

Dallas Toronto

Ehningen

Raleigh

Winterthur

Lisbon

Boulder

Barcelona Montpelier

SoftLayer data centers Network point of presence

IBM Cloud Managed Services for SAP applications data centers

FIGURE 2 A map of IBM’s data centers around the world

With the sheer number of technology changes and integration challenges

involved in a hybrid model of this size, an integrator and cloud provider with

IBM’s experience is a key component to ensure reduced complexity.


S-6



deployments are ubiquitous; most companies have

dozens of SaaS products they’re utilizing already, so

they’re familiar with working across multiple data

centers. This is the new reality, and moving a company’s

SAP landscape to a cloud environment is just a part of

this larger picture.

What we’re learning about the SAP S/4HANA road-

map as the product matures will influence how IBM

helps to take its customers to that next generation of

SAP products. The technology is certainly ready; the

initial hesitance to embrace the cloud has instead been

replaced by questions about what it means for an IT

department as organizations start to work with mul-

tiple cloud service providers and multiple data centers,

and whether those providers can work independently

or need to work together to keep an organization’s

applications running.

SAP S/4HANA as a consolidated platform in the

cloud will certainly evolve as SAP fine-tunes its migra-

tion path. One possibility is that existing SAP customers

that implemented SAP systems a decade ago or longer

will use SAP S/4HANA as a consolidation platform

to make that leap to the cloud and rid themselves of

the complexity that stems from a mix of on-premise

systems. New accounts that are now exploring SAP

Business Suite powered by SAP HANA in the cloud

can migrate to SAP S/4HANA to achieve the same

reduced complexity.

IBM is currently working on delivering SAP

S/4HANA through SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud,

and discussions are under way with SAP over how

to provide additional options for customers in the

cloud, which will be ironed out over time as the road-

map develops.

Regardless of the roadmap, though, companies will

have to take the necessary steps, whether the migra-

tion is within or outside their data center. IBM’s expe-

rienced, time-tested methodology and tools help to do

the heavy lifting, so there’s no question that IBM will

be ready from an integration standpoint.

From deployments in cloud solutions such as

Ariba, SuccessFactors, and SAP Cloud for Customer,

the experience of the IBM migration teams is

directly transferable into SAP S/4HANA migration

questions. Additionally, SAP S/4HANA may be a step

toward lowering the barrier for migrating to the

cloud because it will be easily integrated with SAP

Landscape Transformation, which will likely eliminate

many technical migration problems because of the

replication cycle.

A Guiding HandWhen the transition to SAP S/4HANA really begins,

one path toward adoption may mirror what IBM is

doing with one multinational client, a large profes-

sional services company that is currently deploying

SAP Cloud for Customer and on-premise SAP CRM,

SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM),

and mobility solutions with an SAP Fiori-based UI.

This hybrid model will likely be very similar in the SAP

S/4HANA deployment model as organizations wrestle

with architectural changes and deal with issues such as

network security, identity management, and segrega-

tion of duties (SoD).

With the sheer number of technology changes and

integration challenges involved in a hybrid model of

this size, an integrator and cloud provider with IBM’s

experience is a key component to ensure reduced

complexity. The question companies must answer is

whether they want to change the way they’ve con-

ducted business over the past few decades to capitalize

on the transformational opportunities and to meet the

threats that are upending entire industries.

If the answer to that question is yes, they are going

to need a partner with the breadth and depth of IBM’s

expertise and offerings to steer them through the tech-

nology, business, and organizational challenges and

deliver the unique experience that will get them to

where they need to be.

For more information, visit www.ibm.com/

solutions/sap/us/en.

SAP S/4HANA may be a step

toward lowering the barrier for

migrating to the cloud because it

will be easily integrated with SAP

Landscape Transformation, which

will likely eliminate many technical

migration problems because of the

replication cycle.


http://www.ibm.com/solutions/sap/us/en

S-7



Maximize Plant and Product Performance with Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence Satinath Sarkar

EVP Rolta IP Solutions

To compete effectively, business leaders today need

to analyze operational and back-office data across

myriad sources to make more informed decisions. In

asset-intensive industries, visibility into asset perfor-

mance and product quality, for example, can help an or-

ganization reduce its overall production cost per pound

and even create additional capacity and reduce capital

outlay. Coupled with predictive capabilities, companies

can often reduce their overall cost structure, mainte-

nance spend, and avoid unnecessary downtime.

The path to market leadership, however, goes be-

yond the decision-making capabilities in software. Com-

panies must control the quality and cost of every factor

of production — including the use and care of produc-

tion facilities and the logistics involved in acquiring raw

materials and distributing output. Analytics-based ap-

plications focused on asset utilization can alert every-

one — from individual contributors to line managers

to corporate executives — to what’s working and what

isn’t. Even more importantly, predictive analytics can

tell you what soon won’t work and what you should

do about it. Companies at the forefront of business

intelligence (BI) for operational integrity can reduce

procurement and maintenance costs by leveraging BI

integration with asset management.

Data-based decision making improves day-to-day

operations and drives substantial benefits for asset-

intensive organizations. For example, risk identifica-

tion and mitigation can directly impact the bottom

line. You can only perform risk analysis as fast as you

can get information on asset performance. When

deviations occur but are not reported, an opportunity

to fix the piece of equipment and optimize perfor-

mance is missed.

Predictive analytics provides the ability to proac-

tively manage asset maintenance and improve work-

force management by exploiting patterns found in

historical, transactional, and real-time data to identify

opportunities, mitigate risks, and enable preemptive

capacity planning. It eliminates poor asset utilization,

low maintenance efficiency, and high maintenance

costs, and can also decrease the risk of environmental,

health, and safety incidents.

To achieve performance improvements across the

enterprise, organizations must pursue a strategy that

combines an enterprise-wide approach to BI along with

the proper technology to power this approach.

A Single-Window Approach to BI ExcellenceCompanies should adopt a single-window approach to

BI that incorporates comprehensive, industry-specific

analytics along with necessary IT transformation

solutions. Without a single view of relevant data and a

consistent, enterprise-wide understanding of its mean-

ing, different groups or systems may produce different

answers to the same questions.

The first step of the single-window approach is to

establish the information model. This defines a

comprehensive BI strategy that will positively affect

enterprise performance. The strategy to implement this

model and approach needs to identify the following:

■ The needs of people who enable, produce, and

consume information

■ Various contextual processes, including information

governance processes, analytical processes, and

decision processes

■ The platform capabilities required to deliver real-

time BI insights

Next, you must define the information landscape

that relates to the business model of an organization.

Data silos often spring up organically — different busi-

ness units may implement their own projects indepen-

dently, or could have been acquired via a merger. Either

way, organizations of all sizes must combat the prolif-

eration of data silos. The content, quality, structure, and

definitions of the data in these silos are as variable as

the silos themselves.

The final step is to implement a BI and big data

analytics solution that simplifies the complexity of the

To achieve perfor-

mance improvements

across the enterprise,

organizations must

pursue a strategy

that combines an

enterprise-wide

approach to BI along

with the proper

technology.


S-8



information landscape and enables the organization to

achieve operational excellence by providing role-based,

actionable intelligence.

Rolta OneView Enterprise SuiteRolta OneView exploits the cutting-edge features of

SAP HANA to deliver an advanced BI and analytics

platform (see Figure 1). Backed by the power of SAP

HANA, the solution handles big data to provide light-

ning-fast real-time operational analytics, predictive

analytics for maintenance, reliability and risk manage-

ment, as well as spatial analytics for asset management.

Rolta OneView delivers a precise, holistic view of

an operation’s overall effectiveness and efficiency, in-

cluding the real-time production data that operations

managers need to achieve improvements. It brings

unique business value to all levels of management

through role-based, actionable insights and correlated

real-time operational and business key performance

indicators (KPIs). It breaks down the fundamental bar-

riers to achieving operational and business excellence,

such as silos across operational networks for business,

safety, and sustainability. Rolta OneView provides a 360-

degree view of the enterprise and touches the nerve

center of all critical functions.

This innovative solution simplifies information com-

plexity in the enterprise by providing loosely coupled

yet comprehensive integration across operations and

business systems. Solution modules cover a wide spec-

trum of cross-functional areas, from operations and

maintenance to human resources and finance.

Rolta OneView allows companies to achieve the

following benefits:

■ Accurately understand overall equipment effec-

tiveness. The Rolta OneView connector framework

provides the ability to combine various data sources

that are required to identify areas that contribute to

the loss of production or plant efficiency and poor

utilization at the asset level.

■ Identify gaps in processes by reconciling data

among multiple source systems. This enables a

plant’s management team to make changes to rel-

evant areas and fosters an environment for a cross-

functional team approach.

■ Proactively plan and control operations by bring-

ing in data in real time. This allows users to drill

down to find root causes when falling short of reach-

ing business goals.

■ Minimize quality deviations and eliminate bad

actors. Rolta OneView KPIs provide the framework

to stack-rank risk and compare it to the mean time to

repair to ensure efficient and effective management

of assets.

■ Improve safety performance and regulatory com-

pliance. Rolta OneView helps organizations adhere

to regulatory standards in health, safety, and envi-

ronment. By monitoring data from around the enter-

prise, managers are better aware of any issues that

could lead to regulatory non-compliance and can

address them before they become a catastrophe.

■ Reduce cost of products. The solution provides

actionable information that allows you to improve

quality on both a product and plant basis.

Learn MoreRolta OneView for SAP solutions provides quick and

accurate data analysis in dashboard format, making it

possible to visualize business trends and make decisions

based on current and predictive scenarios. It enables

organizations to streamline business processes, minimize

risk, better predict work load, and enhance business

strategy. Rolta, a global SAP partner, is a strategic origi-

nal equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendor, integrating

its numerous industry solutions with platform technol-

ogy from SAP. Rolta is the 2014 SAP Pinnacle Award

recipient for OEM Partner of the Year, recognized out of

21,000 partners for the most strategic level of innovation

and the fastest new product introductions. For more

information, visit www.rolta.com/oneview-sap.

FIGURE 1 The Rolta

OneView Executive

Dashboard


S-9



Balance Credibility and CostsIntelligent Combination of Disaster-Resilient Solutions and Development Environments Drives Business Innovation

Andrea VoigtSenior Product Marketing

Manager Global Marketing Services

and Solutions Fujitsu

Paul ManteyGlobal Technology

Lead, Fujitsu NetApp

S ince its introduction, SAP HANA has evolved from a

side-by-side analytics and reporting tool to become

the core of successful enterprises around the globe. As

business executives continue to exploit the competitive

advantages that in-memory computing delivers, avail-

ability of the platform becomes essential.

Many companies implement SAP Business Suite

or SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) powered by

SAP HANA to manage business-critical processes

that require high performance and availability —

trading with perishable goods, for instance. Such

implementations need close collaboration between IT

and the business to define a disaster recovery strategy

based on serious risk assessment and business impact

analysis. When it comes to putting that strategy into

practice, IT departments first need to balance two

major factors:

■ Credibility — Assure business owners that IT is

capable of implementing and executing a service

that guarantees continuation of essential business

processes during disaster events.

■ Costs — Design the most effective approach toward

high system availability, including the profitable use

of failover site systems.

High-availability and disaster-resilient solutions

are not “off-the-shelf” commodities. Beyond redun-

dant components, they require orchestration, auto-

mation, and communication systems that ultimately

culminate in multisite implementations. As such,

they must be tailored for each individual organiza-

tion and even for each individual system within a

comprehensive IT landscape. To accomplish this,

IT often turns to external partners to provide the

appropriate technology and to help choose, plan, and

implement the right approach.

Fujitsu and NetApp’s unique solutions and capa-

bilities ensure appropriate availability for SAP HANA

implementations while keeping efficiency in mind.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these solutions.

Avoid Unnecessary DowntimeWhile many companies already have development

systems that are secured by solid components within

server and storage systems, they often experience

downtimes from several hours to even several days. By

contrast, a productive SAP Business Suite powered by

SAP HANA system, which is used to manage mission-

critical processes, generally has a maximum down-

time of a few minutes or less. The key differentiator is

implementing a remotely located failover system that

ensures business process continuity without incurring

unacceptable data loss or downtime.

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX Solutions

Fujitsu and NetApp jointly provide the required

expertise and pre-tested solutions that ensure the

adequate level of availability for each organization,

each SAP HANA system, or each application server.

With proper setup and operational processes,

customers can leverage our technology to ensure that

failover systems are effectively used during normal

operations, yet be prepared to immediately take over

and continue essential business processes in the case

of a disaster.

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX for SAP HANA is a pre-defined

and pre-tested infrastructure solution based on SAP-

certified components that enables simplified, fast,

and secure implementation and operation of the SAP

HANA platform. This solution can be seamlessly inte-

grated with Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX for SAP landscapes,

which provides a unique operational concept for

effectively running SAP applications and databases in

businesses of all sizes and in all types of industries. The

end-to-end virtualization of servers, storage, networks,

and application services creates a straightforward,

flexible environment for managing resources and

workloads. By properly orchestrating and automating

failover processes, Fujitsu’s FlexFrame Orchestrator

software, a core component of PRIMEFLEX for SAP

landscapes, provides the basis for effective high


S-10



availability and disaster recovery (DR) (see Figure 1).

In fact, the DR process does not consist of special pro-

cedures. It contains only typical day-to-day operations,

such as starting an SAP system using infrastructure

resources.

PRIMEFLEX for SAP HANA and PRIMEFLEX for SAP

landscapes are pre-configured and pre-tested combina-

tions of Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY systems, NetApp

FAS storage, and network connectivity and software.

This optimized and ready-to-run approach rounded off

by industrialized services significantly reduces deploy-

ment time, providing a fast track to business value.

Based on PRIMEFLEX for SAP landscapes, the same

simple DR process is applied for multiple productive

SAP HANA systems, which are automatically restarted

after a system breakdown according to their priority.

NetApp FlexClone Environments

With FlexClone, NetApp provides a near real-time,

zero-space technology for creating SAP system

copies that enables IT organizations to deliver signifi-

cant business impact. Application development teams

can create as many full production copy development

environments as they want, and can refresh those envi-

ronments to reflect the current production state in less

time than it takes to get a cup of coffee. Organizations

implementing SAP environments on top of this high-

performance, agile development environment typically

see implementation times reduced by 20%-30%, with

fewer defects and integration problems incurred during

quality assurance (QA) testing. For example, a leading

global cosmetic company reported a 70% reduction in

project delivery time and a 425% increase in the num-

ber of IT projects delivered.

This high-performance application development

environment carries an additional benefit: IT is able

to constantly test and operate in the DR environment

in support of developing and delivering new features

and enhancements to the business. Some clients have

become profitably creative using these DR systems in a de-

ployment similar to the configuration shown in Figure 1;

they have identified and corrected data errors that are cor-

rupting data warehouses or causing key processes to fail.

Always Up and RunningBy deploying SAP HANA with Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX so-

lutions, customers can address the two key inhibitors

of DR implementations: cost and credibility. Effectively

using DR systems as flexible application development

environments enables IT organizations to deliver a

return on investment far in excess of the hurdle rates

expected by the business. Delivering new features and

functions ahead of schedule, with fewer defects and

smoother rollouts, ensures that the business will look

confidently to IT to keep the business running, even

during the most difficult times.

To learn more, visit www.fujitsu.com/fts/sap.

FIGURE 1 Example

of a disaster-resilient

setup of a productive

SAP HANA systemFujitsu

PRIMEFLEX for SAP HANA

(PRD)

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX for

SAP HANA (PRD)

PRD

SAP HANA

Apps

Data Migration

NetApp Snap Mirror/MetroCluster, SAP System Replication

PRIMEFLEX (DEV 1)

DEV (1)

SAP HANA

Apps

PRIMEFLEX (DEV N)

DEV (N)

SAP HANA

Apps

PRIMEFLEX (QA 1)

QA (1)

SAP HANA

Apps

PRIMEFLEX (QA N)

QA (N)

SAP HANA

Apps

PRIMEFLEX (Training 1)

Training (1)

SAP HANA

Apps

PRIMEFLEX (Training N)

Training (N)

SAP HANA

Apps

DR

SAP HANA

Apps

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX for SAP Landscapes

Multisite Orchestration

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX for SAP Landscapes

AppDev Orchestration

System Copies

NetApp FlexClones


S-11



Analytics Transformation Starts WithinHow Organizations Can Achieve Greater Analytics Agility

Frank RinaldiDirector and SAP

Information Management Practice Lead

PwCFor many organizations seeking to transform and

enhance their analytics landscape, deciding on the

right tools is of secondary importance to a more press-

ing need in today’s rapidly changing business climate:

agility. Companies today handle analytics in two differ-

ent groups. One is a group focused on the exploration

of large volumes of structured and unstructured data

to provide insights and predictive analytics, but these

groups are not prevalent in all industries, and vary from

company to company. Instead, I want to focus on the

group that may not always get the glory, but is crucial

to giving organizations visibility to their performance:

the traditional BI group in a business’s IT organization.

Unlike large e-commerce enterprises that are deal-

ing with petabytes of customer data, the traditional

enterprise is instead most apt to develop a BI strategy

with the primary purpose of supporting traditional pro-

cesses around areas such as finance, sales, supply chain,

and human resources. To these companies, where per-

formance of their front-office and back-office functions

is of top concern, agility is paramount to adapt to the

changing needs of the business as far as how it deliv-

ers information. This is a pressing challenge that is be-

coming even more vexing in the wake of an increasing

volume of actionable data.

Agility isn’t unearthed based solely on the tools se-

lected. A sturdy foundation must come first, one that al-

lows an organization to assess its resources and current

processes, and then fine-tune its BI strategy to focus on

what is really important. Incremental changes without a

holistic accounting of how each process affects how the

business is run and which metrics are most effective often

can result in backward progress; companies might have

the means to compartmentalize and analyze more data,

but that doesn’t mean they know how to make sense of it.

Strategy FoundationCompanies must first decide how they are going to

use analytics to improve overall business effectiveness.

Many organizations today are in reactive mode with

BI, using metric roadmaps that are old and obsolete.

BI teams are focusing too much time on servicing pro-

duction support or ad hoc report requests rather than

building a defined metrics roadmap.

A first step to transforming analytics is to have an hon-

est discussion at the C-level about what metrics drive the

company, and how much ad hoc analytics capacity will

be required on a regular basis to deal with fluctuations

in a company’s business model. A rapidly growing or

diversifying company typically needs a much larger ad

hoc analytics capability than a company with a steady

product portfolio and customer base. Additionally, many

companies do not have any one set of metrics they can

point to as the “holy grail.” Instead, there is often a prolif-

eration of metrics, many with the same title but display-

ing different results depending on the line of business

producing the metric. At PwC, we typically jumpstart

these conversations with industry-specific metrics maps.

This gives our clients a baseline to compare their current

metrics mix, helps clients envision what their ultimate

metrics maturity goals should be, and ultimately forms

the bases for a BI strategy and roadmap.

A More Credible BI OrganizationEven with a strong BI strategy, delivering credibly on a

BI roadmap is not simple. BI projects often fail to meet

their primary objectives in the time frame and budget

originally envisioned for a number of reasons. First,

many teams forget that new BI initiatives are inherently

iterative, and require a more incremental project meth-

odology. Second, the availability and quality of data to

feed a metric is often assumed to be much higher than it

is in reality. Last but not least, the volume and complexity

of the data are often underappreciated.

To overcome these challenges, BI delivery organiza-

tions need to be more agile. Typically one of the most

important exercises PwC helps our clients with is base-

lining their BI organization and identifying how it can be

strengthened. Many times, training and reorganizing a

BI organization can lead to large efficiency gains without

large BI software or hardware purchases. Successful BI

teams work to realize broad metric roadmap initiatives

Agility isn’t

unearthed based

solely on the tools

selected; a sturdy

foundation must

come first.


S-12



by adopting a more agile approach to project delivery,

providing value and reviewing results with the business

on a monthly basis, and setting expectations with BI

program stakeholders that additional initiatives

such as process re-engineering, data cleansing, or the

acquisition of more powerful BI technologies may be

required to meet the roadmap as more is discovered

about the underlying data. Additionally, the extended BI

organization should be thought of as a combination of

the business, functional owners of key source data

systems, and the core BI technical team, and all be made

equally accountable for the success of a BI initiative.

BI Organization Skill MixAnother critical factor in developing a successful BI de-

livery organization is the skill mix within the core BI

team. One thing we’re finding with our clients is that

the business analysts who understand the systems and

the data are really the ones who understand the lim-

its of what the information can and cannot be used

for. Developing senior analysts who have this business

knowledge is a sound strategy for companies that wish

to become more mature in their analytics function,

and certainly for those companies with an end game of

completing a full analytics transformation.

Another way to think of it is that the BI team should

be split between analytics and technical profession-

als. Analytics professionals focus on articulating what

metrics should drive the business and the overall

effectiveness, while technical professionals focus on

fulfilling metrics requests.

While this is not a new issue, the rapid pace of

advancements in technology and the diverse array of

options in the marketplace are bringing it to the fore-

front and are making analysts even more valuable to

the business. Combined with an increased interest in

self-service BI, focusing on improving the BI team skill

mix gives many organizations a strong starting point

for an analytics transformation.

Technology Architecture and Governance PoliciesOne of the more interesting developments in the last

five years is the explosion of new BI tools, both at the

database and visualization layers. While this is great

for BI software companies, it has been confusing for

BI teams that have to sift through and integrate these

often disparate technologies. As companies look at

these new platforms, they should consider:

1. How well do the technologies integrate so that the

number of necessary BI technical skill sets in an

organization can be minimized?

2. How can the architecture and a series of policies be

developed so that development and iteration with

metric owners can be as efficient as possible without

sacrificing the quality and performance of the data

and corresponding reports?

Take SAP’s BI and database landscape as an example.

In the last seven years, it has gone from using primar-

ily SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) for data ware-

housing and reporting to now combining SAP BW with

SAP HANA and Sybase for data warehousing and using

a host of solutions, including SAP BusinessObjects BI

solutions, SAP Lumira, and SAP Predictive Analytics,

for reporting. As the technology improves, integration

is a challenge.

One way PwC has helped our clients is to baseline

their existing BI capabilities and help build two-to-

three-month proofs of concept (POCs) for new analytics

architectures. We then help the client make an honest

assessment of the improvements the new architecture

brings compared to their baseline BI capabilities, be-

fore deciding on whether to invest in new technology.

We also help companies understand the costs of train-

ing their team members and of re-developing and sup-

porting the old BI architecture until it can be retired. We

then ultimately help our clients develop a business case

for change (or not) based on these results.

Another way companies can accelerate delivery of the

BI roadmap is by revamping their governance policies.

Companies often underestimate the effect that restrictive

governance policies have on the speed at which BI teams

can iterate through metrics development. The same poli-

cies for changes to a data warehouse that are in place for

a transactional system can result in wait times of days or

weeks for simple changes to reports to be approved.

Fulfilling the Analytics VisionAnalytics is a never-ending organization for companies.

However, developing a strong underpinning strategy

and effective BI delivery organizational strategies will

help companies understand what metrics and ad hoc ca-

pabilities are most important, and what the right invest-

ment level needs to be in their internal BI capabilities. To

learn how PwC can help you realize your analytics vision,

visit www.pwc.com/us/en/increasing-it-effectiveness/

information-management.jhtml.


http://www.pwc.com/us/en/increasing-it-effectiveness/information-management.jhtml

S-13



How to Handle Today’s SAP WorkloadsDistributed Architecture and Open-Source Software Power Modern Organizations

Christine PuccioDirector, Global SAP

Alliance Red Hat, Inc.

Dan WoodsCTO and Founder

CITO Research

From its beginning, SAP has been innovating to help

the business world become more efficient. While

today SAP produces software innovations that help

companies across an array of business processes and

industries and is a leader in modernizing architecture,

the company has in fact been ready for the modern

distributed architecture since the birth of SAP R/3.

When it was first creating SAP R/3, SAP began run-

ning it natively on Unix, which provided a more flexi-

ble alternative to the mainframes that businesses were

used to, and this decision resulted in a boom in SAP

R/3 deployments. Years later, SAP would then see the

benefits of open-source operating systems and begin

to leverage Linux, again anticipating a trend among

its customers.

The story of SAP R/3’s progress illustrates SAP’s lead-

ership in driving the market and bringing customers to

new levels of innovation, with the latest chapter in this

story being SAP HANA. Through the journey from the

mainframe to Unix, and ultimately to Linux, SAP en-

terprise customers have found a permanent home on

Linux that features both distributed architecture and

open-source operating systems.

Ahead of Its TimeSAP pursued distributed architecture before it had

even caught on as a concept by embracing a client/

server model. This not only moved some of the user in-

terface processing to PCs, but also separated the server

computers into tiers, typically several application serv-

ers and one database server. This, coupled with the high

cost of Unix hardware and primitive networking tech-

nologies, meant that SAP solutions ran on a very small

number of computers.

But SAP’s software architecture was capable of even

greater distribution. SAP engineers have long isolated

internal systems from one another, a key to the soft-

ware’s timeless appeal — SAP R/3 could run on 10 Unix

computers, with each maintaining a separate piece of

the solution, although costs and load times made this

unrealistic at the time.

Fast forward to today: The fundamental principles

of SAP R/3 are still with us. SAP’s business applications

run on virtual machines with code written in ABAP or

Java. The applications have multiple tiers and special-

ized systems handle the complexities of the modern

world, such as mobility, in-memory computing, the

Internet of Things, big data, and so on.

Today, we find a computing landscape dominated

by large numbers of small, relatively inexpensive com-

puters working together, using incredibly powerful

networking based on open-source software. The high

speed and low cost of this network has created the

cloud, which allows servers to be located and accessed

from virtually anywhere.

All of the applications and ecosystems that have

grown up in this era — Google, Amazon, Facebook,

and SuccessFactors — use a distributed processing

architecture. It is not a stretch to say that SAP’s busi-

ness applications are far closer to these distributed

applications than they are to traditional mainframe

applications.

But hardware is not the only innovation driving

advances in computing — open-source software is the

second of the twin technologies powering distributed

architectures.

Distributed Architecture and Open SourceOpen-source operating systems power computing

grids for today’s leading companies. Many enterprises

— including 90% of the Fortune 5001 — use Red Hat

Enterprise Linux to achieve this same manner of

productization, providing the missing elements and

services needed to achieve the full security, scalabil-

ity, support, and administration required for enter-

prise computing. In addition, Red Hat supports a

large portfolio of open-source solutions for develop-

ment, integration, storage, and management of cloud

infrastructure.

1 Red Hat client data and Fortune 500 listing, 2014.


S-14



Regardless of an open-source operating system’s

“ownership,” updates, patches, and hardened, reliable

code remain critical to deployment success, not to men-

tion certifications that ensure compatibility with key

applications and infrastructure. At one point, this was

a job that most companies had to do for themselves if

they were going to use Linux or any other open-source

operating system.

Red Hat, however, has created a massive ecosystem

that fosters innovation for developers through JBoss

and OpenShift and supports private and hybrid cloud

environments through OpenStack, taking this burden

off of the enterprise so it can focus on what matters to

its core business success.

The success of SAP follows a natural progression

— beginning with the mainframe, SAP saw a distinct

enterprise need with Unix, with mass Unix adoption

following the company’s support of the technology. As

Unix waned due to issues of cost and scale, SAP saw

the potential in commodity hardware running Linux-

based platforms, opening up the world of distributed

computing for which its software was so well suited

(see Figure 1). Today, Linux is the de facto choice for

running SAP applications; look no further than SAP

HANA, the leading edge of SAP engineering, which

runs only on Linux.

The Linux Legacy From the mainframe to Unix to Linux, SAP enter-

prise customers have found a permanent home with

the twinned innovations of distributed architecture

and open-source software. SAP software is a perfect

fit for the commoditized nature of modern enterprise

hardware, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the

platform to reliably and securely run even the most

extreme SAP workloads.2

To learn more about running SAP systems on

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, visit www.redhat.com/en/

resources/cito-research-why-you-should-put-red-hat-

under-your-sap-systems.

2 For example, in 2014, SAP chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run the world’s largest data warehouse, setting a new Guinness World Record. See www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-data-warehouse.

FIGURE 1 The advantages of running SAP applications on Linux


http://www.redhat.com/en/resources/cito-research-why-you-should-put-red-hat-under-your-sap-systems

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-data-warehouse

S-15



SAP HANA holds enormous promise and offers

a big data strategy that effectively addresses the

“three Vs” of big data: volume, variety, and velocity. To

get there, companies need to embark on a transforma-

tion journey that affects many IT projects and a lot of

technology across many business units — but without

disrupting existing business processes.

Success in an enterprise SAP HANA deployment

means your team will need to complete two very

important phases:

1. Functional validation: Make sure that every

business process functions correctly both before

and after the SAP HANA implementation.

2. Performance validation: Verify that business users

will experience all the speed and responsiveness

promised by SAP HANA.

Both of these phases require a considerable

amount of work from both IT and business teams.

However, automated validation can significantly

reduce the burden and accelerate SAP HANA deploy-

ment and adoption.

Phase 1. Functional ValidationUnlike most other SAP projects, implementing SAP

HANA primarily affects the underlying database. As a

result, these projects can involve relatively little con-

figuration and end-user training. However, SAP HANA

Ensuring SAP HANA Delivers: The Need for Functional and Performance Validation

Shoeb JavedCTO

Worksoft Inc.

projects require extensive functional testing — which

can represent up to 80% of the total project effort,

based on our project experience. This functional vali-

dation ensures quality in two major areas: business

processes and data (see Figure 1 on the next page).

Business Process Quality

As you move to SAP HANA, your team will need to vali-

date that every critical business process works before,

during, and after the implementation. Typically, compa-

nies begin by building their test automation portfolio

on the existing SAP system. Once that is completed suc-

cessfully, the company then runs that same automation

on the applications and data using SAP HANA.

With automation in place, this can be accomplished

in a matter of minutes for each test cycle — compared

to days when using a manual approach. Worksoft auto-

mated business process validation shortens overall proj-

ect timelines and doesn’t require special programming

skills because business users can engage directly.

Data Quality

Data quality is paramount in an SAP HANA migration

because successful adoption requires business users to

have high confidence in their new system, and assur-

ance that business processes still function correctly.

Automated business process validation helps you un-

cover any data transfer problems and system issues

before they affect your production systems and users.

This is accomplished because automated validation

detects any data discrepancies between business intel-

ligence (BI) systems and source ERP systems, providing

a mechanism for you to identify any data quality or

reporting issues.

It’s not just about performing these validations once

and moving on. With all the changes happening to

your environment, you need to check the integrity of

your business processes and data regularly. After the

implementation, regularly validating data transfers

across the various enterprise systems that feed SAP

HANA will remain important to ensure that every

With the pace of change in big data,

you can no longer afford to rely on

manual effort to ensure quality and

performance. Automation is the

new standard for functional and

performance validation.


S-16



business process functions properly. With the speed of

big data, you may find that your validation frequency

will increase.

For example, if you have new analytics capabilities

that speed up your reporting from monthly to daily,

you need to change your validation from monthly to

daily to ensure your data is accurate. Without automa-

tion, this would be an extremely resource-intensive and

time-consuming process.

Phase 2. Performance ValidationThe best way to ensure that your SAP HANA imple-

mentation will deliver the performance, speed, and

user experience that you need is to test it on a typical

maximum workload, analyze the results, identify the

bottlenecks, and optimize the hardware, systems, and

network infrastructure, if needed.

Here’s how one leading company approached per-

formance and load testing of SAP HANA. Using three

analytics systems, the company tracked its computing,

network, and storage tiers specifically for SAP HANA

— all while monitoring the performance of a virtual

SAP HANA system while applying a large production

workload.

The company applied Worksoft Performance

software for performance and load testing, using SAP

financial month-end closing processes as a benchmark.

The workload simulated more than a thousand simul-

taneous users placing orders, viewing stock availability,

performing shipments, and conducting other functions.

This all happened while resource-intensive MRP jobs

were running in the background for consolidation, and

creating tens of gigabytes of SAP HANA logs for data

replication at remote sites. The company’s hybrid cloud

capabilities were also tested.

After conducting these tests, the company was able

to confirm that the deployment would perform as

planned, and see in advance what effect a wide variety

of business activities would have on SAP HANA per-

formance. With automation, the company was able to

do so in a quick, cost-effective manner that would help

them establish confidence in the new system before

going live.

Automate for SAP HANA Project SuccessWith the pace of change in big data, you can no longer

afford to rely on manual effort to ensure quality and

performance. Automation is the new standard for func-

tional and performance validation.

For SAP HANA projects, automation will help your

company avoid business disruption, ensure data qual-

ity and deliver faster, better technology deployment.

Companies can accelerate SAP HANA projects and

ensure performance across every end-to-end business

process touched by SAP HANA. For more information,

visit us at www.worksoft.com.

Functional testing

Performancetesting

SAP HANAquality

assurance

Business processes

Dat

a vo

lum

es

FIGURE 1 Achieve business process quality for SAP HANA

with functional and performance validation


S-17



Dan BaigentSenior Director

SanDisk Global Technology Ecosystem

Optimize Your SAP HANA Deployment with Scalable, Flash-Based StorageHow Flash Technology Is Transforming SAP HANA Economics and Performance

Enterprises are increasingly considering flash tech-

nology as a way to improve their data centers.

SanDisk has been helping customers transform their

data centers by flash-enabling databases and other

transactional workloads to create greater levels of tech-

nical and cost efficiencies and drive higher application

performance and densities. Adding the right flash in the

right places is key to optimizing not just performance,

but also reliability and scale. This is good news for

SAP HANA environments, which are ripe for this type

of optimization.

Working with SAP, SanDisk has created a portfolio

of products that help enable enterprise customers to

deploy high-performance infrastructure for SAP appli-

cations and scalable systems. A primary focus for this

partnership has been the SanDisk ION Accelerator ap-

pliance, an SAP-certified all-flash appliance that provides

unique capabilities for deploying highly scalable, high-

performance SAP HANA deployments as part of the

SAP HANA tailored data center integration offering. The

SanDisk ION Accelerator appliance allows enterprises to

use storage area network (SAN) architectures for SAP

HANA for centralized data management processes such

as data center backup and disaster recovery. Shared stor-

age is useful to consider as a way to move log and data

volumes off of individual SAP HANA appliance nodes as

a shared resource. Let’s look at SAP HANA tailored data

center integration in more detail, and what it means for

your infrastructure options.

What Is SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration?SAP HANA began as a clustered appliance model that

required that the server, software, networking, and stor-

age were all contained within an SAP HANA node.

These nodes could then be scaled across multiple ap-

pliances as the SAP HANA database capacity require-

ments increased, with data shared across the cluster.

With SAP HANA tailored data center integration,

SAP HANA software can now be deployed across mul-

tiple SAP HANA nodes while moving the persistent

storage to an external set of certified storage solutions.

This architecture allows customers to tailor their SAP

HANA infrastructure to use existing and new SAN

infrastructure and introduces flexible deployment op-

tions for SAP HANA infrastructure. With more choice

and flexibility, companies are no longer limited to a

small set of options.

Provided that the server and storage systems are SAP

certified, SAP HANA tailored data center integration

enables customers to meet their deployment require-

ments in a more flexible manner than was previously

thought possible.

While this flexibility can increase the complexity of

the overall installation, deployment, and management

of SAP HANA infrastructure, it can also simplify data

management processes by taking advantage of shared

storage resources and existing data management poli-

cies. Companies deploying SanDisk ION Accelerator

appliances with SAP HANA tailored data center integra-

tion can dramatically reduce the per-node storage costs

while also ensuring high transactional performance.

A single pair of SanDisk ION Accelerator appliances

deployed in a high availability configuration, each using

as few as four units of rack space, can meet the required

performance for up to 32 SAP HANA nodes. The precise

number of SanDisk ION Accelerator appliances required

to support a given SAP HANA configuration is a func-

tion of the memory size of each SAP HANA node and the

number of such nodes deployed in an SAP HANA cluster,

Provided that the server and storage systems

are SAP certified, SAP HANA tailored data

center integration enables customers to

meet their deployment requirements in a

more flexible manner than was previously

thought possible.


S-18



but with up to 32 nodes supported on one high availabil-

ity pair, deployments of multiple terabytes of SAP HANA

database can easily be achieved with plenty of room for

growth — and without additional cost (see Figure 1).

Speed and ReliabilityThe all-flash SanDisk ION Accelerator appliance has

been designed from the ground up to focus on high-

performance, efficiency, and highly scalable shared stor-

age. It offers up to:

■ 1.7 million input/output operations per second (IOPS)

■ 56 microsecond access latency

■ 23 gigabits per second of bandwidth for OLTP

(transactional) and OLAP (analytics) workload

acceleration

This makes the SanDisk ION Accelerator appliance one

of the fastest options for SAP HANA tailored data center

integration deployments and ensures maximum perfor-

mance for SAP HANA data management, including trans-

action logs that can be a bottleneck for performance.

Depending on the configuration, a SanDisk ION

Accelerator appliance can contain up to 51.2 terabytes of

flash storage, controlled by four storage processors and

optimized for throughput, bandwidth, and ultra-low

latency. The SanDisk ION Accelerator appliance can be

deployed in a high availability clustered pair, providing

additional data integrity and protection with redun-

dancy at the component, appliance, and software levels.

ScalabilityWith the SAP HANA enterprise storage certifica-

tion, the SanDisk ION Accelerator appliance is one

of the fastest, most reliable, and most scalable shared

storage platforms for SAP HANA databases.1 Support-

ing up to 32 SAP HANA nodes on a single SanDisk ION

Accelerator appliance high availability pair, it is possible

to deploy multiple terabytes of SAP HANA database

capacity and leverage the performance of the SanDisk

ION Accelerator appliance for all data snapshots, trans-

action logs, and shared file system resources.

This means you can deploy your current SAP HANA

workloads on a minimal number of SanDisk ION Accel-

erator appliance pairs and even have room to scale your

SAP HANA compute nodes without having to deploy addi-

tional shared storage. The SanDisk ION Accelerator appli-

ance provides fast overall transaction speeds, especially for

write-intensive transactional workloads, fast recovery from

SAP HANA node failures, while maintaining overall per-

formance and reliability for your SAP HANA environment.

Learn MoreEnterprises can deploy SAP HANA infrastructure in a

number of ways, but need to balance cost, complexity,

and performance to determine which solution is right

for their SAP HANA use case. As their SAP HANA capac-

ity requirements increase, they need an architecture that

can keep up with their growing needs while also main-

taining cost-effective transaction performance. For those

that want to consider deploying SAP HANA on a shared

storage architecture, the SanDisk ION Accelerator appli-

ance is a simple, cost-effective, and blazingly fast option.

To learn more about the all-flash SanDisk ION

Accelerator appliance and the potential for transforming

your SAP HANA environment, visit http://bigdataflash.

sandisk.com/ion-accelerator.

1 See http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/enterprise-storage.html.

SAP HANA Nodes (n+1)Data and log volumes con�gured for each node

Linear scaling: Add pairs for additional performance or capacity

LUN 0LUN 0

LUN 1LUN 1

SanDisk IONAccelerator

403b

SanDisk IONAccelerator

FIGURE 1 The SanDisk ION Accelerator appliance deployed with SAP HANA tailored data center integration reduces per-node stor-

age costs and ensures high transactional performance


http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/enterprise-storage.html

http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/enterprise-storage.html

http://bigdataflash.sandisk.com/ion-accelerator

S-19



Tag RobertsonSenior Product and Alliance Manager

Lenovo

Maximize Your SAP Deployments with Large Memory Capacity and a Common Server Infrastructure

The SAP HANA database easily integrates online

transaction and analytics processing, offering the

potential for many new business use cases. Whether

it’s the new reporting capabilities with SAP Business

Warehouse (SAP BW) and SAP Business Planning and

Consolidation, or new transactional capabilities with

SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA), com-

panies need to ensure that their server infrastructure is

dependable so that they can achieve these capabilities.

The server infrastructure must integrate into the exist-

ing SAP application landscape, needs to be scalable as

data requirements grow, and must incorporate critical

IT management processes such as high availability,

disaster recovery, and data backup.

While Lenovo may be a new brand in the enterprise

server marketplace, the acquisition of the System x

server division from IBM — which includes server and

services solutions for SAP HANA — brings with it a

legacy of enterprise innovation. System x has a strong

heritage of SAP HANA deployments and has shipped

over 3,600 servers to SAP HANA customers.

Scaling SAP BW and SAP Business Planning and ConsolidationDepending on the type of SAP application you are

planning to deploy, you may have different scaling and

availability requirements. The table structures in the

application dictate the type of scaling required. SAP

BW and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation are

structured with row and columnar formatted data. The

row data is stored in a master server node and deter-

mines the minimum memory sizing requirements

for all server nodes in the cluster. The columnar data

can be split across multiple server nodes in a cluster

configuration. Single as well as multi-node cluster

implementations are possible depending on your sizing

requirements.

The minimum SAP HANA scale-out cluster con-

figuration consists of three server nodes: one master

server node for row store and two worker server nodes

for columnar data. This configuration is not fault tol-

erant. Most IT organizations avoid unplanned outages

by implementing an additional standby node for fully

automated failover and high availability.

The Lenovo System x certified configurations for

SAP HANA use the IBM General Parallel File System

(GPFS) and offer the significant scaling and high avail-

ability capabilities needed for new business-critical

applications, including:

■ Scaling up to two terabytes per node

■ Scaling out to 112 terabytes

■ Integrated high availability and failover

■ Choice of synchronous disaster recovery using GPFS

or SAP HANA system replication

When evaluating server infrastructure options for

SAP BW or SAP Business Planning and Consolidation,

you need to consider several key factors, such as memory

scalability, high availability, and failover functionality.

Because the sizing of the master node can determine the

sizing for each server node in the cluster, it is important

to be able to scale up the memory of the master node.

SAP determines the server sizing and memory re-

quirements of its applications based on a number of

factors, including memory per processor core ratios.

Based on the current ratios, the maximum memory ca-

pacity for each node in the eight-socket Lenovo System

x3950 X6 server based on Intel Xeon Processor E7v2 is

two terabytes.

Server infrastructure must integrate into the

existing SAP application landscape, needs

to be scalable as data requirements grow,

and must incorporate critical IT management

processes such as high availability, disaster

recovery, and data backup.


S-20



With GPFS, you can scale out to 112 terabytes of SAP

HANA memory capacity. In addition, you can set up high

availability nodes that handle auto host failover if a server

node in the cluster goes down. Large cluster configura-

tions can implement failure groups that allow the cluster

to be segmented into groups of nodes. A standby node can

then be assigned to a specific segment in the cluster.

There are still some SAP BW customers that may

not be ready to make the move to SAP HANA because

they cannot migrate to SAP BW 7.3, a prerequisite for

moving to SAP HANA. For these customers, the only

option for real-time analytics is SAP BW Accelerator.

Lenovo offers the latest server configurations for SAP

BW Accelerator, enabling customers to access real-time

analytics in their current environment. The latest con-

figurations are based on the Lenovo Flex System x240

compute node and IBM System Storage v3700. These

configurations are delivered as an integrated solution

and can quickly be inserted into existing SAP BW en-

vironments. There is also an option for a single server

configuration based on Lenovo System x3850 X6.

Scaling SAP S/4HANAThe scaling requirements for SAP S/4HANA are differ-

ent from those for SAP BW and SAP Business Planning

and Consolidation because SAP S/4HANA has very

large tables and requires a large, contiguous memory

space. As a result, these applications require a large

symmetric multi-processing capability with large mem-

ory capacity. As the database grows, it is critical to have

the ability to scale up the server infrastructure to keep

pace with data growth.

Lenovo System x and Flex System servers have the

ability to support eight processors with 15 cores in each

Intel Xeon E7v2 processor, providing up to six terabytes

of memory for SAP HANA applications in production

environments and up to eight processors and 12 tera-

bytes of memory for non-production environments.

Operational ConsiderationsIn addition to having a server with large memory

capacity, it is important to have common server infra-

structure for development, test, quality assurance, and

production environments. To simplify management

and reduce operational costs, organizations should

standardize around a platform that can both scale up

and scale out memory, so that common system man-

agement practices can be established to maintain and

update business-critical systems for SAP HANA.

Choosing server infrastructure that can seamlessly

scale from single-server configurations to multi-server

cluster configurations provides investment protection

by allowing you to deploy the same server platform in

development, test, and production environments. This

further enables a common software stack and server

management policy.

The Lenovo System x configurations with GPFS can

support multiple generations of SAP HANA server

technology in a single cluster. In addition, if your IT or-

ganization is resource constrained, Lenovo Enterprise

Solution Services can help you manage and maintain

your SAP HANA server infrastructure.

The Lenovo System x solution for SAP HANA can

also help customers that have strict data security and

management requirements. The native cryptographic

capabilities of the advanced version of GPFS include

the secure deletion of data. This ensures data confi-

dentiality in a multisite disaster recovery implementa-

tion because all at-rest and in-flight data between data

centers is encrypted, and because only encrypted SAP

HANA data leaves the data center.

This is ideal for installations using shared leased lines

or public internet connections for their high availabil-

ity and disaster recovery setup. It also helps prevent

data leakage when SAP HANA servers are improperly

decommissioned.

Learn MoreApplications such as SAP BW powered by SAP HANA

and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation require

a scale-out architecture to support large memory re-

quirements, while SAP S/4HANA typically requires a

large scale-up memory architecture. Choosing server

infrastructure that can seamlessly scale from single-

server configurations to multi-server cluster configura-

tions provides investment protection by allowing you

to deploy the same server platform in development,

test, and production environments for SAP BW or SAP

S/4HANA, enabling you to have a common server plat-

form, software stack, and server management policy

across all of your SAP application environments.

Lenovo’s System x enterprise heritage and experi-

ence in installing and managing SAP HANA systems

can help you speed your SAP HANA deployment and

realize the business potential that new SAP HANA

applications enable. For more information, visit

www.lenovo.com/servers.

Choosing server

infrastructure that

can seamlessly scale

from single-server

configurations to

multi-server cluster

configurations

provides investment

protection by allow-

ing you to deploy

the same server

platform in develop-

ment, test, and

production environ-

ments for SAP BW

or SAP S/4HANA.


S-21



A Seamlessly Scalable Single-Node InfrastructureBoosting Your Underlying Technology to Keep Up with Today’s Data Needs

Brian FreedVice President, In-Memory

ArchitectureSGI

W ith SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP

S/4HANA), SAP has doubled down on its

mission of becoming the cloud company powered

by SAP HANA. The SAP Simple Finance solution

demonstrates unequivocally that SAP S/4HANA will

be the company’s unifying technology platform

moving forward.

One of the drivers behind this effort is the desire to

reduce business process complexity for organizations as

they engineer their underlying infrastructures. And, to

help further this goal, just as SAP HANA has evolved

from a database and sidecar accelerator into the default

platform for all SAP solutions, so too have its options

for orchestrating an infrastructure to support scalabil-

ity, growth, and operational simplicity.

Consider SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) pow-

ered by SAP HANA, a popular SAP HANA use case

that, because of its analytical nature, can be supported

with a scale-out network cluster. Conversely, the more

transaction-based SAP Business Suite powered by SAP

HANA and SAP S/4HANA have fewer options for a

cluster deployment. For an enterprise that plays with

many terabytes of data, a single-node, scale-up deploy-

ment is the logical choice to support transactional

coherence in the stack as well as to simplify technology

at the architecture level.

Simplicity Behind the ScenesAt its core, SAP HANA is a unifying platform intended

to reduce complexity and drive innovation. It stands to

reason, then, that an organization that leverages this

technology — especially one that uses SAP S/4HANA

to run the entire business in real time — also leverage

an SAP-certified hardware vendor with expertise in re-

ducing complexity, and one that has used this extensive

experience to engineer a purpose-built architecture

specifically for SAP HANA.

This is what sets SGI apart from other SAP-certified

appliance and hardware vendors that deliver general-

purpose solutions applicable to SAP HANA. SGI UV

for SAP HANA leverages SGI’s heritage in building

and providing large, scale-up, single-node systems, and

it was built from the ground up specifically to support

large and growing SAP HANA software environments.

A new offering in the SGI UV server line built for SAP

HANA, SGI UV for SAP HANA provides four distinct

advantages.

1. Seamless Scalability

Most general-purpose scale-up systems are limited to

a maximum of an eight-socket single-node solution,

which requires the adoption of a scale-out cluster to sup-

port further growth. SGI UV for SAP HANA, however,

scales quickly and seamlessly in four-socket increments

far beyond the eight-socket limitation of other systems.

A four-socket SGI appliance, for example, can scale up

as a single node to eight sockets in roughly 90 minutes,

and this seamless scalability continues all the way to 32

sockets. SGI UV for SAP HANA is currently certified for

four- and eight-socket configurations, with certification

pending for scalability up to 32 sockets. This means that

an enterprise can confidently limit capital expenditures

(CAPEX) to an appliance that meets the current busi-

ness requirements without fear that future growth will

require excessive downtime or forklift upgrades.

2. Operational Simplicity

By delivering this scale-up capability in a single-node

deployment, operational simplicity is unparalleled.

Cluster management is known for its proliferation of

network interconnects, a massive storage area network,

cumbersome upgrades, and complex day-to-day admin-

istration. A growing level of complexity when scaling

out in a cluster is just part of the deal. Scaling up in a

A single-node, scale-up deployment is the logical choice to

support transactional coherence in the stack as well as to

simplify technology at the architecture level.


S-22



single node allows for exponential operational capacity

without that complexity, and with far lower total cost of

ownership after the initial capital expense.

3. Future-Proof Architecture

From a hardware component perspective, SGI UV for

SAP HANA is socket compatible across the next three

generations of Intel chip sets, so enterprises can be

confident that today’s in-memory investment can be

maintained and leveraged and can support upgrades

throughout the life of the system.

Additionally, SGI UV for SAP HANA all but guaran-

tees a future-proof architecture to meet an enterprise’s

planned and unplanned needs. If an organization sees

its database expanding at a pace that will outgrow its

infrastructure, it doesn’t have to buy the system that

will support where the business will be three to five

years down the road. Instead, it will know that it can

scale as needed, in four-socket increments, so it does

not have to pay for unused capacity. Likewise, the abil-

ity to scale up to, pending certification, 32 sockets in

a single node provides a safety net for growth in the

event of an unexpected acquisition or surprise merger.

4. Enterprise-Class RAS

SGI UV for SAP HANA provides enterprise-class reli-

ability, availability, and serviceability (RAS). Its Linux

x86 environment carries over the features and func-

tionality typical of a Unix deployment in a database

environment, such as hot swappable components and

software tools to enable proactive monitoring and

predictive failure analysis.

An Interruption-Free FutureOne of the proprietary technologies included with

SGI UV for SAP HANA is SGI Memlog, a fully auto-

mated functionality that, combined with SGI’s remote

monitoring and support, aids seamless operations.

While errors in memory are a foregone conclusion,

allowing them to disrupt operations doesn’t have to be.

Addressing the resilience of a known architecture fail-

ure is the SGI Memlog differentiator. In the case of a

single-bit or other minor error, those are immediately

corrected. What sets apart SGI Memlog, however, is how

it can identify at a granular level the specific error occur-

rence. The system then migrates all of that block’s data

to a new block and permanently retires it, with the sys-

tem fully up and running. This is seamless to the appli-

cation and prevents double-bit memory errors that are

uncorrectable and can lead to system failures. In addition,

memlog events are tracked by SGI’s remote monitoring

and support software to deliver predictive analysis.

Through this and other embedded tools, the mean

time to failure in the SGI single-node architecture has

been improved by more than three and a half times

over the past few years. This was important function-

ality to carry over for SGI UV for SAP HANA, where

uptime becomes much more critical.

Unlimited PotentialThe prospect of unlimited potential was one of the

primary considerations that led SGI to move into the

SAP ecosystem. While SAP is a new partnership for SGI

— we delivered our first SAP-certified system about

six months ago1 — SGI is no stranger to large-scale in-

memory systems, having delivered seven generations of

single-node scale-up systems to hundreds of customers

in industries spanning manufacturing to life sciences.

When SAP HANA became generally available about

four years ago, the symbiotic relationship between the

technology and how it played to our core competency

became apparent rather quickly, and we were pre-

sented with the opportunity to expand our footprint

beyond the traditional technical computing space in

which we’d been operating. As more and more com-

panies adopt SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA, and as

working with live data becomes the norm, the need

for enhanced RAS and seamless growth seems inevi-

table. While we expect there will come a time when a

16-socket, 12-terabyte system will be mainstream, SGI

RAS and scalability features are native to every SGI

appliance from our four-socket entry-level solutions to

the certification-pending 32-socket appliance.

Learn more about SGI UV for SAP HANA at

www.sgi.com/saphana. For more information about

the SGI UV for SAP HANA Try and Buy program,

please contact [email protected].

1 See www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2014/october/sap_hana.html.

As more and more companies adopt SAP HANA and

SAP S/4HANA, and as working with live data becomes

the norm, the need for enhanced RAS and seamless

growth seems inevitable.


S-23



The Next Revolution in Analytics: SAP S/4HANAReshape Business Processes On the Fly with Real-Time Insight

Jagadish BandlaPrincipal

US SAP HANA Analytics Leader

Deloitte Consulting LLP

Krishnankant (KK) Dave

Principal US SAP Cloud Services

Leader Deloitte Consulting LLP

The word “analytics” often conjures images of after-

the-fact investigations — big-picture analyses that

can provide insight for strategic planning and smarter

decision making in the future. Many people view

analytics as a tool that makes them wiser in a holistic

way, but don’t see how it can be applied to routine,

daily tasks. With the right solutions and applications,

however, analytics capabilities can provide insights

instantly during specific but commonplace business

processes — whether it’s something like producing a

sales quote or making everyday procurement decisions.

The challenge lies with today’s complex business

processes. When many connected business processes

culminate in an important event or interaction, the

employees guiding the process steps or activities may

not have access to all the information needed to make

truly informed decisions.

But new tools such as SAP Business Suite 4 SAP

HANA (SAP S/4HANA) can push data-driven insights

to people at the right moment, in an intuitive manner

that can make it easier to assess information and make

quick decisions while executing business processes.

Let’s look at a specific example of how SAP S/4HANA

can help improve a daily task.

Critical Sales Data at Your FingertipsThe sales cycle is a powerful example of the opportuni-

ties made possible through process analytics. Think of

all the opportunities that surround the sales-order entry

process — one of the simplest and most common pro-

cesses taking place every day within many companies.

When taking an order, a good sales representative can

upsell, cross-sell, bundle, and lay the groundwork for the

next sale — if they have instant access to the right data.

Which products are available? Where are they located?

How quickly could they get to the customer? How much

did the customer buy last time? Based on run rates,

when will they exhaust their current supply?

SAP S/4HANA allows sales representatives to use

search-engine capabilities in a system to begin looking

for products or materials as the customer is speaking.

For example, sales reps can type in a part description or

part number, and options instantly appear in a browser

in the same manner as an online search. Once the prod-

uct is located, representatives can identify availability

across locations, making smarter decisions based on

inventories and other data points.

This same type of functionality can give the repre-

sentative access to customer-specific information: What

were the last three orders sold to this customer? What

margin was earned on those sales? What are the top

10 products purchased by the customer? These are the

types of questions sales representatives have asked for

years, but only now are they truly able to have instant

access to the answers. And that can make a huge differ-

ence when it comes to the customer experience, com-

pany efficiency, and revenue.

Uncover Actionable InsightSales-order entry is just one realm in which SAP

S/4HANA-driven process analytics can provide instant

insight. Each business process across an organization

represents an additional opportunity for acting instantly

on real-time insight.

To learn how Deloitte is helping companies signifi-

cantly improve business processes using SAP S/4HANA-

enabled analytics capabilities, visit www.deloitte.com/

sap or email us at [email protected] and kdave@

deloitte.com. New tools such as SAP S/4HANA can

push data-driven insights to people at the

right moment.As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.


http://www.deloitte.com/sap

http://www.deloitte.com/sap

S-24



Harness the Potential of Unlimited Data Storage

Dr. Werner HopfCEO

Dolphin Enterprise Solutions Corporation

The pace of technology innovation is accelerating

rapidly. The cloud, mobile technology, and the

Internet of Things (IoT) have gone from buzzwords to

reality for many organizations, as companies quickly

adopt these new technologies to transform traditional

businesses into digital enterprises.

For organizations running SAP HANA, in-memory

computing is an essential part of moving into this new

digital business age. It enables companies to manage the

increasing amount of data that these new technologies

generate and provides the real-time information that

managers need to make critical business decisions.

Yet, with so many technology options available and

IT costs growing rapidly, organizations must invest

wisely to ensure that they keep the cost of innovation

in line with its value to the business.

Innovation Challenge: Managing Data GrowthHistorically, when businesses collected large amounts

of transactional data, they would quickly dispose of

the details and only keep aggregated information. It

was simply too expensive to store every bit of data.

With SAP HANA, however, many companies are

now choosing to keep all of this valuable data. Retail

companies, for example, can leverage transactional data

from customer receipts to streamline financial audits

and internal fraud investigations, or to develop new

business models and pricing algorithms.

However, with many high-volume retailers report-

ing a monthly data growth rate of more than two

terabytes (see Figure 1) and retention periods of

seven years or more, the cost of keeping this level

of transactional detail often remains too high for

many companies.

A Strategy for Controlling CostsOrganizations can lower the cost of innovation by ar-

chiving static data and storing it in the most appro-

priate and cost-effective location: using SAP HANA,

using nearline storage, or in the cloud.

This way, the company can retain a virtually unlim-

ited amount of data at a fraction of the cost. That data

can then be used to answer compelling business ques-

tions that were previously unanswerable — in the case

of retail companies, questions such as “How effective

was last week’s promotion?” or “Is a loss leader really

generating additional revenue for the company?”

Learn MoreWhile many organizations can’t answer these types of

questions now, the power and flexibility of SAP HANA

— combined with the wealth of data available from new

technologies — makes it a possibility in the near future.

Innovation cannot come at any price, however. For

companies that plan to invest in digital business initia-

tives, controlling data growth with an innovation strat-

egy can keep the cost of progress under control today

and in the future.

For more information on how Dolphin can help

you develop an innovation strategy for SAP HANA,

go to www.dolphin-corp.com or email contact@

dolphin-corp.com. FIGURE 1 Typical data storage needs of a large retailer

when merging data from a point-of-sale (POS) system

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

S-25



SAP HANA Innovations Touch All Aspects of an OrganizationSAP S/4HANA Is the Latest in a Long Line of Releases

Philippe DendievelPartner

Delaware Consulting

The speed of innovation at SAP is fast, and it only

shows signs of accelerating. The consistent evolu-

tion of the SAP HANA platform most recently pro-

duced its newest iteration: SAP Business Suite 4 SAP

HANA (SAP S/4HANA).

SAP S/4HANA builds upon SAP HANA-based in-

novations, with a simplified database (no materialized

aggregates) and rewritten, optimized code. It fully

leverages SAP HANA’s transactional and real-time

analytics capabilities through SAP HANA Live and

delivers an improved end-user interface based on SAP

Fiori. SAP S/4HANA is available on premise and in the

cloud on a multitenant SAP HANA database.

SAP’s innovation spreads across all facets of the en-

terprise, from the finance department to operations,

supply chain, and the warehouse. These innovations

allow companies to gain real-time business insights, run

smarter apps built for specific roles in the enterprise,

and deliver unprecedented user experience while main-

taining a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

A Wave of New Features, Flexibility, and FunctionalityOne prominent place of innovation for SAP solutions is

finance. SAP Simple Finance delivers the new genera-

tion of accounting, cash management, and integrated

business planning capabilities with higher agility, simu-

lation, and real-time insights.

In business intelligence, SAP Business Warehouse (SAP

BW) customers now have more agility and self-service

ability. With new Eclipse-based modeling, real-time op-

tions, self-service with SAP Lumira, solutions for nearline

storage, and dynamic tiering to store data, companies can

publish SAP BW objects into SAP HANA views that de-

liver self-service capabilities at a stunning performance.

SAP HANA Live brings more than 1,000 views on

SAP ERP, enabling real-time operational reporting and

dashboards. In fact, they can be combined with SAP BW

powered by SAP HANA views, enabling you to combine

operational reporting with historical data based on the

data warehouse.

Multitenancy, available in SAP HANA service pack

9, supports multitenant database containers. This up-

grade is vital in enabling multiple SAP applications to

run on a single SAP HANA system, which optimizes

investments in hardware and results in a lower TCO.

Additional innovations include expansion in the area of

virtualization, SAP HANA tailored data center integra-

tion options for reusing storage networks, and support

for less expensive central processing units.

But there is more than just the database. SAP HANA

allows the seamless integration of any data in SAP Busi-

ness Suite, such as point-of-sale (POS) data. SAP for

Retail is being enhanced with SAP Customer Activity

Repository and SAP hybris Marketing. SAP Customer

Activity Repository includes key performance indicator

dashboards on consumer views and product views.

SAP hybris Marketing embeds advanced analytics with

SAP Audience Discovery and Targeting. This enables

the segmentation of customers as well as information

gleaned from recommendation engines that make use

of SAP HANA’s predictive analysis library. SAP

Customer Activity Repository and SAP hybris Marketing

currently integrate with SAP Cloud for Customer.

Learn MoreDelaware Consulting specializes in SAP HANA imple-

mentations, including SAP Business Suite powered

by SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Fiori, and more.

We are the proud recipients of the 2015 EMEA Partner

Excellence Award for SAP Business Suite powered by

SAP HANA.1

Delaware Consulting is a global business consulting

leader offering advanced solutions and services to orga-

nizations striving for a sustainable competitive advan-

tage. As a certified partner of SAP, OpenText, Microsoft,

and Sitecore, Delaware Consulting helps organizations

reach the next level of customer experience, operational

excellence, or business insights. For more information,

visit www.delawareconsulting.com.

1 See www.delawareconsulting.com/company/news.aspx?Title= Delaware_Consulting_receives_EMEA_Award_for_SAP_HANA.

SAP S/4HANA

builds upon

SAP HANA-based

innovations,

with a simplified

database and

rewritten,

optimized code.

S-26



From Business Enablers to Business Catalysts: CFOs Are Empowered by SAP Simple Finance

Ken ToddNorth America SAP

Finance Leader Capgemini

Juan Carlos Martinez-Gil

SAP HANA Leader, Continental Europe

Capgemini

With businesses becoming increasingly digital,

the role of finance departments is changing

dramatically, and CFOs have an unprecedented

opportunity to become business catalysts within their

organizations. Finance departments are now expected

to go beyond their traditional governance roles to

actually engage in strategic decision making, and

CFOs everywhere are looking for new ways to unlock

innovation and growth.

However, many CFOs’ transformation agendas are

held back by their companies’ complex technology

landscapes and disparate ERP systems, which often ren-

der efficient closing and reporting impossible within ex-

pected business timelines. These cumbersome systems

hamper the management of working capital and make

it difficult for finance departments to get instantaneous

and reliable figures about profit and loss or actual ver-

sus forecasted budgets. Moreover, they impede finance

departments’ flexibility to innovate in a world in which

on-demand reporting is now a requirement.

Real-Time Insights and User-Friendly AnalyticsSAP Simple Finance and Capgemini’s digital and

finance transformation expertise offer a solution to

these problems. SAP Simple Finance provides finance

departments with access to real-time insights and user-

friendly analytics from a variety of data sources. Part of

SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP

S/4HANA), SAP Simple Finance is easy

to use and simple to adopt, enabling

intuitive reporting via a user-friendly,

mobile-ready interface. SAP Simple

Finance’s instant insight modernizes

and automates processes, drives more

robust data models using real-time

information, and allows for more stra-

tegic decision making to put the CFO

firmly in the driver’s seat when it comes

to organizational transformation.

Making Finance EasierAs its name indicates, SAP Simple Finance is designed

to be headache-free, and Capgemini’s Financials EDGE

and industry-specific SAP solutions are designed to make

the move to SAP Simple Finance even easier, in any

industry. Pre-configured and SAP-certified, Capgemini’s

Financials EDGE and sector-specific SAP offerings

accelerate the move to SAP Simple Finance by leveraging

configuration templates based on finance and industry

best practices. They draw on Capgemini’s industry and

financial expertise to reduce the complexity inherent

in moving to any new technology, and because they’re

accelerators, they offer significant cost savings.

Whether your organization is a retail or utilities com-

pany, and whether you’re present in one country or

around the world, Capgemini can help you maximize

the value of SAP Simple Finance. No matter where you

are in your journey to empower your finance teams,

Capgemini can assist at all stages of the process, in-

cluding developing a strong business case, devising a

strategy that will create long-term business value, or

managing technical aspects such as application ratio-

nalization, harmonization, and consolidation.

Delivering SAP HANA GloballySince launching initiatives in 2011 as a first mover in

the SAP HANA space, Capgemini has led the way in

delivering innovative SAP HANA projects for companies

in a variety of industries around the world. Capgemini

has supported these deliveries with global delivery

capability enabled by an SAP HANA Center of

Excellence and a worldwide force of SAP HANA ex-

perts. Capgemini was also the first company to develop

solutions specifically for SAP HANA and won the 2014

SAP Pinnacle Award for SAP HANA Adoption Partner

of the Year.1 To begin the journey to intuitive, mod-

ern finance, consider SAP Simple Finance. For more

information, visit www.capgemini.com/sap-hana.

1 See the article “Top SAP Partners Help Customers Run Simpler” by Steve Graham in the October-December 2014 issue of SAPinsider (SAPinsiderOnline.com).

Cumbersome systems

hamper the management

of working capital and

make it difficult for

finance departments to

get instantaneous and

reliable data.

http://sapinsideronline.com

the fabric for success: sap hana spins up...

Documents