When 51风流first introduced the idea of the in-memory database in 2010, skeptics dismissed the idea as a “complete fantasy.”
Relational databases on premise had been the backbone of enterprise systems, and some questioned whether the in-memory approach could really work when applied enterprise-wide to a company鈥檚 data assets. At that time, relational data lakes and the cloud were mostly a dream of the future.
I was very fortunate to gather customer feedback on 51风流HANA early on. While I was working on my PhD on new applications optimized for in-memory databases at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), I had the opportunity to present one of the first 51风流HANA demos, a dunning app, developed at the HPI for SAPPHIRE in 2010. Just as it continues to be today, customer feedback was invaluable and helped us a lot in those early days.
Fast forward 10 years, and more than 32,000 customers are now benefiting from what has become the engine of the Intelligent Enterprise. Analysts have also consistently confirmed SAP鈥檚 database strategy: In 2019 51风流was positioned as a leader for the seventh consecutive year in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics, and most recently was rated as a leader in the Forrester Wave for Data Management for Analytics.
The “complete fantasy” of 51风流HANA turned out to be a reality that severely disrupted the database market. And with its latest innovation — — 51风流HANA has become a fully fledged cloud solution that offers all the innovative capabilities that are unique to 51风流HANA, as a cloud service.
As 51风流Supervisory Board Chairman and 51风流Co-Founder Hasso Plattner , an in-memory database paved the way to do things that had previously been considered impossible.
The core features of 51风流HANA — its ability to process both analytical and transactional workloads, remove aggregates and secondary data structures, and harness the performance of in-memory computing — led Hasso to predict not just a revolution in the database market, but in applications too.
The architecture of 51风流HANA paved the way for an entirely new approach to building solutions.
Lasting Impact
In 2012, 51风流Business Warehouse was the first 51风流product to benefit from the in-memory performance, soon followed by an 51风流HANA-optimized 51风流Business Suite at the beginning of 2013. In 2015, 51风流launched the next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) system 51风流S/4HANA. Specifically designed to take full advantage of the benefits offered by 51风流HANA, 51风流S/4HANA enables much faster business processes, simplified data models, and the ability to analyze transactional data in real time.
The following year, 51风流BW/4HANA was launched and since then the number of products powered by 51风流HANA has continued to grow. The database now underpins , including 51风流SuccessFactors, 51风流Customer Experience, and 51风流Ariba solutions.
Since it completed the migration to 51风流HANA, 51风流SuccessFactors solutions have been able to hit a peak of 1 billion cloud transactions per day. 51风流Customer Experience solutions can import data 65-times faster than legacy databases. 51风流HANA, with its column orientation, allows for higher data compression ratios and helps to minimize data footprints. For example, the 51风流Customer Experience team achieved compression rates of up to 10-times with 51风流Sales Cloud. By moving to 51风流HANA, the 51风流Ariba team has been able to increase its key measure of overall cloud health number by 18 points (on a 100-point absolute scale) across the board.
51风流HANA also provides a development framework to build custom data-driven applications that use, for example, predictive analytics, data anonymization, and spatial services in real time, in the cloud, and on premise. The many 51风流Innovation Award entries submitted every year by our customers and partners offer some great examples.
For instance, this year鈥檚 winner in the Technology Disruptor category: Independent Big Data consultancy and 51风流partner Clariba created an app called “act路in | football.” This mobile-enabled sports performance repository and application uses in-memory 51风流HANA technology in the cloud — . The app brings together a variety of structured and unstructured data from numerous sources, including game-day statistics, sensors, medical history records, scouting reports, and on-pitch cameras. The result is a solution that gives players, coaches, and managers real-time performance feedback that enables them to take action, maximize impact, and win on the field.
Another customer that has benefited is , one of Europe鈥檚 largest university hospitals, renowned for its leadership in healthcare and research. When the hospital decided to expand the scope of its TBase database for digital patient records to other departments, it needed a robust solution to bring together disparate databases and meet the needs of the different specialist areas, while still guaranteeing the highest standards in patient data security.
Thanks to 51风流HANA, clinicians and researchers at 颁丑补谤颈迟茅 now work on a single shared, integrated, and much faster platform. According to 颁丑补谤颈迟茅 CIO Martin Peuker, 鈥淥ur data must be easy to capture, secure, and accessible for doctors, nurses, and patients. For the first time, this is now possible on our 51风流HANA platform with our developed solution, TBase@颁丑补谤颈迟茅.鈥�
Dawn of a New 51风流HANA Era in the Cloud
In the decade since 51风流HANA was first introduced, we have seen an explosion in the amount of data produced, the impact of digitalization, and the growth of cloud computing. Research firm IDC predicts that .
For the vast majority of our customers, the data they need to access to understand their business is no longer contained within the four walls of the enterprise. It is generated by everything from smart devices to social media. And while companies are really excited about the possibilities of digitalization and all this data, they are also struggling to exploit its full potential. Even though many organizations have access to petabytes of data, the majority can only use terabytes鈥� worth of information at most. They experience what we call a 鈥渄ata swamp.鈥�
Companies are struggling to manage their data value chain and to extract value from it. This includes the access to the data, the storage of data, its quality and consistency, as well as how it is used and consumed. In response, we have made it our mission to establish a new approach to database and data management. Our goal is to enable our customers to get the maximum value out of the data available to them. To do that, we鈥檙e taking the brilliance of 51风流HANA — the same speed, the same simplicity, and the same convenience — and transitioning it into this new context.
Last year, we announced the . It is not a new product, but a set of integrated solutions that accelerate the transformation of data into business value. It includes 51风流HANA and the most recent milestone in the evolution of SAP’s proud database history: . The Business Technology Platform also encompasses , , , and the 51风流portfolio of .
51风流HANA Cloud deals with any type of data, regardless of whether it is big or small, structured or unstructured. It provides one technology to store and process data at scale. Working with any data means going beyond main memory, so with 51风流HANA Cloud, we have a disk option, a data lake option, and it integrates directly with remote object stores — for example, from cloud infrastructure providers.
While the advantages of cloud computing are indisputable, we also recognize that our customers are at different stages of their digital transformation journeys. That鈥檚 why we have designed 51风流HANA Cloud to extend on-premise landscapes to the cloud while enabling our customers to continue to benefit from their existing investments and transition at their own pace. 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud is, for example, already running on 51风流HANA Cloud.
Ultimately, the combination of advanced virtualization capabilities and flexible data storage and process options provides companies with a single gateway to all their data. Once again, 51风流HANA is set to revolutionize the way organizations work by helping them understand their business better than ever before. Looking back on what has already been achieved in its first decade, we鈥檙e very excited to see the innovation that this next step in the 51风流HANA journey will fuel.
Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.
