SAP has announced two new solutions built on SAP HANA, the company's in-memory computing platform. SAP says it is renewing its existing applications as well as delivering an entirely new class of applications that will work in real-time deployment scenarios with heavy data throughput demands.
SAP Smart Meter Analytics software powered by SAP HANA and SAP COPA Accelerator were designed to give users real-time insight into "big data," allowing them to leverage vast amounts of information for analysis, planning, and forecasting and simulations in a more fluid, natural way versus traditional approaches that are rigid, sequential, and time-consuming.
According to Forrester Research, SAP has emerged as the leading advocate of in-memory computing technology as a key pillar of its innovation strategy: "[SAP] HANA allows SAP to develop innovative new applications that can consume and analyze massive volumes of data in near real time while also providing a cost-effective, elastic computing platform."
In practice, this in-memory computing means data doesn't have to travel between so many layers inside the IT stack. This means calculations are executed faster, allowing real-world transactional workloads happen faster, which in turn causes accurate data intensive analytics to happen faster. Ultimately, corporate information dashboards are updated faster, and therefore executives can take actions faster. With the SAP HANA platform, companies now can run complex analyses such as simulations and pattern recognition in seconds, enabling sweeping innovations in the way they run their businesses.
"There is a massive simplification happening all around us. Layers are being dissolved at an unbelievable pace; people, businesses, data, and machines are becoming more directly connected. This virtuous cycle of connectedness leads to disintermediation of layers, which drives end-users to become more empowered and demand better user-experience — challenging us to create more connectedness," said SAP CTO Dr. Vishal Sikka.
"This is leading to a fundamental renewal and reshaping in the IT industry, and SAP HANA is helping to drive this change. SAP HANA removes the inefficiencies and layers that have developed over time, but also finally delivers the unbelievable user experience, simultaneously enabling new horizons and simplification of the existing layers of complexity, without disruption. The incredible customer response is proof that we are delivering this renewal with SAP HANA, and these applications are just the beginning of what we will do."
