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Huh-NA: Surrounded with wonder; flanked by question-marks

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Pratima Harigunani
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Pratima H

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MUMBAI, INDIA: HANA reminds you of a name that probably stood for a beautiful gracious girl. And a girl usually grows up amidst fairy tales, confusion, fantasies, harmless gossip and roads paved for adventure that one day lead to a perfect nest. There used to be an era now ensconced in history, when girls coming of age immediately confronted the non-negotiable need for a good chaperone. Going to a grand Ball, or meeting a suitor, was never an unaccompanied feat.

Sometimes when all the HANA buzz, specially one where excitement-and-cynicism are sandwiched opposite each other, keeps whirring at tiring levels; one succumbs to a wistful moment of wondering whether this so-promised of a breakthrough technology idea has already come of age? If it's already time for her to abandon dolls and let a mature chaperone escort her further into the real world?

Timo Elliot may be confident when he remarks that enterprises would be running a lot of in-memory in the next 15 to 20 years. The confidence around this radical offering from SAP is not all smoke. But HANA stands at an interesting cusp. It is full of conversations brimming with great stories and potential of in-memory high speeds. On the other side there are epiphany spots like ‘when will transactional and analytical twain meet' or ‘whether HANA is a disoriented technology marvel that is still in search of a business problem soulmate'?

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It also faces practical questions and expectations around the need for a conducive ecosystem, range of applications, platform progress, SLAs, licensing, discounts, partnerships to escort her well into real-world use cases. All at a time when erstwhile rivals like Oracle Exalytics foxtrot around and even future adversaries like Microsoft Hekaton can waltz in any time.

HANA has been talked a lot of when one thinks of her sheer power, mind numbing speeds and immense business-side possibilities. But are critics right when they still want her to fill a blank called ‘a real purpose'?

She is beautiful. She charms well. She has been raised in great hands. But is she confused? Is she sure where she wants to go next? We get a chance to check that with Anthony McMahon, Senior Vice President, Platform Solutions, SAP Asia Pacific Japan, Database, Technology, Analytics, Mobility at SAP Forum where he ironically tells us to not believe what SAP is saying about HANA. He also shrugs off a rival for repackaging an old wrinkle as a new one. Here is how the mystery around HANA unravels.

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Is HANA really living up to the unprecedented hype it has generated since 2011?

Absolutely. In fact customers are voting with their bucks. Our recent quarter results how much HANA has helped the company in real revenue terms. As far as critics go, I would tell them - do not believe us but look for all those investments that are happening. They have a business value ascribed to them. Customers are rewriting data explicably to take advantage of HANA. Many smart analytics-related applications can be even written natively, thanks to our initial thoughts on architecting HANA. A lot of use cases are showing the diverse range of ways of putting HANA's power on full steam.

Will things become queer or interesting as Oracle or Microsoft up their ante in this game?

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It is natural for competition to get concerned. They are naturally worried. Many providers now see this as a threat. Let them argue as much as they want but we what we are focused on is doing the real thing and working on its capability and availability. I would say competition is always healthy. It is a good thing because it shows how the industry is shifting in this direction. We are not here to get worried about a hundred per cent share of a slice but it is better if the market gets enlarged as a whole. That said, we have three to four years of edge, and have an enterprise-class, robust platform to offer. SAP is driving some competition too which will help push the envelope and will lead to more innovation than someone trying to sell a hardware that was made years back.

Is enough progress happening on what flanks HANA? Would HANA be more rounded on apps and hardware areas? Will you think of a hardware offering sooner or later?

A lot of applications and real-world scenarios are being worked upon. That coupled with SAP's own rich and deep industry experience will do wonders. Most of the hardware vendors have rearchitected or reoriented their hardware to suit HANA. We have enough experts in this domain. We cannot dictate these players but we can assume that they will align well on the way the industry is moving. Let's leave this part to experts now. We have other things and our core expertise to focus on.

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A chief potshot at HANA is about its competence when it comes to mission-critical applications. Have you addressed this part and other expectations enough?

Let me offer an example. World's largest ISV that runs mission-critical tasks can run on HANA. SAP can manage its high-level environments on HANA. Big transactions that run in a global context at SAP are smooth on HANA. We have chosen it for our own company. As applications and hardware providers optimize their offerings for this platform, you will see a lot of new paradigms ahead. At the same time we always want to give a lot of choice to our customers, from open source to shifts like Hadoop. To us, intersection with other landscapes is important.

Are you ready with clarity and promise on areas like licensing or SLAs for customers?

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We have priced it in a licensing model which is familiar to those comfortable with transactional software, like - a percentage value of the application amount. There is a dramatic support offering also done for Business Warehouse with HANA. We also try to make it simple, entailing memory footprint, as most customers can size the data volumes they can run and they can offset that with some advantage. As far as SLAs go, it can be hard to do them at a component level. It's tough to point something like this in a stack, and to identify what is there as a part of what system at a given point in time.

Has HANA matured enough for a transactional posture besides analytical one now?

HANA does both. Since always. When we started, we approached analytical piece first as it was more intuitive and could reflect benefits faster. Transactional readiness has always been there too though. It's only that from an architecture point of view, it was always designed that way.

What next?

We have just crushed the surface, and I am not saying that OLTP (Online Transcational Processing) will suddenly go away. But we will have to confront thoughts like two different OLTPs or monolithic EAM pieces as we see all that which is possible with in-memory innovation. Meanwhile the industry is watching this shift.Â

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