HANA is the future for SAP

SAP HANA is the foundation of the intelligent revolution at SAP. At our organization, it is being used everywhere we use SAP. Solution Manager is on HANA, ERP is on HANA, cloud applications are on HANA as well. We interact with it on a daily basis. HANA's in-memory data platform is a true next-generation foundation.

As an in-memory database, HANA has a lot of upsides. We've been able to implement custom machine learning scenarios directly on the database using HANA push-down functionalities. HANA has also simplified our analysis methods as we cut technical overhead and allow HANA to take over. As more and more systems move to HANA, we anticipate further benefits.

The ability to support multiple data types is extremely important. This enables a multitude of functionality and potential in a lot of areas. It limits the need to transform data from one type to another for processing. It allows more native functionality to be built into the platform rather than added on top. It allows a more diverse array of functionality to run on HANA.

This has been an interesting part of HANA for us, although we've used it sparingly. Mainly, we've been able to push down our machine learning logic directly to the database layer in order to simplify and greatly speed up processing. We are looking to explore further in this area as it shows a lot of promise.