SAP HANA Datacenter Readiness - Customer Discussions

Over the recent months I've been involved in a series of customer meetings, where the key topic has been SAP HANA.

Big take away: today ROI and business case identification are the biggest barriers to an accelerated SAP HANA adoption. Not the technology or datacenter readiness.

Let me share the top 5 questions I’ve faced, and what I've found out from these customer meetings.

Over these meetings, I've talked with:

• Directors of applications;
• Corporate IT Architecture leads and their infrastructure teams;
• Directors of IT Planning and their implementation teams;
• Directors of IT Operations and their SAP Administration leads.

QUESTION 1: What really is HANA?

Surprisingly still lots of customer stakeholders are very confused on what HANA really is at a technical level. They get lots of marketing attention that position HANA as the next big thing, and the solution to all problems, but many of them still don’t understand the how. So, on all the times I’ve found myself spending at least 10 to 15 minutes on the whiteboard describing the SAP HANA Architecture, why it is transformational, and how it benefits from current Intel NUMA Architectures. Also, surprisingly, most of these customers told me that until then no one else (SAP or other Solution Providers) had explain them in such a clear way what HANA is, and why it is such a transformational technology. The note to be taken here is that a lot still needs to be done at multiple levels of the customer organizations to drive up the knowledge on the technology, as in the end it will need to be integrated in the datacenter architecture and operated, and no way it will go into production unless those teams really understand what they are dealing with.

QUESTION 2: Is HANA ready for the Datacenter and Mission Critical use cases?

This topic goes straight to Infrastructure and operations teams pain points. All of us that at some point in time managed IT operations know that the easiest is to get a new technology to work. The hard is later to keep it operating in a stable, predictable way, and with the needed access and data security. Also many of us have spent nights awake, fixing poorly designed architectures or implementations, as the requirements for availability and performance were not correctly evaluated when this new application was implemented. On this topic, this year’s SAP TechEd sessions like the ITM214 show how much effort SAP has put into this aspect, and as I guide customers through these options, they come to two conclusions: yes HANA is ready for the datacenter, but as it is changing so fast wouldn’t it be better to wait another 6 to 12 months to get it more tested and more robust? This last comment trails back to an expression I’ve heard a lot from operations directors in charge of core business mission critical systems: “I want in my datacenter the almost newest technology”. Many customers are conservative on their technology adoptions, and the most critical the systems are for their core business, the more conservative they are. The reasoning is: let other less critical usages get adopted and more tested, before we put our core workloads there. This is a reasonable point, but as all new technologies in the end, it will all depend on the business case and corresponding SLA requirements. Today, HANA has definitely built in the features to support mission critical workloads, and there are partner solutions for a solid integration in the datacenter operations’ SLAs.

QUESTION 3: I’m being sold HANA to the “X” use case. Is this the right tool for my problems?

We all have lived the paradigm between the sales pitch and the reality. Most IT companies make a huge effort to align their offerings with the real customer needs, but the supplier’s pressure to fulfill the sales goals sometimes makes account teams shoot every possible target. On my understanding this question related with two key aspects: many people not understanding the real positioning and business transformational potential of HANA (that was widely approached by SAP through the Use Case discovery work and clarification on the strategy behind the Real Time Data Platform), and the fact that no single big customer is likely to become a “full single provider shop”, if not for anything else, because of risk management and non-full dependency of a single provider. In these discussions with the different customer stakeholders, some conclusions come out: in some cases, maybe HANA is like killing a mosquito with a canon, and also there might be more interesting use cases for real time applications that weren’t even thought off. The end answer to this questions most of the times has been: “we’ll start with a Proof of Concept with the lowest possible investment, also to give us the opportunity to touch this technology and getter a better understanding of it”. As customers understand better the technology and get more familiarity with it, the value starts to shout out clearly.

QUESTION 4: what would be the use case for HANA in my business scenario?

In an increasing number of customers, this question has already been answered by the key business stakeholders. But still many IT stakeholders, who will have to implement and operate HANA, and fulfill its business SLAs, are loaded with questions. There are still many discussions at the level of positioning HANA just as another database in the datacenter, which reveals a lack of knowledge on aspects like the possibilities offered by the XS Engine or by the embedded Web Dispatcher, regarding processing code where the “data lives”, meaning in the RAM of the server, reaping the benefits of the NUMA architecture of current Intel Based servers, and their memory to CPU bandwidth and throughput. Here the key discussion topic has been: understand how HANA is a different architecture from any of your existing databases, and how it is much more than just a database, moving the discussion to the “what if” of imagining the future type of discussion. This topic is critical, as a key barrier to faster adoption even when business decision makers have defined a business scenario, is the resistance of the architecture, planning and operations groups in the IT organization. It has been very fulfilling for me to be able to contribute in this area.

QUESTION 5: will “my selected HANA use case” provide a positive ROI?

This is the most sounding question I’ve seen so far. Sometimes, “providers” forget that customers don’t buy new solutions just because they are cool and they like it. Although I’ve found a couple of IT organizations claiming still not to have any budget restrictions, this is not the reality in the majority of the market in Europe due to the current economic situation, and in Middle East and Africa due to more limited investment budgets even though some of these markets are experiencing significant expansion. So, for a new solution or technology to be adopted, there must be a well support “Return on Investment Analysis”. Here I have to split 2 major scenarios. 1) Implementing HANA integrated into the existing SAP Applications landscapes; 2) Implementing HANA for new applications. On the first scenario, when customers sum up the costs on the new infrastructure needed, licensing, implementation services, new skills development costs, plus potential dependencies (cost of needed Version Upgrade, OS/DB Migration, or Code Optimization projects), it has been challenging for most of them to come up with a positive ROI number. Even though, some are starting pilots as they understand that as HANA adoption increased, all these costs will come down, and they need to start and learn / integrate this new technology in their portfolio. As for the second scenario, the investment justifications has shown to be way easier, as it’s a whole new implementation, and some of the costs of change do not enter the calculations. Nevertheless, I realize that most customers are only considering the first scenario, which means that there is still a lot of work to be done to open up the discussions on new use cases and business transformation potential of HANA.

CONCLUSION: 

(1) It’s my clear understanding that HANA presents a transformational technology in the IT landscape like we haven’t seen in the last 10 years. Nevertheless, as for all new technologies, lots of “educational work” still needs to be done in order to drive higher adoption levels. In this space I do believe SAP at a corporate level has been making the right moves, with extensive information and “free training” available for those interested in knowing more, still needing further roll-out throughout the different countries. 

(2) As for the technology and datacenter features, I would say that for more than 95% of existing customer installations of SAP applications, HANA is ready. Questions remain for very large scale systems and transactional systems that require 24x7x365 continuous operations with near zero maintenance windows, although I believe will see stronger answers over the next HANA Service Packs. 

(3) It is also clear that the competition is not sleeping and is coming back with all their arguments. In this sense, having more communication from SAP (observed both the Las Vegas TechEd and in the Amsterdam one) regarding to the Real Time Data Platform (RTDP), and how SAP has different tools for different needs (HANA, Sybase IQ, Sybase ASE, HADOOP), makes the message better received. Field teams need to understand this and ensure to position HANA where it is the right tool: fast data, real time analytics and planning, etc. 

(4) It is when you talk about business transformation towards the integration of real time business decisions, that the HANA potential shines. I believe SAP has some great initiatives like the “SAP Idea Incubator” that are contributing to overcome this challenge, and great innovation has been driven into this direction. Still, the challenge I see is customers realizing SAP is not only a business applications provider, but also a platform provider, with differentiating technologies ready to cope new challenges outside the traditional scope of the Business Suite applications, being SAP HANA the next generation platform for real time planning, forecasting and operational reporting.

(5) As for the costs/ROI, more and more customers want to see quantifiable ROI before decisions are made. I see merit in initiatives like the simplification driven on the BW migration to HANA, with all the tools that make it easier and more streamlined, but still for many customers this is the key roadblock and the current environment in the global economy does not make it any easier. As architecture implementation models get more “open” (for example through the SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration), and more knowledge grows in the field, this aspect will be less and less challenging. Definitely on this dimension, time will be a best friend. As time passes, customers will reach their upgrade timings, technology end-of-life and other major events that will facilitate the decision.

My experience talking with customers over the last 15 years, both at a business and IT level, has shown me that handling all levels within the customer organizations both on the business side and on the IT side, is critical for the successful and smooth adoption of new technologies. My SAP HANA discussions over the last 6 months confirm the same applies also for this new technology.

It has been very rewarding to help customers demystify HANA, make it easily understandable by the IT stakeholders, helping them build the confidence to implement it, showing them the “datacenter” readiness characteristics and options now available, and helping bridge the widely discussed gap between business and IT. 

Still, the biggest barrier is related with the identification of the “low hanging fruits” for adoption of this new technology where, the business benefits are clear when moving into a “real time business process model”, and the “total costs” fit into the business case.

Full and updated information on the datacenter readiness characteristics of SAP HANA 1.0 SP6 can be found on the presentation in attach to the following blog post: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-2010 

Updated information for SAP HANA 1.0 SP7 regarding Backup&Recovery, High Availability and Disaster Tolerance, can be found here: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-4351

And check out EMC's solutions for SAP at: https://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_sap