Version Feb 2, 2011

A BVA Knowledge Share Paper BVA = Business Value Attainment

SAP HANA

& Real Time Analytics

By Hari Guleria

BI Solution Manager

Ask how HCL AXON can assist - Meet Business Expectations

SAP HANA

& Real Time Analytics

Hari Guleria

BI Solution Manager

Meet Business Expectations with your HANA initiative

2 | P a g e

Contents

Introduction 2

Problem Statement 2

Alternatives 2

HCL Solution 2

Introduction to Hana 3

Is Hana the Silver bullet to all SAP BI? 3

Will HANA eliminate the need for BW? 3

What Berlin said about HANA 4

Why Data Quality? 4

Data quality issues in In-Memory solutions 5

HANA, BW, BWA & Accelerated Explorer? 5

HANA 1.0 - Where to next 6

Business Case - Utilities 6

Conclusion 8

About the author 8

Introduction

In Memory and Real-Time Informatics are the big growth area is

global Performance Management and Key Decision Enablement.

With the introduction of HANA SAP takes a leap into real time

Informatics as a global leader in In-Memory & Real-Time

Informatics

Problem Statement

How should a customer decide when HANA becomes a business

asset for a corporation?

Alternatives

BW Accelerator was a previous alternative. However, BW

Accelerator could only connect to the SAP BW Accelerator or

BWA.

HANA on the other hand connects directly to the operational

system and provides critical real-time analytics for decision

enhancement..

HCL Solution

The HCL Solutions is based on the following:

Benefit 1

Review and deploy a ‘Business Value Attainment’ Solution. This

will ensure Hana is deployed for business reasons and not as a

technology deployment

Benefit 2

Global SAP Services Partner. This assures customers that all HCL

AXON solutions are pre-aligned with SAP’s Best Business Practices

Benefit 3

High experience and leadership in SAP BI Alternatives

deployment; Business Solutions and ‘Meet Business Expectations

in BI’ methodology.

Introduction to Hana

Both at Las Vegas and Berlin SAP TechEd’s were

dominated by HANA. Interspersed with the brand-new

launch of NetWeaver 7.3 and BusinessObjects 4.0, HANA

was the main push at Berlin. HANA for High Performance

Analytic Appliance takes SAP from BW Accelerator as an

BW performance appliance to HANA as a bigger

operational appliance.

The current version of HANA is designed as version 1.0

and will enable high performance, in memory processing

from your SAP ECC system, and other disparate source

systems.

HANA is the next big thing even as the dust on BW

Accelerator and BusinessObjects Explorer has not yet

settled.

It is certain HANA will bring new frontiers in high-

performance analytical processing and new opportunities

to SAP and their customers; however its introduction is

raising a lot of important questions about things like data

quality, data warehouse or BW, and the appliance

promotion from SAP. In recent presentations and

communications SAP has started communicating an old

theme when asked how things work inside a

BusinessObjects Universe, WebI, BusinessObjects

Explorer, BW Accelerator and now HANA – their answer is

a constant; These are appliances developed by SAP and

they will work perfectly. You have to see how you can

leverage the appliance and not waste too much time in

trying to figure its innards.

On one side of the equation an appliance is excellent,

however on the other side of BVA (Business Value

Attainment) it becomes necessary to know how and why

things work so one can leverage the tools capabilities by

understanding what the tool can and more importantly

cannot do.

Is Hana the Silver bullet to all SAP BI?

The simple answer is No.

Hana is to ECC what BW Accelerator is to SAP BW. Both

are expensive technologies and must be deployed for

business reasons in order to meet, and exceed, business

expectations. For more years than one can remember we

have heard of the ultimate solution and then realized that

there is a gap between marketing and capabilities. In 1998 SAP

BW was proposed to answer any question an executive could ask

and yet twelve years down the line we are still struggling at a 50%

success factor. The same can be applied to BW Accelerator and

BusinessObjects Explorer. So let us understand HANA and how it

is both similar and different in its BI capabilities.

Will HANA eliminate the need for BW?

This is a question that surprisingly keeps creeping up from all

sides and customers. However, we can only see so far ahead. My

current statement will be not for the next five to eight years

based on two basic myths that must be bust right now:

1. If we take all the ERP fields into a data warehouse, or an

appliance, we should then be able to answer every

question.

a. This is a myth that is still prevailing in the data

warehouse world. It is most applicable to the

Accelerated Explorer and now to Hana. Not

considering this will result in a costly mistake. All data

can answer is simple questions. However, large

organizations do not live by simple answers alone.

Data filled appliances cannot answer complex

questions that make modern enterprises run ‘Give me

the stock position for the next week considering all

operational variables like production schedules, stock,

returns, customer bookings, requisitions, PO orders in

process, etc..

Release 1.0 of HANA is for non-disruptive and very fast

Operational Reporting. Operational reporting normally

consists of simple reports and to meet day-to-day

reporting needs.

b. HANA version 1.0 is for ECC data access only

c. HANA leverages existing technologies of BW

Accelerator, BusinessObjects Explorer and

BusinessObjects WebI along with Sybase database to

deliver real-time informatics in critical areas. The key

here is critical areas and how business defines this

singularity for using HANA.

d. Data warehouses enable complex transformations,

summarizations, exceptions and a host of other

filtering that enables a ‘SPOT’ (Single Point of Truth)

answer to critical and complex questions. So far as

executives need answers to complex questions data

warehouses will remain – unless of course we get a self

modeling InfoCube that remodels itself on information

demand and consumption.

What Berlin said about HANA

Vishal Sikka, SAP CTO, outlined [1] on-demand, [2]

mobility and [3] in-memory as the three technology

priorities across the global enterprises. All three belong to

the domain of Business Intelligence and analytics.

HANA was aligned with ‘Non-Disruptive’, just like

BusinessObjects Explorer was aligned with CLEAR by Hasso

Plattner and Leo Apothekar (now HP) a year or so ago. The

focus at Las Vegas and Berlin has been HANA. Vishal Sikka

quoted a meeting he had with Hasso Plattner prior to the

Berlin TechEd in his keynote speech.

HANA’s key value proposition is it’s ability to support

operational BI in a non-disruptive manner. It manages this

by leveraging SAP new acquisition Sybase. HANA uses the

Sybase’s replication Server for real-time replication and

synchronization of a SAP ERP system by loading all the

data into In-Memory appliances for real-time analytics

capabilities.

By running parallel to the source SAP ERP application,

HANA enables business users to query

extremely large volumes of

operational data in near real time.

Just like in the BusinessObjects

explorer there will be no need to pre-

aggregate or filter any data. At the

same time HANA will use SAP’s acceleration technology

for query performance and exceptional speed. HANA’s

support for standard SQL and MDX means it can also work

with a BusinessObjects client such as WebI or Crystal

Reports, however it must not be forgotten that MDX

cannot read OLAP so hierarchies from BW will still be a

problem until BICS becomes a standard read for HANA in

version 1.5 when HANA will integrate with SAP BW.

With the introduction of BusinessObjects 4.0 the MDX

issue will be replaced with a BW compatible BICS

technology. This will make reading BW, ECC and OLAP

hierarchies very efficient in BWA and HANA.

SAP is focusing all their energy into In-Memory computing.

From BW Accelerator, to BusinessObjects Explorer and

now HANA. The HANA platform comprises of SAP BAE

(Business Analytics Engine); an in-memory columnar data

store with compression technology very much like the BW

Accelerator with current compression ratios of 10x. So a 1

terabyte data source can now be compressed to 100

gigabytes, and with a 50% space for computation it would

mean a 200GB space requirement. All this combined with

partners like HP and IBM in the near future.

So as the world progresses with better and better technology

solutions, in-memory computing, multi-core chips, parallel

processing, true 64 bit computing, columnar databases I still need

to ask one simple question – What steps are we taking to assure

that all this technology helps your enterprise meet business

expectations?

Very much like a BW implementation that does not meet business

expectations and recommends installation of a BW Accelerator to

solve their problems. All the group succeeds in doing is delay the

inevitable, i.e. not meet business expectations – only this time

faster. So the BI team goes and installs a BW accelerator and gets

their reports in 30 seconds instead of 500 seconds. The net result

of all their investments all that what the users got faster were

reports that they could not use initially – only this time faster.

The goal of every BI initiative must start with ‘Meet Business

Expectations’ HANA is no exception.

The goal must not simply be lightening fast analytics but first

meeting business expectations and

then taking that to lightening speeds.

Business participation thus becomes

imperative in HANA as it does in other

BI initiatives.

Why Data Quality?

HANA’s sweet spot is high performance reports and analytics from

operational data. As BI solution architects we understand that not

all data from every operational systems is squeaky clean from the

start. This issue becomes all the more complex as we merge more

than one source system. HANA will soon be accepting data from

more than ECC and we have to plan for that point in time. It also

becomes more complex as we find different systems having

different ID’s for the same master data or the same ID’s for

different Master Data. By simply replicating all the data from an

ERP, and other operational, systems we also stand to replicate

any data quality issues that may reside in the ERP system/s.

Also if HANA is simply deployed as a Technology solution, on a lets

wait and see principle then it may turn out to be a very expensive

investment. However, if we work with business and identify

critical, real-time business needs and then further prioritize then

HANA has the potential to become an informatics asset as no

other technology has ever been before.

HANA has the potential to become

an informatics asset as no other

technology has ever been before

SAP may have inadvertently taken the ‘Technology as the

final solution’ and business stakeholders need to review

the operational and technical capabilities before

approving the HANA project as a BI alternative. This is just

brought up as a point of reference and a check-list point.

Data quality issues in In-Memory solutions

While SAP points out the benefits of using HANA they

also identify data quality issues. Their current

recommendation is to correct this at the source system

and this may not be a practical or perfect solution right

now. With Data Governance kicking in between the HANA

deliverables and source system data issues we identified a

lag in data quality, i.e. what HANA has delivered vs. what

needs to be corrected at the source systems to rectify the

data issues. While correcting data issues in the source

system may eradicate some of the problems the time and

complexity factor of making changes in any source system

are all too familiar to the data warehouse world. That is

the reason we have the Transform as part of the ETL

sequence in BI. At the same time it is critical to realize that

HANA may not turn out to be the preferred application for

resolving data quality issues since it leverages the

columnar centric data store approach which is not ideally

suited for data transformation or corrections. Its sole

purpose is performance.

A possible scenario might be to leverage the use of a data

warehouse and an intermediary point to resolve data

quality issues and then push the data into HANA for

performance. This tends to align with SAP’s current

thinking around the ‘Future State’ use of the data

warehouse.

HANA, BW, BWA & Accelerated Explorer?

One of the questions customer have been asking, and we

do not currently have a clear answer to this one is that -

despite all the HANA and Explorer extolling on

performance how does HANA fit into the overall picture of

companies that have invested into BW, BW Accelerator

and BusinessObjects Explorer. How does HANA assist in

‘Meet Business Expectations’ in the overall enterprise BI

Equation?

One thing that is certain is that the role of the data

warehouse is becoming more and more solidified. When

executives need integrated, harmonized, cleansed and a

consolidated view of their business Analytics or global

operations the current data warehouse is their only

option.

While customers continue to ask whether HANA will replace BW

or the BW accelerator we are witnessing a clear pattern that SAP

is continuing to invest heavily into the BW (their data warehouse

platform) that already has a 10,000 plus customer base. In this

sense BW remains the company’s go forward strategy for Reports,

Analytics and Informatics. It remains the option where companies

need a persistent data layer.

Thus, while HANA is designed to meet the gap between the last

extract and the current reality with high-performance virtual view

of the ERP data, it will complement and not supplement the BW

data warehouse and is not planned to replace the functionalities

of a Federated Enterprise Data warehouse or the old time EDW

(Enterprise Data Warehouse)

However, the question that still requires clarification still hangs in

the air. What is the relationship between HANA and BW

Accelerator, and SAP’s other In Memory products like

BusinessObjects Explorer.

The current answer is that BW Accelerator is an accelerator for

pre-existing BW Queries. It can do little more than that. The BWA

can also be used to accelerate BOBJ (BusinessObjects) Web,

Crystal and other analytics if the source of the data is from BW.

The BWA can only report on data in BW. By the way, SAP has

already announced that HANA v.5 will support BW, Explorer and

ECC blades. Whether the current BWA can be upgraded to HANA

v.5 is still to be confirmed. The current assumption, going on

SAP’s history should be a yes, but this is an unqualified statement.

HANA, on the other hand, is exactly like the BW Accelerator

except it connects directly to the ECC environment and will run

real-time analytics from data in the ECC.

Scenario 1- BW Accelerator: Is the BWA scenario where BWA is

simply used to accelerate existing query performance of SAPBW

analytics. This can assist BW, Business Objects and the Explorer all

of which can use the standard versions and the accelerated

options. This is done by loading the entire BW InfoCube (SAP’s

extended star Schema format) into ‘In-Memory’ and thereby

leveraging the BWA’s capabilities to index for faster response to

the same queries.

Scenario 2- BOBJ Explorer: Is the accelerated Explorer where data

is fed to the BIBJ Explorer via the BW Accelerator for search and

Analyze in fixed format Analytics.

Scenario 3: HANA on the other hand is currently targeted at the

SAP ERP/ECC environment. HANA is for customers who want

extremely high performance operational reporting straight from

the source systems, i.e. real-time POS (Point of Sale) data for a

retail organization. SAP is positioning HANA as an evolution of

BWA and as an option to open high-performance, in-

memory options to non BW users.

The challenge for most architects and business

stakeholders right now is how to articulate where HANA

fits into the overall ‘Enterprise Wide Business Intelligence

Landscape’ especially when considering investments made

into BW, BWA, accelerated explorer – without further

confusing the customers.

HANA 1.0 - Where to next

The current HANA release is HANA 1.0 and HANA is

gearing up for greater ‘Future State’ options. SAP has

ambitious plans for HANA. SAP plans to use In- Memory

computing for financial planning, simulation scenarios and

real-time inventory management.

Likewise the core in-memory computing engine used

within HANA has the potential to power newer versions of

SAP NetWeaver, allowing in-memory technology to be

used across all of its product development roadmaps for

both transactional and analytical applications. SAP is

betting heavily on HANA and in-memory computing and

combining this with cloud computing, appliances and peak

performance.

Business Case - Utilities

Example 1: DRILL THROUGH

Utilities are investing into smart meters that are

dispatching data every 15 minutes, or so depending on

ETL plans and settings, from each household. The data

here is a representation of monthly smart meter peaks

and troughs based on smart meter readings

What we see here is 1.8 billion records of data from smart

meter being viewed in real-time.

Action 1: By Simply passing your mouse over a selected

view of data the user can drill through into the detailed

data from the selection. In order to do this the user can

continue to drill into more and more detailed data.

The example here is about drilling down into a few months and

then further drilling into a few weeks or even a few days in a

matter of seconds.

The screen below shows the user selecting a range of visual

months

Here we then start to see week

.. and further drill down into days and hours

In this example 1 we demonstrate how a business stakeholder

can view very large volumes of data and drill down from years

into months to weeks and then from days to hours within a

matter of seconds

Example 2: MARGINS & Profitability Analytics

On the left of the HANA Informatics we have user

selections as shown below and the user moves from usage

to ‘Margins’

Now when the user selects Margins, the HANA engine

runs through our 1.8 billion records and in a matter of 3 to

4 seconds returns with a Margins analysis for business

decisions. We immediately see the Margins view as shown

below

Now the user decides to add the financial data with the

margin data for the period being reviewed. Once again

within seconds the HANA engine displays all the financial

data along with Margins

So in the above chart we see the Profitability, which is the

green line below, we see the Revenue Generated for the

same period which is represented by the Blue line and

then we look at the Cost of providing required energy shown by

the Brown line.

Now margins in the Utility industry are extremely critical, as they

are for all industries, but HANA gives the ability for key

stakeholders to commence with different aspects and how it

impacts the overall margins for the company.

So what we find in this chart is very interesting where the

profitability at certain times goes below ‘Zero’. When we look at

costs we find that during the same period the costs have gone

extremely high. Further analysis shows that during peak hours the

utility buys power, often at up to a hundred (‘00) times higher to

buy at the spot market than what it would cost to produce

internally.

Suddenly this report becomes a critical piece of evidence for the

business stakeholders to review adding capacity or continuing to

erode profitability by routinely buying energy from external

suppliers.

It is excellent to see when the utility is procuring energy in the

spot market.

At the same time the user can also take any single month and

review customers to see which customers were profitable –

represented by green, who were marginally profitable-

represented by yellow, and who was unprofitable- represented by

red, during any given period. The3 graph below shows this

analysis

The user can now click on the unprofitable customers and

instantly get a list of the entire unprofitable customer base (for

the selected period) as to names, how much they consume and so

on and so forth by different categories

This type of analysis can now assist the marketing

department to plan promotions, pricing conditions or

special offers to change this paradigm and convert them

into profitable customers.

Conclusion

SAP HANA has exceptional potential if planned and

leveraged for its business potential and not as another

technology deployment.

Like most BI initiatives HANA too needs business

comprehension, business capability analysis followed by

identifying what true benefits can be realized with HANA,

that traditional BI cannot provide. The key here is real-

time and not simply reports, analytics or informatics.

About the author

Hari Guleria is a BI Solutions Manager with HCL AXON and

routinely works with Fortune 1000 companies and their BI

initiatives. He is the author of BI Valuenomics – the story

of meeting business expectations in BI. Prior to this Hari

worked with SAP America and Anderson Consulting. Hari

comes with over 9 years of senior business management

experience, 15 plus years of SAP and 13 plus years of SAP

BI. Hari has implemented projects in BW, BW Accelerator,

BusinessObjects and Oracle DW. He may be contacted at

h.guleria@hcl-axon.com