The main use case for SAP HANA is that I mainly support the S/4HANA system, which is SAP's ECC successor to the Enterprise Resource Planning Software. Apart from that, it is used in Business Warehouse, so these are the main uses.
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The main use case for SAP HANA is that I mainly support the S/4HANA system, which is SAP's ECC successor to the Enterprise Resource Planning Software. Apart from that, it is used in Business Warehouse, so these are the main uses.
The most valuable SAP HANA features are that, compared to Oracle, there is less administrative work and less complex work to handle, making it very straightforward. The tool itself takes care of the backend work.
The main benefits SAP HANA provides to users include its architecture, which combines both column store and row store capabilities. Some places find the row feature important, whereas others find column store important. It allows some tables to be stored in a column base, others in a row base, and the In-Memory functionalities are mostly the highlight of SAP HANA, especially compared to disk-based memory users. This was the main reason SAP HANA was introduced initially.
Based on my experience, SAP can improve SAP HANA in terms of customer preferences. Many customers still prefer Oracle, possibly due to cost or familiarity, despite SAP mandating that they have to go to SAP HANA. I have recently seen some newer implementations where customers are still happy with their current SAP and Oracle combination, and they are moving to SAP HANA only because their Oracle support will be ending soon.
I have been working with SAP HANA for more than five years.
The initial setup for SAP HANA is simple, too simple.
I would rate the stability of the product at eight because recently we faced some issues in SAP HANA replication. However, I do not believe it is a SAP HANA issue. It could be the tool managing the replication that might be at fault, though we are not sure because the root cause is not yet confirmed. We believe that the issue is likely with the Pacemaker Linux cluster managing the replication, since we recently faced customer data loss during the cluster handover or failover fallback.
The scalability for SAP HANA is generally rated as either a ten or a nine issue.
I would rate technical support from SAP as somewhat unsatisfactory compared to other peers. For instance, when we raise a ticket for AWS or Azure issues, we find their support is very proactive, while SAP's support is quite passive. We often do not know when our ticket will be handled or who is handling it, and we can wait from one to four days for a reply, which is unexpected.
Neutral
When I compare SAP HANA to Oracle, I find that SAP HANA is better and easier to manage. However, Oracle has released a newer version called 19C, which I have never used because now SAP promotes SAP HANA. I see that Oracle is also starting to catch up with Cloud or other new technologies, so in time, they will have additional features that are competitive.
The initial setup for SAP HANA is simple, too simple.
I recommend SAP HANA mainly for large companies. I believe the licensing cost is on the higher side, but for those companies whose performance is crucial, it does not matter as much at the cost of high pricing. Other alternatives might be possible for smaller companies.
I would rate the price for SAP HANA as high.
Real-Time Analytics capabilities in SAP HANA are mostly used by the development team, not as an administrator or support team. I believe Real-Time Analytics is beneficial mostly because of the development team; however, I don't have any exposure to their analytics capabilities.
Regarding analysis and ML features, I do not have experience with predictive analytics.
When it comes to how SAP HANA supports both structured and unstructured data, I am unsure about what is meant by unstructured data. However, I think there are other databases that also support this kind of data. I don't find anything unique in that regard because, for example, Oracle also has File Store or something for PDFs; unstructured data has been common for ages.
I cannot recommend this product to users. I feel that SAP's approach of mandating customers to go with SAP HANA is not a good point; they should make SAP HANA so good that customers willingly choose it. Since SAP HANA was introduced, SAP seems to be forcing a monopoly by not giving options, leading customers to have to choose between staying with SAP or moving away entirely. Thus, I rated it eight out of ten; otherwise, it would have been a ten.
For SAP HANA, my first project involved migrating from SAP HANA to BW due to cost concerns. The client requested replacing SAP HANA tables with BW tables. I started working on this in 2015.
SAP HANA's best features include the ability to connect to any database, including SQL legacy systems and ECC S/4HANA. We have built dashboards using legacy systems and SAP. We replicated data from legacy systems and ECC, created calculation views on top of the databases, and developed Power BI reports, Excelsius dashboards, and recently started Power BI dashboards using SAP HANA.
We have developed C-Store dashboards on top of calculation views using Power BI and Excelsius. For example, we recently created dashboards for tickets and CRs, showing how many tickets were resolved, which tickets were sent to which employee, and how many CRs have been closed. Using this dashboard, they can make useful decisions to improve their business.
The database loading performance is high using SAP HANA, and in BW, the loading and reporting performance is superior based on my experience. One of our dashboards using Excelsius was previously developed on normal BW on Oracle data, which took 10 minutes to open. After developing the same calculation views using those tables and replacing them with calculation views in Excelsius, the dashboard opened in seconds.
The benefits include high database loading performance, superior reporting performance, and ease of use. We can connect legacy systems and create reporting. There is inbuilt functionality such as SSC, and we can create easy reporting. End users can create their own dashboards using SSC and Power BI.
We face difficulties replicating the AC DOCA table, which is a huge table, from S/4HANA to SAP HANA BAS, Business Application Studio, or HANA Studio using SLT.
For developing Power BI reports using the AC DOCA table, we are replicating full data daily. We want to implement delta load, and while we used OData service for one client, the delta OData service link is not properly updating delta records.
Licensing costs with SAP HANA are very high. Due to high pricing, many clients are moving from BW on SAP HANA and S/4HANA to Azure SQL. I have worked with several clients who have moved all data flows to Azure and developed Power BI queries on top of Azure. Many clients are also using Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
The certification costs are also very high, more than ₹1,40,000 INR. Previously, it was ₹30,000 to ₹40,000. I want to pursue three certifications but am unable to do so due to the cost.
I have been using SAP HANA for 10 years.
Regarding stability, they are using legacy systems and have implemented SAP HANA. They have installed Business Content, BW data sources, and we have built new data flows and new reports for them, including functions.
The SAP support experience has not been satisfactory. When we raise an incident, they take more than 25-30 days to respond. In the meantime, we search for SAP notes and resolve issues ourselves.
For documentation, we use the SAP portal where we search for existing documents and solutions posted by others to resolve similar issues.
The community support is better than the official SAP support.
Neutral
We recently worked with a pigmentation company where one of their plants was using SAP HANA. When they acquired another plant, we implemented SAP HANA in that organization with a team of approximately 15 members, including basis persons, functional staff, and the BW team.
I have worked on both SAP HANA and Azure projects. I am more comfortable working with SAP HANA than Azure. Clients choose Azure mainly due to pricing considerations, and it requires more coding which is more difficult for me. I prefer to work with SAP HANA as it is easier to use than Azure.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate SAP HANA an 8 out of 10.
