SAP HANA Reviews

I am the technical consultant at our firm and our primary use case of the solution is to manage our databases. 

We don't really use the solution for code integration purposes but one feature I find very valuable, is the response time of the application on the database memory. 

If the developers were to enhance or improve the application logic while processing the transactions, that would be great. For example, if you are accessing a transection, it takes about 10 seconds. So the logic behind the transection usually is part of the development part and a product code is not from the database.

The solution is currently very stable. We have about 80,000 people in our company's underlying database.

The technical support is good and they were very helpful.

The initial setup was complex and we had to contact the vendor a couple of times. And for the licensing part we've also had a couple of issues. We did the deployment ourselves, as a team. 

On a scale from one to ten, I rate this solution an eight. In the future I would like to see the response time of the application being much faster than it currently is. The response time on  a task should be faster so that we don't have to wait for 10 seconds each time. 

We're using the on-premises deployment model.

This solution did improve my organization. We had some changes to better our organization, especially in the procurement process. Here in the Middle East, we have some processes that are not according to standard business processes. Through our change management processes, we had to re-change or resend our process to adapt it with SAP.

Integration is the most valuable feature we use SAP HANA for.

FI, or the financial module of SAP, has room for improvement. It has to have some better localization for the Middle East, especially in regards to taxes and the letter of a credit cycle. I would like to see better localization from the HCM.

We are satisfied with the solution's stability.

This solution is fine to scale. It converted great.

We have a technical support contract with a subcontractor from SAP in the from of an SLA, a service-level agreement, divided into four categories. First, second, third, and fourth lines of support. We are satisfied with the technical support.

It was a little bit complex in the beginning, but after gaining experience training through business structures, now it is straightforward for us. Especially, as we are building our internal team now, it is becoming easier and easier.

It took us eight months to deploy because we are running five modules. In some cases, it may take even longer than that.

The biggest lesson learned was that we started late. We all should have started earlier.

Out of ten, I would rate this solution as eleven.

We are using on-premises, but I have also done some research in the last six months trying to go towards the cloud. We want to upgrade it because we also did the same thing with another company we are working with which is using the Sage X3 Cloud. We started with Sage Evolution, but now we are also moving to Save X3 Cloud.

It helped us because some of the people who are busy supporting us are not local. We opened SAP HANA more for the management. We even got some tenders that we were able to submit documents online and sending it to our servers. The key value is that we can get more tenders because of the lower cost while giving a better product or service. This is possible only because of our use of SAP HANA.

The most value for us was in terms of using it to issue tenders online. We host our server, but it is open to the public, so clients who want to buy those tenders were able to go online, put their tender documents up, and we could evaluate them using SAP. We were basically able to do pre-qualifications using SAP. After that, we could send notifications to people who qualified and go through the non-qualified people using SAP. That feature is very effective in terms of supplier relationship management. We can issue tenders and people put their big documents through SAP HANA, which helps with communication and gives them notifications.

One is the menu. There is a part of the menu where the button should be "reject." The interface is a little bit hard to customize. You almost have to consult the SAP original developer to change it. Now we have to consult SAP just to do some interface changes. You expect it to be easy to get into the menu, but you can't. Instead of changing the console you wanted to reject it, for example, if a tender that does not meet a specific qualification. Basically, the customization of the interface needs to be more friendly.

I think we are also going towards mobile technology, so I would like to see the integration of a mobile app.

It's quite stable. There haven't been many cases of bugs, crashing, or freezing. It has been quite stable.

Its scalability is good, in terms of meeting our needs.

I think technical support is okay. They should be more focused on updating the knowledge transfer for people who have experience with SAP in general but need to transition their knowledge to the local client. This part is a little bit challenging.

We used another solution, but it was more of a client-oriented system, where you get developers to make and customize them for you. It's more local or in-house than regular IT systems. When you only have one company developer to make some products for you and he is the only one who can support you, it's a little bit of a challenge. With SAP HANA, if you get stuck somewhere you can call any other SAP HANA partner.

It was easy for us to set up, because we had that QA code, in terms of the system analysis and system requirements. Once we got the system requirements, we were able to connect to the hardware and software. We could make sure before we did the implementation that we had the right environment.

The main lesson is the importance of ERP capability, stability, and speed. The other lesson is about knowledge transfer because that is how you learn. 

At the end of the day, I like it because it's one of the affordable ERP systems. I would rate is as eight of ten.

We use a hybrid deployment model for this solution. Our primary use case of SAP HANA is for business intelligence. 

In terms of improvement, the speed is not as good as we thought it would be. That is why we are trying different solutions that will be built with different technologies.

Also, the cost is an issue. SAP HANA is extremely expensive, especially in the cloud. Right now that has changed because you can actually purchase modules of that size but, for example, two years ago when we had a database of 10 terabytes, then we would have to purchase the hardware on our own and then put it in the cloud foreign location of the vendor. It runs on our own software that we have purchased. It's just placed in the same location as the rest of the cloud of the vendor.

They should improve the speed and scalability

It's stable. 

If you want to scale the entire size of the database then that is difficult and has an impact on the speed. If you want to scale with new processes and new reports, that's fairly easy.

We have more than 1,000 users using this solution. 

The initial setup, from what I recall, was complex. I remember we had a lot of issues to tackle when we set this up and with upgrading.

We used a partner for the implementation. We had mixed feelings about our experience with them. It wasn't bad. It wasn't exceptionally good.

We're moving away from HANA and currently implementing a new solution which is not yet productive. Only the first part of it has become productive and I can't really say whether it's better or worse. During testing, we can see it's faster than HANA and provides the same data which is promising. I would restrain myself from providing any recommendations because that might give a false impression.

I would not recommend SAP HANA because it has some issues with the speed and scalability of the size. It's also extremely expensive. It's probably the most expensive solution of all and you could expect more from it. On the other hand, we don't have much experience with other solutions yet, so it will be very difficult to provide a real recommendation.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for database storage.

I am an SAP developer and consultant at my company. I examine the client's system and propose solutions that will ease their processes or make them faster. This involves programming, as well as other kinds of development.

We are using the on-premise deployment model.

This solution is very fast.

The backup solution and time machine should be more accurate, reliable, and comfortable to use. The inclusion of a well-performing Time Machine is vital.

If the interface were more comfortable and easy to use then it would be excellent. Sometimes, an incorrect request is taken to production and it will corruption everything in the production database.

When there are a large number of records to process in a transaction, it is not any faster than Oracle.

This solution is very stable. We have been using it for one year and there have been no problems with the database.

I was not involved in the setup of this solution. I only installed SAP HANA Express on my laptop, which was easy. The full version requires professional knowledge. It's not something you can install, like Microsoft Office, on any laptop.

We hired a consulting firm in Turkey to set up our solution. The two machines were configured by SAP Turkey.

I have more than nineteen years of experience with the Oracle database, from version 7.2 through to RAC. I know the administration, as well as backup and recovery very well.

There are not many differences between Oracle and HANA. As an example, for transactional purposes, it is very similar to Oracle.

We switched to HANA from Oracle because SAP systems are moving entirely to the HANA platform. There will be no support for SAP using Oracle.

We do not use the HANA features, for example, embedded scripts. This is something that we may use in the future.

My advice to anybody looking to implement a relational database is to use Oracle, rather than HANA. HANA consultants are very rare and therefore costly. My testing has also shown that Oracle in memory is much faster than HANA.

This is a good solution, but the vendor inaccurately promises that the database is ten-thousand times faster than Oracle.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

It is a memory database that has all the content of the database. Once the database is turned on, it is loaded in the server RAM. It has a very huge bandwidth and data transfer. Once you try to do any queries against this database you can get the result very fast. You can get real-time output or results. This aspect is very helpful to me.

From the deployment-side, I don't have any issues with the solution and haven't heard of any problems from clients.

The solution is very expensive, however. The pricing depends on the number of users and many other factors that affect licensing.

It is very stable. I use the Linux operating system and find it to be quite stable.

The solution is scalable. You have horizontal or vertical capabilities. You can upgrade the server itself in case the memory is at capacity. The resources of one server are not enough because it's big. According to your requirements, you can expand by adding more servers into one big cluster.

I don't go through the official support team from SAP, but most of the time I use the website to find the answers I need. It's very detailed and most of the problems that I've faced in the past while handling the implementations I can find on the website or on the internet.

Before using SAP HANA, we used other SAP products.

The initial setup is straightforward. For one system, the stand-down system, it will take about four to five days for implementation from scratch. I often handle implementation, so for me, it's straightforward because I have some experience in this area. You do need a skilled team. You have to understand many areas if you want to deploy it yourself. You have to have experience with the storage, the network, with operating systems, etc. 

I know SAP itself recommends that you have to have a certificate or a certified person that can deploy SAP HANA.

We are an integrator, so we handle the installation for clients.

The SAP portfolio is huge. It covers all industries and fields. It is very wide horizontally or vertically. It has modules for all industries, fields, and for all departments: accounts, HR, production, they have a solution for each industry and for each department in any organization.

There are some applications that are very sensitive to the delay or the latency so for these types of applications I would recommend SAP HANA. However, if these are not concerns, there may be other database technologies that would be more cost-effective than HANA.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

Provides us with predictive capabilities for asset maintenance and real-time forecasts.

Real-time database, near zero downtime for production business.

Graphical programming without coding.

System recovery in version 1.0 failed due to corrupt log files. Version 2.0 is stable now.

Should have scalibity from terabytes to petabytes/zetabytes/yotabytes for both scale-up and scale-out, multi-tenancy approach.

Excellent.

Gradual deployment from straightforward to complex, on-premise and then to cloud platform.

Set up a consortium of consulting partners and hardware vendors to define your tech. Landscape TCO (total cost of ownership) and then approach the OEM for pricing (on-premise or on cloud or a hybrid model).

Check if you can bring your own licenses for some of the existing application licenses on the new platform, to reduce TCO.

Product was the first of its kind for us. However, we later evaluated other products: Oracle Exadata, Exalytics, Teradata, Hadoop, MongoDB.

• Check out the cloud option to reduce your initial cost of deploying the dev/test system.
• Strategize on side car approach, remember to try out the best practice model company to get look and feel for your business users.
• Maintain non-disruptive approach while migrating via demo. 
• Try out the rapid deployment solutions (RDS) for industry-specific modules.
• Start end-user training/simulations early on to reduce pushback.
• Split go-live into two (technical go-live and then business go-live) to maintain stage-wise roll-out.