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Technical Department Manager at Direcbusiness Technologies, Inc.
Real User
Fast performance with good dashboards and analytics, but the documentation needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "What I like most are the dashboards and pervasive analytics."
  • "The documentation can be improved in the future."

What is our primary use case?

We have an ongoing cloud installation but mostly, we implement on-premises.

We use this solution for SAP Business One. 

It's used mainly for analytic purposes, reporting, and the processing of large data.

What is most valuable?

What I like most are the dashboards and pervasive analytics. Those are the most useful to us.

What needs improvement?

The documentation can be improved in the future.

In the next release, I would like to see integration with smart devices.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been implementing SAP Hana for six years.

We are using the latest version.

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SAP HANA
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SAP HANA is scalable.

We are project-based. In each project, there are anywhere from 30 to 50 users.

How are customer service and support?

We have not really received any technical support from SAP HANA.

I think that's also one thing that maybe SAP would be most helpful, especially if we encounter several errors during installation. We don't get to have many references or we don't get to ask the technical guys of SAP HANA.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously we were using MySQL, but due to the fast performance of SAP HANA, we switched approximately three years ago.

How was the initial setup?

In the newer versions, the initial setup is mostly straightforward. However, the older version was more complex. We had several issues with installing.

The installation usually takes approximately four hours.

There are two admins at the most to maintain this solution.

What other advice do I have?

We definitely plan to keep implementing this product in the future and I can recommend it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
PeerSpot user
Group General Manager-ICT at a consumer goods company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Unmatched performance, good security, and good traceability for audits
Pros and Cons
  • "The performance in terms of processing time is unmatched due to the in-memory processing capability."
  • "The product is very demanding on memory requirements."

What is our primary use case?

We use SAP HANA as our primary database for our enterprise business. The product is centrally hosted where all our business departments access the product through its sister product SAP ERP.

The product hosts data for the deployed modules namely, Finance and Control (FICO), Materials Management (MM), Plant Maintenance (PM), Production Planning (PP), Quality Management (QM), Human Capital Management (HCM), and Sales and Distribution (SD).

It also hosts the business warehouse (BW)/BI environment.

How has it helped my organization?

The performance in terms of processing time is unmatched due to the in-memory processing capability.

The administration of the many records that were previously distributed in different systems into a central location has been made easier. All that information has been availed central from multi-locations without the requirement for manipulation using worksheets, as was the case before.

The database is also running our business warehouse and business intelligence environment, where insightful reports are generated for business management.

What is most valuable?

Security and performance are the two most valuable features. Our processing time came down to less than two hours from more than ten hours in the legacy system. We use the product to process our small-scale grower payments at the end of the month and whose daily tea deliveries records are in hundreds of thousands.

The audit trails in the HANA product are so robust that one can trace back to the tiny details of what happened at a particular time, who did it, and the time it was done. This makes auditing of both the transactions and performance of the product possible. 

What needs improvement?

The product is very demanding on memory requirements. This is a result of it being an in-memory processing product. The choice of the hardware must be done carefully because when subject to other hardware, it gets slow and just crawls. Memory on the other hand is not cheap because you have to buy it from a third-party.  

The cost of the database is not cheap either, as you have to pay for the runtime for any licenses that you purchase, and that comes each year. Now that is punitive with increasing license requirement.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using SAP HANA for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a very stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SAP HANA is very scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

The customer service is excellent, whereas the technical support is not among the best but we managed.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used another solution before this one and we switched due to data growth and the need for predictive management.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complex.

What about the implementation team?

SAP itself assisted us with deployment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Setup and licensing require planning and proper budgeting, as it is not cheap.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated products by Microsoft and Oracle.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
SAP HANA
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about SAP HANA. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1396107 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
A feature-rich product that is easy to set up, stable, and scales well
Pros and Cons
  • "This is a feature-rich product and I like all of them."
  • "Technical support should be more customer-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

We are system implementers and we have many clients who use SAP HANA. Some examples of our customers are factories, hospitals, and other businesses.

What is most valuable?

This is a feature-rich product and I like all of them.

What needs improvement?

The price of this product should be reduced.

Technical support should be more customer-friendly.

We would like to see better CRM functionality in the future because there are other products that are better and more effective.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SAP HANA since they first launched the HANA database, several years ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SAP HANA is scalable and we have a lot of clients who use this product. We have installed it for perhaps 15,000 users, and plan to increase our client base.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support from SAP is medium. I'm not fully satisfied and it could be improved.

It isn't always a matter of them needing to being faster. Sometimes they cannot answer our questions, whereas other times, the answers come so late that we have already solved the problem.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used to implement our own product that we had developed. However, after engaging with SAP, we substituted our own product for SAP HANA.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We have a team of about 200 consultants who implement, deploy, and maintain solutions such as this one.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

SAP HANA is an expensive product.

What other advice do I have?

SAP HANA is a good product and I can recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
PeerSpot user
reviewer1353810 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer - Data at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Needs more integration capabilities and support for other programming languages but is pretty flexible
Pros and Cons
  • "Its in-memory capabilities are good, which is why many companies still use it."
  • "SAP HANA is a very proprietary tool and there's not as much support available for it as there is for an SQL Server (which is more popular)."

What is most valuable?

What is good about SAP HANA is its simplicity and its flexibility. 

Its in-memory capabilities are good, which is why many companies still use it. 

What needs improvement?

SAP HANA is a very proprietary tool and there's not as much support available for it as there is for an SQL Server (which is more popular). 

It requires some internal SAP knowledge to work with the tool and it's a completely graphical modeling kind of a system. You can't come in cold with no knowledge or understanding of the solution and think you can jump in and start working.

You have to work with the very few tools that are given to you. It could probably increase its flexibility and there could be more components added, which would make it more versatile. They could improve the solution by adding more components and by making it more feature-rich and including typical features that other more popular tools have.

There needs to be better support from the SAP support team. There needs to be more support for other programming languages like high-level C++, Java, or Python. That could be another improvement. 

HANA needs more integration with open-source tools, and with general reporting and analytics tools that are out there on the market. Once again, more integration on so many levels would be amazing. It's very SAP-centric and very proprietary right now. There are ways to connect SAP HANA with many tools already, however, in particular with open-source tools, if there could be even more integration, that would be helpful.

There needs to be more data transformation and more ELT features that can be implemented in the view. 

For how long have I used the solution?

While I'm not exactly sure how long the company itself has used the solution, I've been dealing with it for four years at this point. It's been a while.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In terms of stability, I can't comment much. It depends on the underlying system and infrastructure, and it has the same kind of stability as any other on-premise solution. It doesn't have any cloud features such as multiple replication and multiple locations, et cetera. In that sense, it has the same stability as any other on-premise solution and does not guarantee any SLA. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In terms of scalability, it's quite scalable. We've used it for production solutions very often and from any number of users. Generally, there are a few hundred users or so. I have not really worked on an implementation that uses thousands of users or anything that big, so I can't really comment on massive scaling. However, if it's for enterprise applications that have a few hundred internal users, it's good. 

How are customer service and technical support?

The community support needs to be better. I haven't been impressed with it. In general, it just needs better support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have only worked on SAP and I haven't worked on other solutions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't have information on the pricing, as that is an SAP and corporate-level agreement, which is not really known by all the in-house teams. I'm not really aware of the pricing. On the internet, I couldn't find much information about the cost of SAP HANA. I have heard that it is an expensive option. Being an enterprise-level solution, however, I don't have exact numbers. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm not really part of the decision making team or the architecture team. I do not know if my organization has a business relationship with SAP or not.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.

In the case of enterprise projects, I've heard that SAP HANA is used very widely. I would say, in general, it would be good to explore other alternatives, and not just go with HANA. It would be good to explore big data alternatives that are out there. They might be a better fit. Databricks these days seems to be quite popular. It might be an interesting alternative for some organizations. Depending on the use case, I'd recommend that other alternatives should be considered. If it's a reporting solution that people are building, which is using a lot of SAP internal data, then SAP HANA is a good option. Otherwise, other alternatives are out there.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Chief Executive Officer at Redment
Real User
Stable, with very good technical support and easily scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "We've had good experiences with technical support."
  • "The solution is very expensive for us."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use SAP HANA for machine learning and deep learning.

What is most valuable?

The solution is very stable.

The solution can scale well.

We've had good experiences with technical support.

The performance is excellent.

What needs improvement?

We use SAP HANA in our projects but it's very expensive for our projects. We need a relational database in-memory that can handle these issues.

The solution is very expensive for us.

It's hard for us to find test users and sometimes we need them to connect to SAP from Iran, however, this is an issue due to the sanctions against the country.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using the solution for more than six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've found the solution to be very, very stable, especially when you compare it to other solutions.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution can scale quite well. If a company needs to expand it so that it fits their growing needs, they can do so easily. 

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support on offer is very good. We're quite satisfied with their level of service.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We tried GQ database but it's not a stable database. Sometimes the results weren't correct. SAP HANA is much more stable, which is why we use it, even though it's expensive. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is very pricey. We're looking into other options because of this.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We're looking at Oracle products as an option right now. We're also looking at MAT-V, a CPU-based database it's very fast, however, we do occasionally face issues with it.

What other advice do I have?

We are a customer. We don't have a professional relationship with SAP.

SAP HANA is not just a memory database, it's a big platform. It's a very, very safe database. It's a very safe database and the performance is very, very good for an in-memory database. For example, sometimes we use Oracle databases 18C or 19C. The data is in the memory, however, when data is running, it's very slow, due to the fact that all data is in the memory and you need to and go to write disk. 

Sometimes when the data is very large, we might scale up our approach, and, in the scale-up approach, sometimes it is slow in HANA. That said, the scale-up approach is very, very good. SAP has got one problem. When you start the database, all data from the tool's memory takes a very long time. We've found that IBM's non-volatile memory is better than internal memory.  New users just need to be aware of that.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. The solution, overall, has fantastic performance, however, the cost makes it really hard for us to keep using it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Chief Executive Officer at Redment
Real User
Excellent performance, scalable, and great for large-scale projects
Pros and Cons
  • "The performance is very, very good. It's one of the best aspects of the solution."
  • "There's an issue in the partition. When you record more than two million records, partitioning does not work well. In Oracle it's easy. SAP must resolve this issue in order to be more competitive with Oracle."

What is most valuable?

The memory capabilities are great.

The performance is very, very good. It's one of the best aspects of the solution.

I've used Oracle for ten years, and yet, I find SAP better than Oracle. Oracle is more cost-based.

What needs improvement?

Oracle tends to have better features than SAP HANA. They should work to add the kinds of features clients expect from Oracle.

With Oracle, you can install their cloud and that enables you to see more of the database and multiple accounts. This is better than what SAP has on offer.

SAP could really work on its monitoring capabilities.

There's data aging that needs to be dealt with on the solution. It's not ideal. You might have a lot of raw data and aging can really affect it.

It would be help if the solution had a graph database. They're lacking that right now.

There's an issue in the partition. When you record more than two million records, partitioning does not work well. In Oracle it's easy. SAP must resolve this issue in order to be more competitive with Oracle.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about five years at this point. It's been about half a decade.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the solution is pretty good. We don't have any problems in that area.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've dealt with technical support in the past. It wasn't that good. Sometimes the information we received from them wasn't accurate. It's a difficult solution. I would say, to be fair, that their support is better than Oracle's.

In the case of Oracle, I had an issue once with Oracle GoldenGate. It took two weeks to resolve the issue. That's far too long. SAP is much more responsive. It's never taken two weeks to resolve anything.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also used Oracle. We find SAP to be very fast. It's much faster than Oracle.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was five years ago, so it's been a while. However, I do recall it being straightforward. We typically install a version on Linux. While it can be difficult, at the moment, it's pretty good. Things have changed a bit, and they've improved the setup a bit. It's not really that unsimilar to Microsoft's SQL server.

What other advice do I have?

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with SAP.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

We use an on-premises version and e have a private cloud in our company.

I'd recommend the solution. If you have, for example, a huge project that's kind of a unique, scalable database I recommend SAP HANA for it. It's easy to use and handles more RAM.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
SAP Technical Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Great database that saves data easily and good reliability
Pros and Cons
  • "We can save data very easily."
  • "The pricing is expensive."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is mainly for in-memory computing and past data processing, both columns or databases. It's a very good database.

What is most valuable?

The solution offers very good in-memory computing.

We can save data very easily.

It is easy to set up. The implementation process is quite straightforward for us. 

The solution is stable.

What needs improvement?

There are limitations on tables. There is a two billion record limitation on a table. We'd like it if there could be more. If a table passes two billion records, SAP goes down.

The pricing is expensive. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've dealt with the solution since 2012. It's been about ten years or so. We've used it for around a decade now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. We've been using it for almost ten years and haven't had any issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

How was the initial setup?

The solution is very straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's quite a costly product. It is expensive. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of the level of expense. 

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. It's one of the best databases in the world. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Narasimhan Jayavel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Consultant at Emerging Alliance
Consultant
Reliable with good dashboards and helpful technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "It's user-friendly so long as you use it frequently."
  • "It's a complex initial setup."

What is most valuable?

The dashboard is great.

It's user-friendly so long as you use it frequently.

The product is stable.

You can scale the solution.

Technical support has been good.

What needs improvement?

Some production features are lacking. For example, we cannot see any dashboards in the production department. The generation of reports needs to be better. We have sales reports and yet no production reports.

It's a complex initial setup.

It can be an expensive solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is very, very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good. It's very capable.

How are customer service and support?

I've used technical support in the past. They are good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not use a different solution. I use what my company uses in order to get reports.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is difficult and complex. It's very complex compared to SQL, for example.

The initial deployment took 15 days, however, nowadays, it takes one or two days. Mostly, I can complete it in one day.

What about the implementation team?

I'm a business consultant. I do implementations for various parts of my customers' organizations.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing is typically chared yearly. It was rather expensive.

What other advice do I have?

We deploy the solution mostly on-premises and sometimes on the cloud. When we use the cloud, we usually use the AWS cloud. 

I'd warn new users that it might be difficult the initial time they use it if they are changing their ERP, however,t it'll be very helpful in the future if they're using it frequently.

I'd rate the entire product an eight out of ten. There are other well-known ERPs, such as Salesforce, and companies expect to have the same features. However, not everything may be on SAP, and that's something they need to work on.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SAP HANA Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SAP HANA Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.