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Choosing a HANA

C
cloud provider
requires some
serious digging

SAP HANA Cloud

Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS hoosing a SAP HANA cloud provider re-
quires a thorough understanding of how it
interacts with your existing SAP land-
scape. Learn the intricacies of this selec-
tion process, and about the disruption of in-memory PaaS.

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CHOOSING A HANA CLOUD PROVIDER REQUIRES SOME

SERIOUS DIGGING
Chris Maxcer
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Choosing a HANA When it comes time to choose a HANA cloud provider, it’s important to make
cloud provider
requires some sure that key business leaders understand what SAP HANA is -- and more
serious digging
importantly, how HANA permeates the new landscape of SAP application
SAP HANA Cloud software and databases.
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS HANA is SAP’s in-memory database, and it’s used by many of the vendor’s
newest applications, such as SAP S/4HANA Finance (formerly known as
Simple Finance) and the new flagship ERP suite, SAP S/4HANA. Things start
to look more complicated when it comes to deployment choices. An enterprise
can run S/4HANA in the cloud, on-premises in its own datacenter and even in
a hybrid scenario.
Meanwhile, there are even more HANA-in-the-cloud options, most notably
SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP). This HANA cloud offering is a platform as
a service that lets organizations extend or customize SAP applications as well

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as build new applications. It is also used by SAP business partners who deliver
industry-specific add-on software.
In contrast, HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) is a private cloud offered as a
managed service. It was designed to make it easier to deploy HANA-based SAP
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software.
Choosing a HANA All of this gets even more complicated, it turns out, because some of these
cloud provider
requires some HANA cloud elements can be delivered by third-party providers.
serious digging
“The vast majority of SAP HANA implementations today is in support of
SAP HANA Cloud SAP software, like SAP BW [Business Warehouse], SAP Business Suite, and
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS obviously S4/HANA,” said Adam Ronthal, research director of information
management at Gartner.
“There is minimal use of HANA as a general-purpose database manage-
ment system, which means that most people who are looking for cloud solu-
tions are doing so because they want to run specific SAP software in the cloud,
which largely means they are talking to SAP first,” he explained.
But while it may seem natural to talk to SAP first, SAP is not always the best
option, Ronthal said. Gartner recommends that potential HANA cloud users
look at the complete set of services available from cloud providers because us-
ers who employ a broader range of services tend to gain more value.

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“We recommend they approach the cloud selection process not just to
meet their immediate needs but to meet their potential future needs as well,”
he added.

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HANA CLOUD DETAILS ARE HARD TO FIND
Choosing a HANA While HANA has been around for nearly five years, details on HANA cloud
cloud provider
requires some offerings are surprisingly hard to find. “The amount of information that SAP is
serious digging
sharing around their cloud offerings seems to be shifting from year-to-year -- I
SAP HANA Cloud mean, if I went to their website two years ago, I could pull up a configurator and
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS it would spit out a price sheet based on what edition I wanted,” Ronthal noted.
“Now ... I can’t find anything like that. I think SAP wants to have the con-
versation with their customers more directly to ensure they are advising and
proposing the solution that will work best for them.”
And this shift, it turns out, speaks directly to the challenge of finding and
choosing a HANA cloud provider.
“We see this continuing struggle with clients who want the pre-built, ready-
to-go cloud, but they can’t really give up their control of uptime or their own
upgrades -- and these elements don’t go along with a public cloud solution,” said
Liz Herbert, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

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Consequently, Herbert recommends that before organizations choose a

HANA cloud provider, they should agree on what’s important to their organi-
zation. “Everyone needs to understand there is this continuum between speed
and elasticity -- with a cloud solution -- versus control,” she said.
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Choosing a HANA MORE REASONS TO CHOOSE A SINGLE HANA CLOUD PROVIDER

cloud provider
requires some While Gartner recommends that HANA cloud customers look closely at pro-
serious digging
viders who can be there for future needs, not just single applications, Forrester
SAP HANA Cloud recommends a similar consideration but for a slightly different purpose: sav-
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS ings through simplified vendor management.
“One hidden cost is the overhead of managing multiple vendors,” Herbert
said. “If you’re buying from a one-stop shop, your negotiation and buying power
might be stronger. If you’re a huge SAP customer, you might have more leverage
going straight to the source, for example.”
In addition, there is what Forrester calls the multi-vendor tax. “If you have
to manage your SAP subscriptions separately from your cloud vendor, there
is some [human activity] cost associated with managing both vendors,” she
explained.

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LOOK FOR CERTIFICATIONS

For an emerging technology like HANA, it’s important to go with a certified pro-
vider, which can limit your options, Ronthal said. “There still doesn’t appear to
be a very wide selection of certified HANA partners for the public cloud today.”
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So where do you look for certified cloud providers? It’s not exactly easy, but
Choosing a HANA here are a few resources and tips.
cloud provider
requires some Third-party providers can deliver HANA as a managed service, as a hosted
serious digging
service, as managed cloud as a service and through private clouds.
SAP HANA Cloud SAP recommends that third-party providers use certified hardware to
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS run HANA. So while a third party might not be specifically certified to deliver
HANA through the cloud, they should at least be running HANA on certified
hardware.
SAP’s own HCP product also offers HANA as infrastructure as a service
(IaaS) and database as a service. Similarly, users can run HANA as a database
on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
Certified service providers can be found in SAP’s Outsourcing Operations
Partner Guide. It covers nearly 300 partners and lets users filter partners by
services such as “hosting,” “SAP HANA,” “infrastructure,” or “cloud,” in addi-
tion to filtering by country.

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Using a self-service public cloud for an IaaS-type deployment presents

the risk that the provider isn’t using certified hardware, but it may be an SAP
Technology Partner with certifications for SAP HANA One (a HANA private
cloud option that runs on AWS), HANA Bring Your Own License (BYOL, for
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transferring HANA licenses between on-premises and the cloud) or the small-
Choosing a HANA business ERP offering, SAP Business One.
cloud provider
requires some As of early 2016, the only third-party HANA cloud provider with a BYOL
serious digging
option was AWS, but SAP says it is in the process of signing up more providers
SAP HANA Cloud in 2016. The new partner options will appear on SAP’s new Find Certified IaaS
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS Platforms page, but at the time of this writing, the site wasn’t yet populated
with options.

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SAP HANA CLOUD PLATFORM EMERGING AS GO-TO PAAS

Chris Maxcer

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The SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP), an in-memory platform as a service
Choosing a HANA (PaaS), represents the future of customizations for SAP users, as well as exten-
cloud provider
requires some sions to SAP software. If an SAP user wants to write applications that tie into
serious digging
SAP software, whether on-premises or in the cloud, SAP is encouraging them
SAP HANA Cloud to do it with HCP.
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS Furthermore, SAP wants third-party ISVs and integrators to take their
industry-focused expertise and deliver it through apps and extensions built
upon HCP, which can then be sold to SAP’s 250,000 customers through the SAP
store, creating, in effect, an enterprise-grade “app store.”
The vision is ambitious but critical to SAP’s cloud strategies.
“If you’re an SAP customer, you’re getting a lot of pressure to go to the
cloud,” said Forrester Research Inc. analyst John Wargo. “Everything for SAP
is going in cloud, all the development tools, the suite and everything else, so it’s
not going to be long before -- if you want to do anything innovative or new with
SAP -- it’s going to be in the cloud first.”

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Of course, using the cloud is not without benefits, Wargo noted. For ex-
ample, you could buy a prebuilt application and configure and deploy it from
the cloud instead of having to make programmatic changes. If you can remove
complexity by using HCP, he said, “that’s when this becomes really powerful.”
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Choosing a HANA WHY CHOOSE HCP?

cloud provider
requires some SAP HANA Cloud Platform is made up of several different services that users
serious digging
can tap into, but the foundation includes three core options: SAP HANA App
SAP HANA Cloud Services, SAP HANA DB Services and SAP HANA Infrastructure Services. App
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS Services is for the creation of applications and includes support for integration,
analytics, mobile, portals and collaboration. It builds on the capabilities of SAP
HANA DB Services, which provides an SAP HANA system with a monthly li-
cense and infrastructure subscription in configurations up to 1TB. SAP HANA
Infrastructure Services lets customers quickly deploy their existing HANA
licenses in the cloud for use with HCP.
HCP has the components to compete with PaaS options from Amazon,
Salesforce, Microsoft, Google and others, but is HCP likely to get the nod from
non-SAP focused developers?

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“If you’re not doing this for SAP business applications, then honestly there
are better, less [expensive] and maybe even better performing options out
there,” Wargo said.
HCP is all about SAP’s 250,000 customers, but Gartner Inc. estimates that
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only 1,200 to 1,500 customers are using HCP today. “That’s not a huge number,”
Choosing a HANA said Massimo Pezzini, a Gartner fellow and research vice president, but he
cloud provider
requires some expects that SAP’s recently increased marketing and messaging around HCP
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-- along with the release and adoption of S/4HANA -- will spark additional
SAP HANA Cloud HCP activity.
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS Pezzini said that the reaction of HCP customers he’s spoken with is posi-
tive. “HCP does what it is supposed to do,” he said. “It is reliable, stable, there
are multiple capabilities, and the HANA database itself adds significant value.”
The bottom line, he added, is that customers are turning to HCP for the deep
out-of-the-box integration between SAP and HANA applications.
Pezzini said he sees customers using HCP primarily for developing new
cloud-based applications that interface with SAP ERP on-premises. “We have
examples of customers building a call center or e-commerce in the cloud using
HANA Cloud Platform and integrating that with SAP on-premises -- and that
is modeling the classic uses,” he said. “In some cases, they are experimenting,

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but others are very serious business-critical applications deployed on a global

basis leveraging HCP.”
Interestingly, Pezzini said that some enterprise clients, including SAP cli-
ents, are using more than one PaaS.
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“For example, I was talking to a packaged manufacturing company that is
Choosing a HANA using three platforms as a service -- using SAP for SAP-centric applications,
cloud provider
requires some Salesforce.com for doing similar things against Salesforce.com, and finally
serious digging
using Amazon,” Pezzini said. “I believe this is going to be such a situation for
SAP HANA Cloud many out there. Very few organizations will be able to standardize on a single
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS platform as a service.”

THE SAP STORE AND RISE OF THIRD-PARTY APPS

Key to SAP’s HCP effort is encouraging and assisting third-party developers
to create extensions, plug-ins and apps that use data from SAP systems. In one
example, a small startup called EnterpriseJungle has tapped into HCP to de-
liver its app directly embedded within SuccessFactors.
EnterpriseJungle is a knowledge management engine that delivers per-
sonalized content to employees in an enterprise to help them find experts
and relevant content from within their own organizations. For example,

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EnterpriseJungle’s “Who can help me?” tool allows a visual search of the work-
force with up to 150 search filters.
Interestingly, EnterpriseJungle didn’t have to be created with HCP -- other
PaaS options could have worked. So why did EnterpriseJungle choose HCP?
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“We saw a very clear opportunity for startups to deliver incredible solu-
Choosing a HANA tions and fight for their place in the SAP enterprise in a way that was never
cloud provider
requires some previously available,” said James Sinclair, co-founder of EnterpriseJungle. As
serious digging
a very small startup, EnterpriseJungle wanted an ecosystem that could bring
SAP HANA Cloud access to a loyal customer base, in addition to an integrated platform that could
Platform emerging
as go-to PaaS change how software is purchased by enterprises.
Sinclair said that HCP also lets his company rapidly create custom proto-
types that SAP-using clients can touch and feel. “Now we’re getting traction
on the ability to deliver design-led solutions, very quickly, without any limita-
tions,” Sinclair said. “The integration to mobile and into existing infrastructure
and technologies is just fantastic.”
Because SAP has delivered the components for integration and security,
Sinclair said, the amount of effort that his team -- and the customer -- has to
put into compliance and review is greatly reduced. “Absolutely from a trust
perspective, the sales cycle and the implementation are expedited,” he said.

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