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 with your HANA initiative

Version Feb 2, 2011

Contents
Introduction Problem Statement Alternatives HCL Solution Introduction to Hana Is Hana the Silver bullet to all SAP BI? Will HANA eliminate the need for BW? What Berlin said about HANA Why Data Quality? Data quality issues in In-Memory solutions HANA, BW, BWA & Accelerated Explorer? HANA 1.0 - Where to next Business Case - Utilities Conclusion
About the author

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

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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 SAPs Best Business Practices Benefit 3 High experience and leadership in SAP BI Alternatives deployment; Business Solutions and Meet Business Expectations in BI methodology.

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Introduction to Hana Both at Las Vegas and Berlin SAP TechEds 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 highperformance 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. HANAs key value proposition is its ability to support operational BI in a non-disruptive manner. It manages this by leveraging SAP new acquisition Sybase. HANA uses the Sybases 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.

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.

By running parallel to the source SAP ERP application, The goal must not simply be lightening fast analytics but first HANA enables business users to query meeting business expectations and HANA has the potential to become extremely large volumes of then taking that to lightening speeds. operational data in near real time. Business participation thus becomes an informatics asset as no other Just like in the BusinessObjects imperative in HANA as it does in other technology has ever been before explorer there will be no need to preBI initiatives. aggregate or filter any data. At the same time HANA will use SAPs acceleration technology Why Data Quality? for query performance and exceptional speed. HANAs support for standard SQL and MDX means it can also work HANAs sweet spot is high performance reports and analytics from with a BusinessObjects client such as WebI or Crystal operational data. As BI solution architects we understand that not Reports, however it must not be forgotten that MDX all data from every operational systems is squeaky clean from the cannot read OLAP so hierarchies from BW will still be a start. This issue becomes all the more complex as we merge more problem until BICS becomes a standard read for HANA in than one source system. HANA will soon be accepting data from version 1.5 when HANA will integrate with SAP BW. more than ECC and we have to plan for that point in time. It also 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 becomes more complex as we find different systems having different IDs for the same master data or the same IDs 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.

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 SAPs 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 companys 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 SAPs 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 SAPs 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 (SAPs extended star Schema format) into In-Memory and thereby leveraging the BWAs 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, inmemory 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

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

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. 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

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.

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

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 profitablerepresented by yellow, and who was unprofitable- represented by red, during any given period. The3 graph below shows this analysis

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 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

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

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 realtime 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