SAPexperts _ a Systematic Approach to Evaluating SAP HANA

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A Systematic Approach toEvaluating SAP HANA

y Anurag Barua, Senior Director,GyanSys, Inc.

anuary 23, 2013

APexperts/BI/IT/Project ManagementConsidering SAP HANA? Learn howo focus your efforts and create ausiness case to deploy the solutionn your company.

Over the past several months, I havepoken with a large, diverse group of ndividuals working for a wide varietyf companies that have interest inAP HANA. In these conversations, itas become apparent to me that theres a critical need for ecommendations and guidance onvaluating the need for HANA in anynterprise.

have put together a phasedpproach to help enterprisesetermine i f they need HANA, and theey phases and activities wi thin each

hase. I’ll show you this roadmap thatou can then cus tomize to your eeds. My recommended approachor pu tting together a HANA plan for n organization is shown in Figure 1.t is about a three- to four-month -longxercise that entails signif icant

iligence. It takes you through four hases: discovery, analysis, businessase, and implementation roadmap.



AP provides, although SAP has a set of certified HANAendors from which you can choose.

Phase 2: Evaluation

nce you have collected all this information, move to phase 2.his is the phase that should take the longest amount of time,ughly five to six weeks. You need to assimilate this

formation with the objective of evaluating the feasibility of ANA for your organization. Over the past several months, Iave assembled a list of criteria and questions that you need

analyze. The answers to these questions largely determinehether you want to proceed to the next phase. Here is thest:

Does Your Enterprise Operate in anEnvironment with Many Mergers,Acquisitions, Divestments, or Consolidations?

here is almost always an increase in an acquirer’s dataolumes as new systems are integrated and new data istroduced. Your data warehouse may have just exploded from

00 GB to 4 TB, especially after a series of acquisitions.Meanwhile, information consumers may be expecting theame response time from your queries. If reporting andnalytics are a pain point in terms of timely access toformation pre-merger, HANA may be a key consideration for

ou.

What Does Your IT InfrastructureLook Like?

or this assessment, you need to work closely with anowledgeable resource in your infrastructure department.our current hardware inventory may have available some or l of what you may need for HANA. In the IT industry, it isery common to come across statements like, “we are an HPhop” or “we are an IBM shop.” Some large organizations useultiple hardware vendors. It is possible that your primary

ardware vendor is also a certified HANA vendor. The priceg for your HANA hardware may vary depending on your

urrent inventory and from which vendor you decide torocure.

How Pervasive Is SAP in Your Enterprise?

you have done your due diligence, you know that in thehort term, your organization benefits most if you not onlyave SAP systems running, but also SAP NetWeaver BWversion 7.3 or higher). Although SAP is increasing its

fferings of pre-packaged (transactional) business scenariosor HANA, the area in which HANA makes its greatest impactor the foreseeable future is in analytics. If you are on BW 7.3nd on at least SP5), you may have the platform to use BWith HANA. In fact, if you are on BW 7.3 but have not



mplemented the BW Accelerator (BWA), you can circumventat step altogether by running your BW 7.3 system on HANA.his approach helps you leverage commonalities between theetWeaver and HANA computing platforms and also helpsou reduce some of the maintenance chores that you wouldormally do in BW.

you use SAP as one of your transactional systems but doot use BW for data warehousing and analytics, this may not

e the right time for you to propose HANA. You may be better ff waiting for the time when the SAP Business Suite isnabled to run on a HANA database. Your non-SAP data canso be extracted and replicated onto this database. You couldo all your reporting and analytics in real time directly off thisonsolidated platform powered by a HANA database andpplication without needing to implement SAP NetWeaver BW.lso, you should consider the key role that BusinessObjectsays in helping you reap tangible benefits from HANA.usinessObjects BI is well integrated with HANA and willontinue to be significantly enhanced and expanded. Also, it

rovides you with tools for analyzing the data and Dataervices provides tools to do ETL of non-SAP data. Mycommendation is that if you are currently using BW, you

hould continue to maintain and upgrade it because HANA willupplement it.

Would You Eventually Consider witching from Your Current

Database Vendor to HANA?his question is important because SAP’s eventual goal is to

osition HANA as a database. In this first stage of evolution,our data warehouses can be moved to primary memory for gh-speed analytics. A later stage entails moving all the

perational and application data (sitting in various databases) primary memory and in theory everything is then real-time

rocessing. Consequently, at that time, you may have toecide whether to switch from a legacy database to HANA,ot only for your SAP data, but for all data. It is too early inANA’s evolution to plan that far ahead but it’s something toink about for the future.

What Are the IT Skill Sets in Your Organization?

your enterprise has been running SAP systems for a while,ou are likely to have a competent resource pool of functionalnd technical experts. In the latter category you are likely toave ABAP developers, technical architects, SAP NetWeaver dministrators, security specialists, and report designers inour IT organization or servicing it. But the real question is,an any of these skill sets be leveraged or repurposed for ANA? Yes indeed, a good technical architect should be able

use his experience with data modeling, extraction,ansformation, and loading (ETL), and so forth. However,ANA entails a lot of different skills. There are specific tools

uch as the HANA Design Studio that you become proficientith only after being trained or having used it. You need to



onsider the cost of hiring, contracting, and training resources doing a feasibility study for HANA.

What Is the Medium-Term and Long-Term IT Roadmap for Your Enterprise?

his strategic consideration is sometimes overlooked in theitial excitement of a new product offering. My experience ise technical subject matter experts (SMEs) in IT departments

ften tend to be focused in exploring new tools andpplications without looking at the big picture. If such a thingoes not exist on paper, it must exist in the CIO’s mind or ose within the senior leadership teams. Your HANA strategyust align with the goals, objectives, and roadmap of your IT

rganization. If your enterprise is planning on another major multi-year) systems integration or business processansformation effort, undertaking a HANA initiative is neither asible nor practicable. A common manifestation of aisalignment is enterprises that are reducing spend and where

T is almost purely a support service. Such enterprises areghly unlikely to take on capital-intensive IT projectsgardless of the benefits that may accrue.

Phase 3: Business Case

t the end of phase 2, you are ready to either move to theext phase or conclude your HANA evaluation with theetermination that it is not the right fit for your enterprise, atast not in the immediate future. Assuming you have decidedn the former option, you have already done a lot of theroundwork necessary in phase 3. During this phase, youeed to articulate in clear terms to senior management andotential sponsors why you think HANA benefits your ompany. The importance of a clear, succinct business caseannot be overstated. I have spoken with senior IT and SAPchitects and middle managers that felt they had compelling

ases for HANA implementations in their companies but wereot able to present a cogent business case. Some haveeated this as a treatise on the technical workings of HANAot realizing that potential sponsors do not really care aboute technical matters as much as the benefits. A compelling

usiness case cannot be a long one and should not be morean 15 pages.

your organization subscribes to IT service managementandard Information Technology Information Library (ITIL),ou do not need to reinvent the wheel. A business case is antegral component of the service strategy component and a

usiness case for HANA should therefore follow establishedandards in your organization. Even if you do not subscribe tois model, a business case should have the following

amework and components.

Overviewstablish the context for this business case in a brief manner



cluding pain points, research and analysis, and an overviewf the approach you are proposing. Explaining the keyoncepts of HANA based on the work you did in phase 1 isso a good idea.

Assumptions and Constraintsour analysis and assertions are likely to be heavily influencedy facts and situations (e.g., funding, resource availability,

elays caused by partners) that you do not control anderefore could change over time. You need to state these inear terms.

Details of the Business Casehis is where you need to go into the details of your proposal.t a minimum, you should include an estimated cost,dvantages, key metrics, other alternatives, and potentialmifications of non-implementation:

stimated cost: You need to be diligent about including allost components, including hardware, software, licenses,onsulting, implementing, training, maintenance, and support.ou also need to distinguish between one-time costs andcurring costs. My experience has been that overestimatingsults in a non-starter, but underestimating can haunt you as

ou are held to these numbers. Striking a balance andcluding the necessary caveats is the key. You are likely to

ncounter your biggest challenge in estimating your HANAcense costs. You may have to approach your SAP accountxecutive for a quote. If you do not want to go that route, youight want to check with other companies that share key

haracteristics with yours and that have implemented HANA.mplementation advantages: Focus on qualitative benefits,specially on how well it aligns with your company’s corporaterategy.ey metrics: You must provide a return on investment (ROI)rojection or one or more of the other metrics such as the netresent value (NPV) or internal rate of return (IRR).ther alternatives evaluated: Include a comparative analysisith any other alternative you’ve researched. If you don’t, your usiness case can be misperceived.otential ramifications of non-implementation: Spell out whatould the impacts of rejecting this business case be, if ossible, in financial terms. You should include the metricsou would already have calculated in phase 2. You shouldso include the qualitative adverse effects. Some examples of eneric ones are not enough real-time information, queries runor a long time, poor ROI if users don’t adopt new tools, ando improvements to the current level of decision-makingupport.

Risksocument the risks associated with a HANA implementation,e type of risk, and a risk mitigation strategy. I recommend

sing a matrix such as the one in Table 1 . In it, I have shownfew of the generic risks that your organization may

ncounter in implementing HANA. You may consider it acaled-down version of a qualitative risk assessment matrix. Ine least, such a repository makes your organization cognizant

f the factors to consider in implementing HANA. The moreoxes that are checked, the more comprehensive is the nature



Figure 2

Sample SAP HANA roadmap

SAPexperts _ a Systematic Approach to Evaluating SAP HANA

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