back to article CIOs aren't loving SAP's HANA. Yep, somebody's afraid of commitment

SAP’s all-or-nothing HANA is experiencing a Hadoop moment in the enterprise, with adoption of the business giant’s in-memory database layer being held back because customers either can't afford it or can't establish a business case for it. One of the biggest problems is licensing of the HANA-oriented next version of SAP’s …

  1. I.Geller Bronze badge

    SAP's HANA is obsolete - it relies on SQL and its variation NoSQL, on queries; HANA does not structure data but the queries only.

    And how queries are related to data? No, they are not.

    Meanwhile Oracle structures unstructured data:

    1. Oracle obtains statistics on queries and data from the data itself, internally.

    3. Oracle gets 100% patterns from data.

    4. Oracle uses synonyms searching.

    5. Oracle indexes data by common dictionary.

    6. Oracle killed SQL and NoSQL: Oracle can filter queries through personal profiles of structured data and enrich them by information from the structured data, searching by meaning into structured data.

    See Oracle ATG?

    Oracle can now have all Database Industry, put Internet into database, get 100% of advertisers on-line money, create a new market for targeted information and many other things can now Oracle.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      FAIL

      I think

      You may have missed the Joke Alert icon

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Do you work for Oracle?

      Your post seems to be nothing more than a Publicity Blurb for Some crappy overpriced Oracle Products.

      (SAP is equally Crap BTW).

      So how much does this thing cost then? How many arms and legs and kidneys do I have to sell to get this latest and greatest thing since sliced bread?

    3. Stretch

      Nothing you say makes any sense. Especially "See Oracle ATG?" which is totally unrelated to their database and was built by a company they bought.

      Before you were posting about your own magical insights. Did it not work out?

  2. dogged
    Mushroom

    CIOs may not like HANA but they still seem to love SAP.

    Despite the fact (evidence, I have witnessed this no less 40 times in my career) that whenever a company goes SAP, it inevitably costs them at least 50% above the quoted price for installation, at least 100% over the quoted price for customization to actually make it do what it was sold as doing (but doesn't), an endless outflow of money on keeping it running at all (it still regularly doesn't), a large training budget and even then, it reduces the efficiency of everyone who has to work with it which knocks on to those affect even those who don't, not to mention the customers.

    When it's up.

    There is no excuse for SAP. It cripples IT budgets, ties up staff on long-winded processes, crashes regularly and has never saved anyone money, ever.

    SAP salesmen should shot on sight.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      The old saying..

      You don't configure SAP to fit your business, you configure your business to fit SAP is still true then????

    2. Erik4872

      No one ever got fired for buying...

      "CIOs may not like HANA but they still seem to love SAP."

      They love safety. Why do you think airport advertising heavily features "XYZ runs SAP." content?

      Real answer: Because SAP wants to remind all the Accenture consultants flying through said airports to their client site for the 23rd week in a row where their paycheck really comes from.

      Seriously, CIOs want the safety of a nice brand-name vendor. Why do you think Oracle, CA and Symantec continue to exist in their current forms? It has nothing to do with functionality and everything to do with having one of those "MyCo runs SAP." ads in the airport.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      SAP is an emperor's new clothes scenario. Every CIO, etc who has implemented SAP *must* pretend SAP is a roaring success (even though 90% of them are not). If the CIO, CFO were to tell the truth about the project, they would be admitting that they just threw millions to hundreds of millions away to basically get a half working system which, to put it mildly, is not well appreciated by the end users. No executive is going to throw themselves on that sword. You then have a bunch of executives wandering around telling other executives about all of the wondrous benefits of SAP... which entices more executives to take on a SAP project, repeat cycle. If you were ever to do an honest study of SAP results as compared to the *original* project goals, budgets and timeframes discussed during the sales process, it would not be a pretty picture.

      On HANA, it is pretty obvious what SAP is doing here. They are fresh out of new large manufacturing enterprises in which to sell ERP. Their attempts to enter the mid market and other industries has not been nearly as successful as their core market... so what are they to do? Accept that they will make a few billion a year in profits on the install base but not grow? Cannot be done in a publicly traded company. They are going for the low hanging fruit of selling infrastructure, DB, software into their huge install base.... they would be equally as happy to sell OSs or hypervisors or snow tires if it could provide growth. Some of the CIOs see what is going on, but the question is: What are they going to do about it? Rip out SAP. Unlikely. SAP realizes this as well.

      1. dogged

        > What are they going to do about it? Rip out SAP.

        And write their own software based on a standard DB that only does what they want, instead of the 90% of unused functionality in every SAP installation?

        Excellent idea. It'll never happen.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SAP must be doing something right if 67% of worldwide transactions flow through some SAP platform.

    SAP has changed significantly recently, no more horrid/boring SAPgui, The new simplified UI is much more intuitive.

    And as for HANA adoption, I spend about 90% of my time sizing systems.

    As for Oracle I know a lot of customers who can't wait to get away from them.

    1. small and stupid

      And where did you get that 67% statistic from? a SAP report?

      1. Michael Bukva

        Usually, ERP > DB > Infrastructure

        "67% of all statistics are made up on the spot"

        -The Internet

        More seriously, because of the total costs and risks involved with massive change, a business is usually far more committed to its ERP than it is to its DB, and in turn a business is usually far more committed to its main DB supplier than to its main DB server infrastructure provider.

        Thus has it ever been since the 1990s, when the walled garden/vertically integrated market/<insert metaphor here> of pre-Unix mainframe and mini days was finally broken up into layers. It was an effort, ironically, to reduce acquisition costs at each layer.

        You can debate the merits of Oracle ERP and SAP ERP all day, but that isn't the point. It's ****ing expensive and risky to change a large business over from one to the other or to any other ERP for that matter. Get it wrong and it's game over.

        It's interesting to watch Oracle getting a bit of a squeeze out from SAP, from higher up in the value chain, that pre-acquisition Sun Microsystems the infrastructure player got from Oracle.

        Disclosure: former Sun Microsystems and Oracle employee here!

        Sun's less than stellar track record with software acquisitions notwithstanding, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had Sun purchased Sybase in the late 1990s, or even (yes this could have happened financially speaking but not in terms of the personalities) Oracle back in the early-mid 1990s. MySQL was IMO too little, too late, for too much.

    2. Trixr

      > 67% of worldwide transactions flow through some SAP platform.

      Of WHAT transactions? Absolute bullpuckey.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No one likes a gun at their temple

    I have yet to see a coherent explanation from SAP as to why an organization should risk everything on a new database platform, which is really what we are talking about here. Until that day comes, we have to live with the impenetrable fluff that passes for content on SAP's website.

    Now consider that HANA is not just a DB but also an app server and analytics platform. Suddenly things are regressing: now I can't pick the best app server with the best engine but have to choose a vendor and get locked in. This is progress?

    All I see is vendor lockin, untried product and a high-stakes, career-ending migration. I'll pass.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No one likes a gun at their temple

      Couldn't agree more. Anonymous as SAP reseller (for BI products).

      Our SAP Account manager tells us that 'SAP have bet the business on HANA'. Rather worrying.

      As an analytics engine and database, it seems stunning. Starting at €100K though? There are very few sites that need such a fast DB, most can see huge improvements with some basic database tuning.

  5. Bryan Hall

    Why?

    HANA. How exactly do I download a version to run on a VM on my laptop so I can try / break / fix things to learn how it really works?

    Right, you can't. Which beyond a few SAP implementations, will go nowhere. That and the price shock for wanting that SQL report that ran on Oracle or SQL Server on HANA - can you say total rewrite?

    HANA, like Montana - rubish.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why?

      "the next version of the firm’s ERP suite. It will only work on HANA"

      So what happens when support runs out for the current version of SAP then?

      If this is an appliance who administers it apart from the vendor themselves?

      So no incentive to make it more efficient if it is slow or space inefficent, why would they when they can sell you another appliance?

      If this can one run only on 1 database, that is using 1 product in 1 market area (app) to force usage of another product (database) in another market area. Isn't that anti-competitive practive, Glass-Steagall anyone?

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