SAP has a powerful new platform for business software called HANA. HANA stands for “High Performance Analytical Appliance” and it utilizes new “In-Memory” database technology, made possible by the new generation of computer servers that can have massive amounts of very fast Random Access Memory (RAM). The HANA database is column-based instead of row-based like conventional SQL servers, so the way it accesses data internally is completely different. HANA can handle massive workloads such as performing complex analytical queries at the same time as processing heavy transactional throughput – all on the same HANA appliance.
So what does all this mean for business customers? In short it means that business software running on HANA can run more concurrent users on larger databases more quickly than conventional database servers and at the same time produce complex real-time data warehousing-type analytics without having to run a separate server. Real time analytics is able to run at the same time as heavy transactional throughput on the same database. Wow.
At Enprise, we are excited about the new capabilities that HANA will give to our customers. Enprise Job customers on HANA will be able to run more concurrent users more quickly on larger databases and we will be able to produce more sophisticated reports and analysis of job and transaction data.
We expect that our largest Enprise Job customer – Nashua Communications of Midrand, South Africa (who run 300+ SAP Business One users and 60+ Enprise Job users) will be one of our first customers to fully switch their Business One system to HANA. At present they are running Business One HANA Analytics and are very pleased with the powerful search and analytical capabilities that is giving them. The next step for Nashua is to move all of their transactional processing on to HANA.
James Brading and I caught up with Nashua’s CIO, Darren de Vries at the SAP HANA TechSummit event in Bratislava during April this year.
Mark Loveys, Darren de Vries (CIO of Nashua Communications) and James Brading at the SAP HANA TechSummit in Bratislava
Mark Loveys 
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