OREANDA-NEWS. SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced the latest release of the SAP HANA platform that delivers a broad range of enterprise reliability and data-center scale features, including new hybrid data management service in the cloud, an expanded maintenance strategy and a new offering for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs).

This enables companies to embed cloud agility into their on-premise data management environment, provide greater stability for mission-critical workloads and help SMEs go digital with greater ease. This announcement was made at the 28th annual SAPPHIRE NOW conference.

SAP HANA Platform: The Foundation for Live Business

The latest release of the SAP HANA platform helps customers get ahead of the market through innovation without compromising the solid foundation they depend on for running a digital business. Key new features include:

  • Graph data processing: Allows organizations to visualize data connections to understand complex relationships between people, places and things. This helps companies address issues such as detecting fraud or uncover new business opportunities through greater market intelligence.
  • Capture and replay: Helps IT capture live workloads and replay them on a target system. This enables IT to evaluate new features, assess upgrade options and measure impact before making changes to the live production system. As a result, administrators can explore technology innovation with less downtime and cost.

The latest offering of SAP HANA also delivers an expanded maintenance lifecycle program. This gives IT organizations a choice between consistent maintenance of their SAP HANA software environment for up to three years or adopting the latest SAP HANA platform innovations twice a year.

Expanding Cloud Agility to On-Premise Deployments

With the new SAP HANA platform release, SAP also announced an invitation-only beta program that helps strategic customers get direct hands-on access to hybrid data management services in the cloud. The hybrid model offers lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by requiring less hardware infrastructure and rapid integration across cloud and on-premise deployments. The first service available is capture and replay, enabling IT to treat the cloud as an extension of an on-premise environment. 

“Our new beta program breaks down the traditional silos of on-premise and cloud, allowing customers to freely use both approaches for greater agility,” said Daniel Schneiss, senior vice president and global head, SAP HANA Platform and Databases, SAP. “The true hybrid model allows organizations to test the impact of IT system change requirements in the cloud before committing the upgrades to an on-premise environment — ultimately promoting cost-effective IT management. We designed the program in close collaboration with our customers to shape the next wave of data management services in the cloud.”

Greater Choice with New Edition of SAP HANA for the Midsize Market

SAP also released an advanced version of SAP HANA, Edge edition, at a low-entry price point for SMEs. The latest edition supports a 32 GB database and 128 GB of dynamic tiering, enabling IT personnel to manage data as it grows by moving from in-memory to lower-cost storage as needed. The new version is packaged with SAP Predictive Analytics software to help SMEs analyze business and predict future outcomes with greater ease. SAP HANA, Edge edition, is available to customers through indirect channels, creating a unique opportunity for partners to grow their businesses with SAP HANA and analytics solutions from SAP. 

SAP HANA Innovation Awards Showcase Customer Innovation

SAP unveiled the winners of the SAP HANA Innovation Award program for 2016 to recognize customers who are demonstrating true innovation using the SAP HANA platform to transform their business in today’s digital economy. With over 100 entries from 36 countries across four categories covering analytics, digital transformation, business processes and next-generation apps, the final winners are: Mercy Health (analytics wizard), Vodafone (digital trailblazer), Lenovo (process simplifier) and Stanford Medical Center (next-generation apps).

Customers are choosing SAP HANA for innovation and process simplification as they experience significant change in their markets.

“We’re transforming our data center supply chain to smoothly integrate an acquired business, while fully leveraging the global scale, efficiency and agility of Lenovo’s overall operations,” said Qingtong Zhou, senior vice president and CIO, Lenovo. “We chose SAP HANA as the foundation for running critical business applications and integrating acquired product lines into our Lenovo plants in the United States, Mexico and China. SAP HANA has proven instrumental in our effort to simplify core processes, increase operational speed and reduce costs.”

Curtis Dudley, vice president of Performance Solutions, Mercy, said: “Few industries are undergoing more change than healthcare with new treatments, advanced equipment, enhanced health insurance and exploding costs. Our goal is to provide the best care to our patients, while controlling costs, by becoming a data-driven business. With SAP HANA and SAP BusinessObjects™ business intelligence (BI) solutions, we were able to rapidly analyze vast amounts of data to save US$9 million in supply costs and improve operating room block utilization by 12 percent, while improving the outcome of procedures and patient experience.”

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable approximately 310,000 business and public sector customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably.