SAP AG has unveiled new breakthroughs in the in-memory SAP HANA platform, including the latest innovations in service pack 6 (SP6). SAP HANA is a completely re-imagined platform that transforms transactions, analytics, predictive and text sentiment processing so that businesses can operate in real time. With this service pack, SAP is introducing new SAP HANA smart data access technology to help enterprises dynamically derive real-time insights across heterogeneous sources such as Hadoop. New in-memory spatial capabilities in SAP HANA will help businesses uncover richer and meaningful signals from business and geospatial data. The expanded SAP HANA One service will help customers and independent software vendors (ISVs) accelerate their time to value through flexible cloud deployment models. The completion of the integration of Sybase data management with SAP HANA will further transform customers’ end-to-end data management landscape.

“With SAP HANA, we have embarked on a journey to continuously re-think and transform how we access, interact with and analyze data to answer any question of any complexity in real-time,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka , member of the Executive Board of SAP AG, Technology & Innovation. “Breaking down the unnecessary divide between OLTP and OLAP has only been the beginning. We will continue to re-invent real-time experiences by bringing the power of SAP HANA to more data varieties, sources and deployment options to enable enterprises to run as fast as our imaginations.”

Smarter Data Access for Hadoop and Other Heterogeneous Data Sources
SAP HANA smart data access is the data virtualization technology in SAP HANA that enables dynamic data queries across heterogeneous relational and non-relational database systems such as Hadoop, SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP Sybase ASE), SAP Sybase IQ and other third-party data warehouses. SAP is bringing the power of the SAP HANA platform to data virtualization, which will simplify data queries across heterogeneous sources while optimizing response time based on where data is stored and how it is used. SAP HANA smart data access helps customers build real-time Big Data applications with fast and secure query access to data across their business networks while minimizing unnecessary data transfers and data redundancy.

Spatial Data Processing for Richer Insights
SAP will further expand the SAP HANA platform with the introduction of new spatial data processing capabilities to combine geospatial data with business data, adding a new dimension to real-time business applications. Customers and ISVs will be able to process combinations of spatial, predictive and text analysis results within one SQL to simplify the development of intelligent, intuitive location-based solutions. Additionally, SAP HANA customers will be able to utilize geo-content at no additional charge, allowing customers to seamlessly develop and deploy spatially based solutions using native in-memory processing, mapping content and services.

These new spatial capabilities, content and services will particularly help industries that require real-time and mission-critical location solutions for planning, monitoring and analytics with a new level of performance and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). For example, energy infrastructure companies can use spatial processing capabilities in SAP HANA to identify and take action on high-risk pipeline components based on numerous variables in real time instead of days, thereby reducing potential outages, maintenance costs and risk of catastrophic failure.

Additional capabilities in the SAP HANA service pack will include:
• Extended natural language processing: Text mining capabilities in SAP HANA will be enhanced to support additional key languages for sentiment and core entity extraction, including Simplified Chinese for multi-lingual “voice-of-the-customer” analysis.
• Simplified predictive application development: Application function modeler in SAP HANA studio will enable model-driven access to native functions and predictive algorithms helping to enable rapid development.
• Integrated data provisioning and modeling: Unified data model and provisioning workbench for development and data acquisition simplicity in SAP HANA studio.
• Enhanced data services: Native extract, transform, load (ETL) solution with increased performance and new guided advisor to profile and assess the quality of incoming data.
• Enhanced disaster recovery feature: Introduction of new asynchronous and asymmetrical long-distance remote data center failover capabilities.
• Embedded interactive education: Pre-package referenced business application, data models, sample code, example data and data generators for interactive learning.
• Open hardware architecture for tailored data-center Integration: SAP plans to introduce an initiative to drive the availability and the openness of SAP HANA platform. This aims to include tailored data-center integration to provide customers the choice to integrate SAP HANA platform with customers’ existing network storage infrastructure. Additionally the initiative also aims to include the existing certification program for SAP HANA targeting third-party business intelligence (BI), ETL and backup and recovery tools.

Expanding Cloud Deployment Options
SAP HANA One, which was introduced a few months ago as a cloud offering, has gained more than 600 customers and provides the same leading capabilities as the on-premise SAP HANA platform. The new version of SAP HANA One is packaged with access to a trial edition of SAP Lumira software and sample public datasets to help analysts jumpstart their ad hoc BI projects in the cloud. SAP also announced the premium edition of SAP HANA One, the newest addition to the cloud-based offering that is available on SAP HANA Marketplace. The premium edition of HANA One is packaged with SAP HANA Cloud Integration to provide integration with SAP systems and heterogeneous sources. This edition is suited for existing SAP customers to run SAP Business Suite and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) applications or custom applications in the public cloud with an annual subscription contract.

Complete Integration With Sybase Data Management
SAP announced a roadmap on April 10, 2012, to integrate Sybase technologies into a coherent real-time data platform centered on SAP HANA. Today, SAP is announcing the completion of the integration of SAP Sybase ASE, SAP Sybase IQ, SAP Sybase Event Stream Processor (SAP Sybase ESP), SAP Data Services, SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere, SAP Sybase Replication Server and SAP Sybase PowerDesigner with SAP HANA.
• Enterprise-wide data modeling: SAP Sybase PowerDesigner in combination with SAP HANA will generate and share the necessary metadata to facilitate end-to-end data modeling support from planning to implementation.
• Extremely large data warehouse with integrated near-line store: SAP HANA and SAP Sybase IQ can now be combined into one logical database to SAP NetWeaver BW. Now customers can get both real-time in-memory processing and near-line storage with petascale data size.
• Added mobile synchronization: SAP Sybase SQL Anywhere, a mobile and embedded database supports bi-directional synchronization with SAP HANA across wireless networks.
• Integrated stream processing: SAP Sybase ESP is now integrated with SAP HANA allowing real-world integration to machine and event data.
• Real-time analytics for SAP Sybase ASE: SAP Sybase Replication Server is now enabled to connect SAP HANA with SAP Sybase ASE and other third-party databases allowing real-time analysis and reporting.

SAP HANA continues to push the boundaries of speed and innovation demanded by modern, real-time businesses. The open platform approach allows companies to more easily leverage SAP HANA to interoperate within their existing data center infrastructures. The latest enhancements to SAP HANA continue to provide additional value with smarter in-memory data virtualization, robust spatial data processing and simpler appliance architecture. By providing an open, integrated platform for core business applications such as SAP Business Suite, SAP NetWeaver BW and customer-built applications, SAP HANA empowers customers to run their business in real time within the window of opportunity needed to transact, analyze and predict instantly and proactively.