Game Changer

It hurts when loud callers from the fringes of the Community pretend to know better.

It hurts when people and institutions outside the Community believe to understand it better - and then also believe in SAP Awards and prizes given out merely to put themselves in the spotlight.

I write these lines on the way back from the SAP-Executive Event Select 2016 Berlin.

I have the current issue of Manager Magazine in front of me and behind me disturbing days in an unfamiliar SAP–Community.

My attitude towards scene events should be known here: CeBIT, Sapphire and TechEd are usually not worth a visit. My employees, on the other hand, are allowed to DSAG-Technology Days and to the annual congress.

A personal invitation from the Executive Board was thus the legendary exception to the rule: Yes, I was at SAP Select in Berlin, a European executive meeting place for SAP-Existing customers and VIPs.

"With its novel database technology, the Walldorf-based software group provides the basis for the Digitization the Economy"

is in the current manager Magazine via SAP to read.

Meant is Hana and of course the database technology "In-memory Computing". The Technology for this purpose was Hasso Plattner Institute at the university Potsdam developed.

The Technology is not new: well over ten years ago, there was already a SAP an in-memory computing database.

The R/3 module APO (Advanced Planning and Optimization) was frighteningly slow and thus unusable. Only a dedicated database engine, fully implemented in main memory, turned the APO a sufficiently useful tool.

Hana is neither revolutionary nor disruptive.Hana is the result of a technical advancement: more powerful processors and cheaper semiconductor memory. This is the reason why Hana also in close partnership with Intel.

"Today. Hana rated globally as disruptive"

becomes SAP-Engineering Director Bernd Leukert in the Manager Magazine Cited.

The only disruptive thing that the SAP–Community can recognize is the changed license model: From now on it is with diversity and openness in the Community over.

With Hana erected SAP a monoculture, a database dictate!
From 2025 SAP-software only on Hana be runnable - that's disruptive!

On the text in front of me from the Manager Magazine there is much to complain about.

What particularly bothers me, however, is the basic message:
Hana provides the basis for the Digitization the Economy.

This statement is not only wrong, but also dangerous. My esteemed colleague Marco Lenck, Chairman of the Board the DSAG e. V., presented at the last annual congress in Nuremberg tries to counter this dangerous opinion.

Very diplomatically, he did not criticize Hana and S/4, but praised SAP Business Suite 7, which is the world's most powerful ERP system and runs on different operating systems and numerous databases (Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, Sybase ASE/IQ) - and naturally also on Hana, then it is called SoH.

Lenck's statement summarized: For the important and necessary Digitization Suite 7 with AnyDB is also very well suited - it does not necessarily require Hana.

The Digitization in our Group is a business, organizational and financial challenge.

In cases where the volume of data is extremely high, we use Hana and Hadoop - that works surprisingly well and very quickly.

With the Digitization our Economy but speed has nothing in common. For us, it's about new business processes and sometimes even new business models.

Anyone who "Technology" wants to use to manage digital transformation fails on the very first day. Thus, the awarding of a Game Changer prize to SAP–Chairman of the Board Bill McDermott in Berlin very embarrassing and unhelpful to the real concerns of the SAP–Community.

Marco Lenck is right. The Digitization must be given our full attention, which tools we use for this must be secondary - but is in no case worthy of a prize.

How it really is about Hana stands, reveals SAP: When this database model was presented in spring 2010, under the leadership of Ex-SAP-chief technology officer Vishal Sikka (now CEO at Infosys), published SAP subsequently regularly the implementation figures.

When this rate of adaptation stalled, the growth curve flattened, they stopped publishing market figures overnight - since then, people have only talked about the huge potential of Hanathat should be possible to realize in the future.

But perhaps McDermott got in Berlin its price not for Hanabut for the clever marketing around Hana?