SAPINSIDER SPECIAL REPORT | TAKING THE NEXT STEP WITH SAP HANA Reproduced from the Apr n May n Jun 2015 issue of SAPinsider with permission from its publisher, WIS Publishing | SAPinsiderOnline.com SAP HANA Innovations Touch All Aspects of an Organization SAP S/4HANA Is the Latest in a Long Line of Releases Philippe Dendievel Partner Delaware Consulting T he speed of innovation at SAP is fast, and it only shows signs of accelerating. The consistent evolu- tion of the SAP HANA platform most recently pro- duced its newest iteration: SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA). SAP S/4HANA builds upon SAP HANA-based in- novations, with a simplified database (no materialized aggregates) and rewritten, optimized code. It fully leverages SAP HANA’s transactional and real-time analytics capabilities through SAP HANA Live and delivers an improved end-user interface based on SAP Fiori. SAP S/4HANA is available on premise and in the cloud on a multitenant SAP HANA database. SAP’s innovation spreads across all facets of the en- terprise, from the finance department to operations, supply chain, and the warehouse. These innovations allow companies to gain real-time business insights, run smarter apps built for specific roles in the enterprise, and deliver unprecedented user experience while main- taining a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). A Wave of New Features, Flexibility, and Functionality One prominent place of innovation for SAP solutions is finance. SAP Simple Finance delivers the new genera- tion of accounting, cash management, and integrated business planning capabilities with higher agility, simu- lation, and real-time insights. In business intelligence, SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) customers now have more agility and self-service ability. With new Eclipse-based modeling, real-time op- tions, self-service with SAP Lumira, solutions for nearline storage, and dynamic tiering to store data, companies can publish SAP BW objects into SAP HANA views that de- liver self-service capabilities at a stunning performance. SAP HANA Live brings more than 1,000 views on SAP ERP, enabling real-time operational reporting and dashboards. In fact, they can be combined with SAP BW powered by SAP HANA views, enabling you to combine operational reporting with historical data based on the data warehouse. Multitenancy, available in SAP HANA service pack 9, supports multitenant database containers. This up- grade is vital in enabling multiple SAP applications to run on a single SAP HANA system, which optimizes investments in hardware and results in a lower TCO. Additional innovations include expansion in the area of virtualization, SAP HANA tailored data center integra- tion options for reusing storage networks, and support for less expensive central processing units. But there is more than just the database. SAP HANA allows the seamless integration of any data in SAP Busi- ness Suite, such as point-of-sale (POS) data. SAP for Retail is being enhanced with SAP Customer Activity Repository and SAP hybris Marketing. SAP Customer Activity Repository includes key performance indicator dashboards on consumer views and product views. SAP hybris Marketing embeds advanced analytics with SAP Audience Discovery and Targeting. This enables the segmentation of customers as well as information gleaned from recommendation engines that make use of SAP HANA’s predictive analysis library. SAP Customer Activity Repository and SAP hybris Marketing currently integrate with SAP Cloud for Customer. Learn More Delaware Consulting specializes in SAP HANA imple- mentations, including SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Fiori, and more. We are the proud recipients of the 2015 EMEA Partner Excellence Award for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. 1 Delaware Consulting is a global business consulting leader offering advanced solutions and services to orga- nizations striving for a sustainable competitive advan- tage. As a certified partner of SAP, OpenText, Microsoft, and Sitecore, Delaware Consulting helps organizations reach the next level of customer experience, operational excellence, or business insights. For more information, visit www.delawareconsulting.com. 1 See www.delawareconsulting.com/company/news.aspx?Title= Delaware_Consulting_receives_EMEA_Award_for_SAP_HANA. SAP S/4HANA builds upon SAP HANA-based innovations, with a simplified database and rewritten, optimized code.