HANA was already positioned as a core technology, destined to underpin SAPs transactional as well as its analytic applications, with the hope that it will eventually dislodge Oracle and IBM DB2 in SAP implementations. Now the database play is being augmented with a range of Sybase database technologies with SAP Business Suite to be ported to run on Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (general availability this month). Sybase’s columnar analytics database Sybase IQ will be linked to HANA enabling it to act as a store for older data, and the mobile database Sybase SQL Anywhere will serve as a front-end data store in the HANA platform. There are also plans integrate HANA with data sources such as Hadoop.
This is a significant step forward for SAP and it is starting to present a coherent database portfolio but we feel it is unlikely to make a major impact on the market for some time yet as the cost and risk on disruption will deter existing customers from making the move. SAP will be hoping to bring new customers in on its database platforms however. The ability to bring together analytic, transactional and mobile database capabilities is a intriguing prospect, which might persuade existing customers to take a look at the new solutions, particularly if they are revamping their information architectures to cope with big data and predictive analytics. The plans to spend $337m on an incentive program to lure customers to HANA will add further pressure.
As we noted in SAP developments open up opportunities for the ecosystem, the company needs partners to make its database strategy succeed so it was good to hear that it plans to create a $155m venture capital fund for startups building applications on the HANA platform – let’s hope some of this will find its way to the UK or a similar fund established. SAP still has development and market awareness work ahead of it but overall we’d say IBM and Oracle cannot afford to dismiss SAP’s plans.