SAP TechEd 2011 Keynote

No question, SAP HANA is the main event.  Vishal Sikka has sweeping expectations for this product.  For those unfamiliar with the tool, HANA is essentially a box of high-speed memory to replace hard disk.  This is certainly an over-simplification.  From all advertisements it can take calculations and reports that currently run in hours and days down to seconds.

What I found most interesting is the view that Vishal imagined in which a single SAP HANA hardware instance was subdivided to provide “virtual” in-memory spaces for all necessary systems at a corporation.  This seemed to indicate SAP was entering the VM space as a competitor with the added benefit of extremely high-speed in-memory.

SAP BW was identified as one of the next big pushes in the SAP HANA team.  More information is expected later this year.

This idea of in-memory computing is something that all companies should be looking more into.

SAP TechEd 2010 Keynote

Vishal Sikka presented the keynote session at SAP TechEd 2010 in Las Vegas. The important take-aways for me were:

SAP Netweaver 7.3 Release
Information about the upcoming release of SAP Netweaver 7.3.

Coalescing mobile application strategy
A presentation was given on a 2-minute development project published to an iPad using the Gateway Consumption Toolset.  Looking forward to attending additional sessions this week regarding mobile development.

SAP In-Memory applications with HANA

I had a conversation with an SAP Labs technician to learn more about this.  This is a device (think Google Search Appliance) that contains the hardware and software in one appliance.  It integrates well into existing system landscapes in that it can sit next to an SAP R/3 and/or SAP BW system and replicate a predefined set of data from either or both systems to be presented to end users in an in-memory, high-performance method.