The use cases are for ERP, for manufacturing, for sales, for finance, HR, material management. Normally, all the basic modules of any ERP package.
Right now, SAP uses the HANA database. It is a real-time database, or as SAP calls it, an in-memory database. For all current transactions, SAP has layered the database into different layers. All the current databases are stored in memory, which makes processing them very fast.
Secondly, the most important thing is that Oracle or Microsoft Dynamics still uses the RDBMS concept in the database. That's what any standard ERP has been using all this while. What SAP HANA does, the HANA database, is store it in a linear fashion. It's a linear database.
See, if I have to draw an analogy, suppose I ask Mr. X. He enters an apartment, and then I ask him to gather five books from five bedrooms. He has to run to each bedroom to get a book. And then I have another apartment where there is one big bedroom. That's what is a linear database. And there are five books stored in that one big shelf. That's the difference between previous RDBMS databases and the HANA database. So the response time is much quicker.
It takes care of very high-volume manufacturing MRP runs, where the MRP run is done across geographies. This kind of in-memory database helps out a lot. Then, the current database is stored next.
The other part is that near-line storage. That's the second layer of the HANA database, where they store the not-so-current data. And the rest of the old data is stored in the data lake layer of the HANA database.