SAP HANA Reviews

Primarily, we used it for reporting and as the underlying database platform for SAP BW solutions.

My experience with SAP NetWeaver is primarily at the database level with SAP HANA. The database is still under development even after its official release over ten years ago. We often see new products with each major release, and there are still a lot of bugs.

As an in-memory database, expectations for HANA were already high, especially considering the infrastructure investments. 

We've seen reporting performance increase four to five times, which was a substantial improvement. At the end of the day, you expect those improvements when spending significant amounts on a solution.

It's a relatively new technology, and in-memory databases intrinsically require larger servers with more memory. We purchase the HANA license from SAP and the hardware from a vendor like HP or IBM.

Ultimately, as an organization, we aimed to speed up support and enable our executives to generate reports on their screens almost instantly with the click of a button. From that perspective, HANA delivered as a reporting solution.

SAP HANA's in-memory computing improved our operational efficiency. In terms of our overall business operations, I'd estimate a 30-40% improvement. Considering things like ticketing, resource allocation, and issue resolution, it's definitely had a sizable impact.

Its performance is one big benefit. 

Reporting is also valuable, but that's standard. I also like SAP HANA's ability to integrate with third-party tools. We can do reporting with tools like Tableau or Power BI by integrating them with HANA for visualization.

It's sufficed all of our requirements. We primarily needed it to run SAP applications, like NetWeaver or S/4HANA, and it has been really good at that. We also successfully integrated it with Tableau for reporting. Overall, it sufficed our needs.

The releases need to be more stable. It's surprising to still encounter significant bugs after ten years of the product being available.

In terms of features, SAP seems to be keeping up with its competitors like Oracle. The main issue is that the features they add often have a lot of bugs.

I've been working with it for ten years. I was a customer of HANA for ten years and have since moved on to new technologies.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. It should be improved. It's not that the system goes down, but there are irritations that affect users.

It's a highly scalable solution. No concerns there. It supports our growing data needs.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

We have database-based users and business users. Overall, it would be more than five thousand at my last organization, we had many employees dependent on SAP. However, we were looking to onboard a few more of our business units to SAP. So, we were targeting an increase in usage by 20% to 30%.

There is room for improvement in the following areas:

1. The response times
2. The prioritization framework for customers
3. Reaching the correct expert quickly

So, those areas should be noted for improvement in customer service and support. 

Neutral

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, with ten being easy. 

Because with HANA, it's less about setting up a new system and more about migrating your old system to HANA. The migration experience isn't the same for everyone or for all customers; you can't follow a single runbook. 

You often need external consultants, SAP premium subscriptions, and SAP experts to manage the migration, and sometimes you need external code. So, from that perspective, it's a six.

I have used SAP HANA on the public cloud and on-premise.

There are two ways to think about the deployment stage:

1. For a Greenfield implementation of HANA, you are building a system from the ground up with SAP, which might take as little as a week. 
2. For large-scale brownfield implementations, where you're migrating your existing database to SAP HANA, it can take anywhere from five to six months to one year.

The price is on the expensive side, at eight out of ten, with ten being expensive. 

We were premium customers with our HANA boxes. It was part of an enterprise license that wasn’t tied to the number of HANA instances we had. 

I would recommend ensuring you have the proper SAP experts on your team if you plan to go for SAP HANA. 

If you don't have SAP experts, it's better to opt for SAP cloud solutions, which are managed by SAP.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use HANA mostly for any live reporting directly from the ECC box or S/4HANA box. We also do some of the operational reports, where it is difficult to do or apply the logic directly in the ECC box. It's better to bring the data, do your logic in SAP HANA and do your reporting out of it. Or you can also push your data to BW as well, by doing all your logic, and you can also expose your HANA calculation directly to SAP Analytics Cloud as well as Power BI.

The maintenance is quick. It's analytics directly out of the box. You do not need storage. You bring the data, do your calculation, and do your reporting. That said, if you want to store it, there's a cost involved. However, if you just want to report out of it, you don't have to move your data to any other place. I won't call it a data warehouse; it's more about quick analytic reporting out of SAP.

The speed at which it gets the data is great. There's a quick response time and quick reporting.

Most of what we need is already there. 

The initial setup isn't too difficult. 

It's a scalable product. 

It's still improving there, still improving a lot. Most of the extractors that are now. Most of the standard things don't satisfy the requirements in order to go for the custom build. More standards would help in the future.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

There are always stability issues. However, that is why we have SAP. I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. It's reliable. 

The solution can scale. I'd rate it nine out of ten in terms of the ability to expand. Of course, it comes down to cot. While it can scale, it will cost to do so. We have six users dealing with the product right now. Everyone in the organization is on HANA, whether it S4 or BW.

While I haven't dealt with support in the past year, they are usually pretty good.

Positive

You do need resources specifically dedicated to the solution. However, it's not that complex. I'd rate the ease of setup around six to seven out of ten.

It is pretty quick to deploy. Deployments happen weekly or biweekly. 

One resource is enough to handle deployment, and three for maintenance.

We have witnessed a very good ROI since you don't have to install a separate box. 

The main concern of every customer is the cost of the product. However, the pro is maintenance. You do not have to do a lot of maintenance on it. The number of results that you need after go-live would be less compared to any other data warehousing tool. You don't need a bunch of data engineers or data scientists, you just need a couple of business resources and a couple of analysts. In that sense, it costs less.

We're working with the latest version of the solution. 

I really like SAP. It's the best ERP tool. If you want to implement analytics, go with HANA. Go with SAP Data Warehousing if you want to implement a data warehouse.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We have used SAP HANA to do some tendering through the supplier management system. We have our own servers that are hosting the solution.

Primarily we use SAP HANA to manage suppliers, they can upload the tender documents. We are then able to do prequalification based on the preset requirements. We then know who is qualified and who is not. Additionally, it has helped us send notifications to the suppliers.

Using SAP HANA has reduced a lot of paperwork that we would typically be doing and the communication we have with our suppliers. Additionally, it has improved our organization and approval process.

The most valuable feature of SAP HANA is the interaction it provides with external suppliers and clients.

When we are using SAP HANA we have some difficulty with the customization. We would like to be able to add and make customized menus.

In a future release, there should be a way to cancel or delete, for example, a tender document. The deleting or canceling of documents is sometimes confusing.

I have been using SAP HANA for approximately three years.

SAP HANA is a stable solution. 

The scalability of SAP HANA is good.

We have more than 500 people using the solution plus the suppliers we have. We can give suppliers accounts. 

I have used the support from SAP HANA. We have expectations some of our problems should be fixed in 24 hours but they are not fixed for 48 hours. It's not that the support does not know how to do it, but sometimes it takes a little bit longer for them to have our solution.

Neutral

I have used previously Oracle and Microsoft Innovation. We switched to SAP HANA because the cost was more favorable than Oracle and it was more user-friendly.

The initial setup of SAP HANA was gradual, it took us approximately six months.

We used consultants, project managers, and our team to do the implementation of SAP HANA. The solution is stable and we do not have to do a lot of maintenance.

There is an annual license to use SAP HANA.

I rate the price of SAP HANA an eight out of ten.

My advice to others is for them to do a lot of research and training before they decided to go live with the solution.

I rate SAP HANA an eight out of ten.

They should develop and improve the solution's data management system. They should also work on the capabilities and features of their mobile and cloud applications.

We have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is highly stable once configured. It requires regular garbage collection activity to function smoothly. Also, it depends on the implementer and vendor's services.

I rate the solution's stability as an eight.

I work with an enterprise business client with 500 users using the solution. Based on the requirement, the solution allows us to scale up our capabilities and business processes.

Thus, it is scalable, and I rate the scalability as an eight.

The solution's initial setup is straightforward, but it requires experience for implementation.

On average, it takes six to eight months for deployment. There are some instances where it takes a year when the client wants to combine two solutions together.

We use SAP's new project management model for deployment. It is a complete infrastructure service where we get the hardware from hyperscaler and implement the application.

Our implementation team includes business, functional, and POD consultants.

The solution's licensing is expensive for SMEs and large enterprises alike. There are no additional costs included.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it as a nine. In comparison with other DMS solutions, it offers good performance and is excellent in administration management. It has a simple table structure that makes it a high-performance system for customers. I advise others to select an implementer with knowledge and experience in using the solution.

We have a full landscape for SAP. Currently, my customer is using it. We are using the native HANA for the non-SAP sources.

We have our data nodes for different business domains. The data is coming from non-SAP sources. The data is coming from different systems. We have a database warehouse approach.

The solution is very fast in terms of memory. It's very convenient and very innovative. It's very good at handling the input and output of the data. There is no lag.

It has become the base of building graphical calculation views. 

It is very convenient when you are working with Postgres or Snowflake. When you have modeled everything correctly, it's easy to translate the model. 

With the way native works, it builds a good platform. It's not just a database. It's much more.

It has an inbuilt smart data integrator which you can use for sourcing, researching, and loading the data. It's included in the web IDE version of the web HANA deployment. 

This is a very mature product. The performance is very good. 

I cannot think of any features that are missing at this time. 

In the calculation views, the functions that have been provided to build the graphical views should be enhanced and could be made more flexible. There should be more functionality available.

You cannot apply mulit-join inside the calculation views, for example, when you are joining tables. You have to do it in a four-node. You have to join them one by one instead of joining everything together in one step. 

I've been using the solution for six years. 

The performance is good. It is mature and stable. I've never experienced any issues like crashing or freezing.

The scalability is very good. I'd rate it 8.5 out of ten in terms of ease of scaling. 

This is a good solution for enterprise solutions. 

In terms of the initial setup, I do not know how to install it on the server itself. I don't handle the technical aspects since I am a consultant. I don't directly handle the setup process. Likely, it is installed on Linux.

While my understanding is the product is likely expensive I do not handle the pricing. I don't know the exact costs. 

Smaller companies may not be suitable as the pricing is quite expensive. Even medium-level companies would have trouble affording a full SAP stack. An enterprise would have the budget to take this solution on.

The cloud may be more affordable, however, on-prem would be very expensive. 

I'm a consultant. 

In terms of relational databases, this is the best option.

If you are going to work with HANA, make sure to use the latest version. It has the latest approaches.

Users should utilize the HANA platform to the fullest extent. Get the most out of it by using all of the tools, as much as possible. Don't just use it as a data model database.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We primarily use SAP HANA for ERP in the manufacturing and delivery industries.

What I like best about SAP HANA is that it's faster than Microsoft SQL Server.

The SAP HANA interface has room for improvement because it takes more work to manage than the Microsoft SQL Server interface.

Nowadays, you'll see more no-code tools in the market with a drag-and-drop feature, and that's what I want to see in SAP HANA in the future.

I've been using SAP HANA for six months.

SAP HANA is a stable product. Its stability is eight out of ten.

The scalability of SAP HANA is a six out of ten.

My company used to work with Oracle Database version 10.2, but migrated to Microsoft SQL Server and now also using SAP HANA because Oracle Database is expensive, plus it requires users with a higher level of experience on Oracle Database.

The initial setup for SAP HANA is so-so. It's not easy, yet it's not so difficult. I'm rating its setup as six out of ten.

The total time it takes to deploy SAP HANA depends on the type of integration. I have a lot of integrations where one integration gets deployed within thirty minutes, while another takes more than two days to deploy.

The pricing for SAP HANA is high. It was expensive. You have to pay a lot, and it's the highest-priced solution in the local market, though when you compare it to other tools in the global market, the price is similar.

You pay a lot for the license, and you also have to pay for some add-ons.

I'd rate SAP HANA licensing fees as two out of ten.

My company uses SAP HANA.

My company has SAP Business One version 9.3 that integrates with SAP HANA, but I haven't worked much on SAP HANA yet.

I'm a user of SAP HANA, not a partner.

Around thirty people, mostly technicians, work on deploying SAP HANA. The solution requires five to six engineers for maintenance.

My company has eighty-eight SAP HANA licenses used mainly by the end-users, for example, managers.

I'd tell anyone looking into using SAP HANA that it's a good tool but expensive for smaller-scale companies.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate SAP HANA as ten because it's a good tool, and I like its technology.

We use it in order-placing and in the IBD integration, integrated business planning for forecast, and demand planning. I'm working in the sales and operation department. I'm not working in finance or production. Maybe the other teams are using it differently, or they're using different modules, however, for us at sales and operation, we are using it to place orders, developer CAST, track reports, and ensure accuracy.

It's made everything faster. The best thing we have is a faster operation. Even the reports are being generated very fast versus before. Before, we used to have an older version of SAP, and once we migrated or upgraded the old system to the current system, the speed of the work totally changed.

The integration is quite good. It's like an add-on in which we add the tools we need, like Excel. 

We're not using the interface with SAP HANA itself. However, we're using a remote access link which we access via the web, and we are also using an add-on, which is installed in our Microsoft Excel program. Therefore, we are not particularly using the SAP HANA environment. We don't have this desktop interface in front of us. As far as I know, this is the engine behind all our work.

The setup is easy.

When we upgraded, we received more functions or more features. I am not aware of all of them; however, I've received positive feedback from the users in our company.

It's a stable product.

The solution scales well. 

The pricing could be better. Finding the solution or adding some additional features that are customized for what we need is difficult. It costs a lot of money. For example, our office has SAP HANA, and the Saudi distributor has SAP, or at least, another version. We are trying now to integrate the two systems together. However, the cost is too much. We'd like to see more integration capabilities.

It does take a while to set up.

I've been using the solution for a year and a half. 

The solution is reliable and quite stable. The performance is good. There are no bogs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It can scale. 

We have about 2,500 employees. Not everyone is using it. Some are in the factory, and some are in the office. Some are at specific branches. We are an international multinational company, our head office is in Italy, and we have branches worldwide.

We haven't had any critical issues. However, we have received good support overall. We haven't really dealt with any downtime. It's very rare. It might have only happened once. 

Positive

Currently, we are doing some integration between SAP and some other tools like Power BI and Tableau. We have some customized solutions developed in-house. We used to use an older version of SAP and upgraded it. 

When I worked at a different company, I used to work with Dynamic Business Solutions, not SAP HANA.

It was an easy setup. That said, the implementation takes some time. They spent two or three months just developing the requirements and they gathered from us what we need to do. Then they implement it in two or three months. I don't know if this is a long period or a short period, however, that is how long it took for us. 

I'm not sure how deployment and maintenance are handled. I'm not sure how many people are involved in those aspects of the product. 

We invited a third party to do the implementation. 

Our team did the wishlist, the comments, and we shared it with a third party, and this third party came on-site, and they finished the job.

I'm not sure of the exact numbers surrounding ROI. They may have done a study and chosen the solution based on ROI. However, I was not a part of that process. 

We are spending about 20,000 to 30,000 euros on the solution. It is a one-time implementation. To integrate everything and do the gap analysis, and then implement all of that as per our requirements, that cost us too much money.

We're a potential SAP partner. 

We are using SAP HANA in Italy. We're using the latest version there. That said, in Saudi Arabia, we are not using SAP HANA. They're using the older version.

We have remote access. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. SAP is a very powerful tool.

I would rate it nine out of ten.

We use SAP HANA mostly for fetching data. There are a lot of tables for which we need to do some troubleshooting. For example, if the fill rates are low daily, we examine various factors, such as yield production versions and inventory levels, to understand why it is happening. To assist us in this process, we leverage Blue Yonder ESP, which operates on HANA View. As a supply chain consultant, we use SAP HANA to fetch data from these tables to troubleshoot the issue and find out why the fill rate is dropping. This helps us determine if it is a genuine issue related to supply or something related to the model.

We have been building a lot of sniffer audits for users. For instance, if a bond structure is not going a particular way, the master data team and the business users can check those audits. These audits, made to assess the data quality, will confirm if it is something we have already identified. So all the data quality audits are built on HANA View.

SAP HANA's interface is pretty user-friendly. It is not very difficult to pull out data extract, and even a beginner can fetch data easily. Additionally, data snapshots are available. Also, building upon a more advanced query is not that difficult. In terms of usability, SAP HANA is pretty good.

SAP HANA's long run time to extract data could be improved upon. Also, the analytics given in SAP HANA's interface is basic and could be improved upon.

I have been using SAP HANA for a year.

I rate SAP HANA an eight out of ten for stability.

I rate SAP HANA a seven out of ten for scalability. SAP HANA can be used in the tactical horizon, which for us is 52 weeks. Anything beyond that needs scenario-based planning, which is not possible with SAP HANA.

Around 5,000 to 6,000 users are using SAP HANA because we are a team spread across the globe in places like Boise, the US, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and India. The first users are supply chain engineers and IT employees. Business users hardly use it because it is a little complicated for them. Since we are trying to expand our tactical horizon from 12 months to 18 months, the usage of SAP HANA will increase in the future.

SAP HANA's technical support is pretty good.

Positive

Before using SAP HANA, we were entirely using SAP APO. We switched to SAP HANA because it is an optimizer and gives better results than SAP APO.

I rate SAP HANA a seven and a half out of ten for its initial setup. The deployment of SAP HANA took around 18 months.

The major part of the deployment was done internally. However, initially, we did use external consultants. So SAP HANA's deployment was partly internal.

The first step in the deployment process is customization, which involves obtaining the solution according to our requirements, including the data we use and the basic tables it provides. Our bond structure was changed to enterprise bonds so SAP HANA could process it. An IT team worked entirely on the data transformation part to ensure the data from other upstream systems could be processed. After that, we went into the design part, the user acceptance testing, and finally went live.

New users of SAP HANA need to have basic SQL coding skills and attention to detail to see data using the solution. It might be complicated for someone, not from a background where they're used to seeing a lot of data.

Overall, I rate SAP HANA an eight out of ten.