SAP HANA Reviews

SAP HANA is one of the best databases known for its performance. Since the solution offers a functionality known as in-memory computing, its performance cannot be measured with other databases. If a customer has a large amount of data, especially data in gigabytes or terabytes, because of which they face performance issues, then SAP HANA is the database for them.

SAP HANA should go for big data solutions as well. So, SAP HANA is good for large enterprises and large databases. Even for large databases, we have to rely on other tools, especially those that fall under big data solutions. Hence, SAP HANA needs to be a part of big data solutions.

SAP HANA has almost all the features, and with every new release, they are introducing some new features because of the development team working on the solution. The solution has started supporting its integration with other applications, which can ensure the solution's development. The solution's development platform should be more flexible and scalable to adapt to other solutions. In short, the development environment of the solution needs to improve. Such improvements will make the integration and adaptation of the solution more flexible.

For almost four to five years, I have been working on SAP HANA. I am not only an end user of the solution but also a part of a company that provides the solution to its customers.

The new version of the solution is stable. SAP HANA Version 1.0 had some performance issues, but after SAP HANA Version 2.0 got introduced, the solution became more stable. So there is no need to put in more effort since most things have become automated in the solution.

It's a scalable product. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Presently, we have around 15 customers.

Since I haven't faced any issues with the solution, I haven't contacted technical support yet.

The solution's initial setup was straightforward.

Only one or two days were required for the deployment part, which the technical department took care of in our organization.

If SAP provides simple and standard documentation to its users explaining every solution process in detail, the steps to deploy the solution can be simplified. In short, the deployment process won't take long if one follows the documentation. Also, it will ensure that the users do not have to get involved in any troubleshooting steps or face any other problems while using the solution.

Only one system administrator is required to deploy and maintain the solution.

SAP offers a license for both ERP and HANA, which means that if you purchase SAP ERP, you will be provided with a license that covers both products. In the case of on-premises deployment, the license is perpetual, which means that you only need to pay for annual maintenance. On the other hand, for cloud deployment, licensing payments are made on a yearly subscription basis.

While the cost of the license may seem high, it is important to note that the benefits of the solution far outweighs the cost. Therefore, it can be considered a normal cost.

I would tell those planning to use the solution that it works fine but needs to become more portable. The solution should also be made capable of supporting non-SAP application environments. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The most valuable feature of SAP HANA is its performance and integration.

The solution could improve by having better migration flexibility. For example, it would be helpful if there was a way for customers could check their nonproduction and production deployments.

Integrating SAP HANA with BTP HANA is difficult and there should be guides available.

I have been using SAP HANA for approximately seven years.

The solution is highly reliable.

I rate the stability of SAP HANA a nine out of ten.

We have more than 100 people using the solution.

I rate the scalability of SAP HANA a ten out of ten.

I have had good responses from the support.

I rate the support from SAP HANA a ten out of ten.

Positive

I have used MongoDB and SQL.

The initial setup of SAP HANA was simple. The process can take approximately 45 minutes.

The licensing could improve.

One person can manage the maintenance of the solution.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate SAP HANA a ten out of ten.

My clients are using a specific technique called an in-memory database that is used with SAP HANA.

The solution can be deployed on the cloud and on-premises.

The most valuable feature of SAP HANA is the modeling of the databases.

The solution could improve in the handling of backup data and the administration tools.

I have been using SAP HANA for approximately seven years.

The solution is stable.

SAP HANA is scalable.

I have received a good response from the support from SAP HANA. However, the speed of the response could be better.

The standard way to implement the solution does not take a lot of time. However, if you need to use specific deployment options, called distributions, in the replication. It takes a lot of time for the configuration. The maximum time of deployment will be three days.

The steps taken for the implementation of the solution are sizing the resources, cloud or on-premise, and determining what modules will be required. The most important is figuring out the prerequisites and then starting the deployment. We have to check to see if all the licenses are in place, do application appraisals, and review the whole system.

There is a yearly subscription to use SAP HANA. There is a fee for maintenance.

I have over 50 customers using this solution.

I rate SAP HANA 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. 

There are no primary use cases of the solution in our company. We use SAP HANA as a database in our company because of the expiry deadline of our hardware, which is in January next year.

The benefit of SAP HANA can be observed from the fact that my entire organization depends on the solution since we use around nine to ten modules of SAP, including finance, inventory management, and SCM.

There are no weaknesses in the solution. My company tries to improve its different applications, making it one of the major reasons for us to move from SAP HANA to S4 HANA while also considering the fact that SAP may discard SAP ECC 6.0 by 2027. After that, SAP will provide us with the liberty to upgrade the product.

The only downside of the product is that it is an expensive solution that needs to consider lowering its prices to improve the product.

I have been using SAP for twenty years, and my company started using SAP HANA as a database for the past three years. My company uses the on-premises version of the solution. My company currently uses SAP ECC 6.0 EhP8 and SAP HANA as a database. My company is an end user of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

My company has around 290 users using the solution 24 hours daily.

My company has only one SAP administrator and one more person who provides support.

Before getting support from TMC, my company used to get support from SAP Pakistan. Within the company, my team is well-equipped to look after SAP, and because of this, we don't need to opt for additional support. If there are any changes, my company approaches sAP directly. We're not dependent on the local vendors for support.

My company has been using SAP since 2004, so I don't know the other products used in the past.

Speaking about the initial setup phase, my company is still in the planning phase, and because of this, there is no dedicated person involved to look after the initial setup process.

The solution is deployed on-premises, but we plan to move to AWS in the future. We will start the migration process in the next month or after two or three months.

The vendor takes care of the product's implementation part.

Price-wise, the product falls on the higher side of the spectrum. There is no need to pay for maintenance and support additionally. Support is available for bug fixes in the product.

As there is no alternative for SAP in the market, I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.

We use it for database virtualization.

The main feature is that the processes are very flexible, they are able to be adapted to the business and their departments. The solution is very good and has covered all functional areas needed in this type of solution.

There could be better management for faster updates, last year there were some changes in India to the e-invoicing feature. During that time, there was a couple of updates that we had to wait until the release happened before we could do the implementation, this was a time we had to wait. They are pretty good at releasing updates but that time it was not the fastest.

I have been using the solution for a few months.

I have found the solution to be stable, it is very robust.

There is the ability to scale the solution by increasing capacity with no problem, it is very flexible. We have almost 34,000 users using the solution.

We had some issue with support in the past because they did not have enough availability. However, they have improved and now they are okay. 

Since we have been using the solution before we did not have any issues with the install. There were not any major complex operations. However, there were some challenges but we had the full documentation with us and it was not a problem. 

The price of the solution could be reduced, it is expensive. If they wanted to go into other industries and sectors the cost is on the higher side. They cannot go into each and every sector. If the cost was more reasonable, then it would be easy for them to enter more markets. This would be a disruptor in the industry because it would be used more often than other solutions, which would be good for the company.

I do recommend this solution but at the same time, it is expensive. The cost will not be able to be afforded by everyone such as medium and small scale businesses.

I rate SAP HANA an eight out of ten.

I use SAP HANA for enterprise, financial, and materials management.

The best feature of SAP HANA is column computing. The computing speed of the solution is also very high, so developers can easily develop programs through SAP HANA.

Per SAP, you can do both transactional and analytical processes in SAP HANA. Though that's true, the speed is slower when you combine the two functions, so this is what I'd like SAP to improve in SAP HANA.

In the next release, I want to see better diagrams in SAP HANA and a more user-friendly interface.

I've used SAP HANA for a long time because I'm a technical consultant for SAP.

I used to contact SAP to ask for help with SAP HANA, and I'm giving the SAP support team a six out of ten.

Neutral

My company still uses SAP HANA because it's an SAP business partner, plus the company also helps other companies use SAP HANA.

SAP HANA is easy to set up. It took a short time to deploy the solution.

SAP HANA is very expensive here in China. My company bought the SAP ERP suite, which includes SAP HANA. For others who use SAP HANA as an analytical database, CPU numbers will affect the pricing, so as a solution, it's costly.

I'm using SAP HANA version 2.0 from 1.0.

Here in China, most people use the on-premise SAP HANA version.

My company has five hundred employees, all using SAP HANA.

I suggest this solution to people using SAP ERP or any other software from SAP.

My rating for SAP HANA is eight out of ten because it's a very powerful database for traditional and analytical scenarios.

The client is using the solution for supply chain management, and at the same time, our enterprise uses it to track the businesses' performance. The rest of our regions are going to be using SAP ECC. We are the first region to go with HANA. We were shortlisted to show them the roadmap and guide them. Supply chain management and tracking raw materials were areas of concern.

The IBP module was the most useful followed by the FI/CO and CNMM modules.

The product could be improved in several ways.

First, before carrying out a project with this environment size, a POC needs to be carried out, for which you would have access to various environments. And those environments are something that SAP should invest in and others should provide. That would be an improvement.

Second, some good amount of handholding, guidance, or other validation or certification from SAP at different levels.  

Third, access to tools for a longer period than the pre-defined trial version license. That's something that we can ask our friends from SAP to extend or make available in a different licensing model at zero cost.

I have three years of experience with the solution.

The solution is very stable. We would rate its stability as eight out of 10.

We would rate the scalability of the solution as eight-plus on a scale of one to 10.

The initial setup was pretty complex, considering the enormous amount of data they had from an Oracle ERP. Migration was an especially painful task, but we managed to sail through it thanks to the support of our customer. We delivered it within the timelines. We managed a few escalations. We worked with the customer. We had a weekly stand-up with the customer and various workshops and sessions to educate them and highlight the challenges. 

Implementation was completely in-house with a team of around 18 to 22 people and a couple of people from SAP, who looked at the overall program management level, providing guidance plus certifying that best practices were being followed and implemented. 

The deployment, moving from Oracle to SAP HANA, took around eight months

The customer took care of all the SAP license costs. Our scope was primarily implementation and migration support.

Oracle ERP had the flexibility, but it didn't have the functionality that the customer was looking for.

We would give the product an overall rating of nine out of 10.

We have an entirely SAP family, which makes it easy to manage and support. The customer opened its first, and we are doing multiple instances of SAP ECC implementations for the rest of the small countries in APAC, the Middle East, and Africa.

Around 175 to 250 people use the solution at every level of the customer's organization.

We will be providing maintenance for the next five years.

My advice would be to explore and play with the different systems available in the market. But, ultimately, look for a system with a brand, broad user usability, and support. For instance, my customer wanted to explore an open-source ERP. We persuaded him to go with SAP, primarily because they have the expertise. They adhere to the best policies. They offer support, etc. 

If you don't have all this, don't explore freebies. Go for a licensed version, recommended globally, and highly rated by Gartner or various research and consulting firms.