SAP HANA Reviews

What is good about SAP HANA is its simplicity and its flexibility. 

Its in-memory capabilities are good, which is why many companies still use it. 

SAP HANA is a very proprietary tool and there's not as much support available for it as there is for an SQL Server (which is more popular). 

It requires some internal SAP knowledge to work with the tool and it's a completely graphical modeling kind of a system. You can't come in cold with no knowledge or understanding of the solution and think you can jump in and start working.

You have to work with the very few tools that are given to you. It could probably increase its flexibility and there could be more components added, which would make it more versatile. They could improve the solution by adding more components and by making it more feature-rich and including typical features that other more popular tools have.

There needs to be better support from the SAP support team. There needs to be more support for other programming languages like high-level C++, Java, or Python. That could be another improvement. 

HANA needs more integration with open-source tools, and with general reporting and analytics tools that are out there on the market. Once again, more integration on so many levels would be amazing. It's very SAP-centric and very proprietary right now. There are ways to connect SAP HANA with many tools already, however, in particular with open-source tools, if there could be even more integration, that would be helpful.

There needs to be more data transformation and more ELT features that can be implemented in the view. 

While I'm not exactly sure how long the company itself has used the solution, I've been dealing with it for four years at this point. It's been a while.

In terms of stability, I can't comment much. It depends on the underlying system and infrastructure, and it has the same kind of stability as any other on-premise solution. It doesn't have any cloud features such as multiple replication and multiple locations, et cetera. In that sense, it has the same stability as any other on-premise solution and does not guarantee any SLA. 

In terms of scalability, it's quite scalable. We've used it for production solutions very often and from any number of users. Generally, there are a few hundred users or so. I have not really worked on an implementation that uses thousands of users or anything that big, so I can't really comment on massive scaling. However, if it's for enterprise applications that have a few hundred internal users, it's good. 

The community support needs to be better. I haven't been impressed with it. In general, it just needs better support.

I have only worked on SAP and I haven't worked on other solutions.

I don't have information on the pricing, as that is an SAP and corporate-level agreement, which is not really known by all the in-house teams. I'm not really aware of the pricing. On the internet, I couldn't find much information about the cost of SAP HANA. I have heard that it is an expensive option. Being an enterprise-level solution, however, I don't have exact numbers. 

I'm not really part of the decision making team or the architecture team. I do not know if my organization has a business relationship with SAP or not.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.

In the case of enterprise projects, I've heard that SAP HANA is used very widely. I would say, in general, it would be good to explore other alternatives, and not just go with HANA. It would be good to explore big data alternatives that are out there. They might be a better fit. Databricks these days seems to be quite popular. It might be an interesting alternative for some organizations. Depending on the use case, I'd recommend that other alternatives should be considered. If it's a reporting solution that people are building, which is using a lot of SAP internal data, then SAP HANA is a good option. Otherwise, other alternatives are out there.

We are using on-premises, but I have also done some research in the last six months trying to go towards the cloud. We want to upgrade it because we also did the same thing with another company we are working with which is using the Sage X3 Cloud. We started with Sage Evolution, but now we are also moving to Save X3 Cloud.

It helped us because some of the people who are busy supporting us are not local. We opened SAP HANA more for the management. We even got some tenders that we were able to submit documents online and sending it to our servers. The key value is that we can get more tenders because of the lower cost while giving a better product or service. This is possible only because of our use of SAP HANA.

The most value for us was in terms of using it to issue tenders online. We host our server, but it is open to the public, so clients who want to buy those tenders were able to go online, put their tender documents up, and we could evaluate them using SAP. We were basically able to do pre-qualifications using SAP. After that, we could send notifications to people who qualified and go through the non-qualified people using SAP. That feature is very effective in terms of supplier relationship management. We can issue tenders and people put their big documents through SAP HANA, which helps with communication and gives them notifications.

One is the menu. There is a part of the menu where the button should be "reject." The interface is a little bit hard to customize. You almost have to consult the SAP original developer to change it. Now we have to consult SAP just to do some interface changes. You expect it to be easy to get into the menu, but you can't. Instead of changing the console you wanted to reject it, for example, if a tender that does not meet a specific qualification. Basically, the customization of the interface needs to be more friendly.

I think we are also going towards mobile technology, so I would like to see the integration of a mobile app.

It's quite stable. There haven't been many cases of bugs, crashing, or freezing. It has been quite stable.

Its scalability is good, in terms of meeting our needs.

I think technical support is okay. They should be more focused on updating the knowledge transfer for people who have experience with SAP in general but need to transition their knowledge to the local client. This part is a little bit challenging.

We used another solution, but it was more of a client-oriented system, where you get developers to make and customize them for you. It's more local or in-house than regular IT systems. When you only have one company developer to make some products for you and he is the only one who can support you, it's a little bit of a challenge. With SAP HANA, if you get stuck somewhere you can call any other SAP HANA partner.

It was easy for us to set up, because we had that QA code, in terms of the system analysis and system requirements. Once we got the system requirements, we were able to connect to the hardware and software. We could make sure before we did the implementation that we had the right environment.

The main lesson is the importance of ERP capability, stability, and speed. The other lesson is about knowledge transfer because that is how you learn. 

At the end of the day, I like it because it's one of the affordable ERP systems. I would rate is as eight of ten.

This is an in-memory database. It's designed to leverage the use of new generation, multi-threaded CPU architecture. We are service providers.

This is a very feature-rich solution with excellent performance. It's capable of integrating with most applications on the market. The stand-out feature of SAP HANA is that all data resides in memory. Processing is significantly faster, and the need and size of databases drop because there is no need to create and maintain tables that hold historical data.

As with all electrical products, this is an expensive solution and we'd like to see licensing costs reduced. 

We've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable. 

The technical support is very knowledgeable and provide good service. 

The initial setup doesn't take more than a few hours. The on-premise version can be installed on public cloud and SAP now have their own version on private cloud. Installation is just a matter of preparing the operating system that has certain prerequisites, patches, and networking requirements that need to fill parameters.

The hardware to run a HANA database requires extremely big servers, makes this an expensive solution. 

There aren't many options available and this is a good product. I rate SAP HANA eight out of 10. 

Our primary use case is for the database and the network.

The most valuable features I have found are speed, dashboard, and reporting.

There are a few areas wherein there could be a patch upgrade, and that can cover up the country-specific payroll areas.

I have been using SAP HANA for the past two years.

The stability is amazing.

There is a high level of scalability. We currently have around three hundred and thirty licenses.

Technical support is excellent. There has never been a case where I was not given an answer.

Positive

The initial setup is very difficult and not easy.

The deployment took two months to implement.

It is a good, satisfactory, and very customizable product. There has not been a situation where I have not been able to provide a solution to the customer. I think it is the best product.

The pricing is relatively high for both customers and partners.

I would highly recommend SAP HANA and would give it a ten on a scale of one to ten.

This solution is an advanced, analytical database, which supports in-memory computing.

We appreciate that the current, redesigned version of this solution that is much more straightforward for new users, and has been well thought out with industry best practice standards in mind.

While new users to this solution have the benefit of the new design, existing ERP users may experience issues with migrating legacy data.  We would like to see development of ready-made tools that allow for easy mapping when upgrading.

There is an issue with the programming language that has been introduced in the latest updates to the product, as it does not match the language originally used to develop the solution. We would like to have development tools included as a feature of the solution to help with this.

Also, this product has seen a large amount of new features added over the last few versions, and we would like the focus to be on improving those before more functionality is added.

We have been using this solution for more than five years.

This is a stable solution in our experience. However, current ECC users may experience issues with performance.

The cloud-based versions of this solution is auto-scalable, which is easy to initiate.

We have found that the support for this solution is a little inconsistent, particularly with the regular introduction of new functionality, which doesn't allow the technical teams time to become fully acquainted with the tools they need to support.

Neutral

The initial setup for this solution is straightforward as it is all automated. The setup is also easy, except for issues with migrating legacy data.

I have customers who work with SAP, and I carried out performance research for them, comparing the different parameters of SAP HANA. The solution is generally used for data warehousing. 

I think the in-memory database is excellent as it boosts performance. 

The product lacks some flexibility in its settings and configurations.

The solution is stable. 

The product is quite scalable.

I don't think the initial setup is too complex. Obviously it's not easy because SAP HANA is a complex system, so it's somewhere in the middle.

Licensing costs are quite expensive for the Ukraine but there is a range of different purchasing models so it's flexible in that sense. For a small enterprise, the costs might seem unreasonably high.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We have an ongoing cloud installation but mostly, we implement on-premises.

We use this solution for SAP Business One. 

It's used mainly for analytic purposes, reporting, and the processing of large data.

What I like most are the dashboards and pervasive analytics. Those are the most useful to us.

The documentation can be improved in the future.

In the next release, I would like to see integration with smart devices.

I have been implementing SAP Hana for six years.

We are using the latest version.

It's a stable solution.

SAP HANA is scalable.

We are project-based. In each project, there are anywhere from 30 to 50 users.

We have not really received any technical support from SAP HANA.

I think that's also one thing that maybe SAP would be most helpful, especially if we encounter several errors during installation. We don't get to have many references or we don't get to ask the technical guys of SAP HANA.

Previously we were using MySQL, but due to the fast performance of SAP HANA, we switched approximately three years ago.

In the newer versions, the initial setup is mostly straightforward. However, the older version was more complex. We had several issues with installing.

The installation usually takes approximately four hours.

There are two admins at the most to maintain this solution.

We definitely plan to keep implementing this product in the future and I can recommend it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for our CRM, and for our ERP, inventory, and supply chain management. It's basically used to run the majority of the company. We are customers of SAP HANA and I'm an account executive. 

SAP is great for what it does. There are likely better solutions out there but I'm not aware of them. It's a solution for big companies and in that sense it makes management of the databases much easier for higher-level people to know what's going on. 

The user interface and CRM need to be more user-friendly, it's abnormally painful. I'm a frontline user of the CRM, and it requires lots of clicks that are unnecessary. Less is more on the internet and quite often I'm clicking five, six, seven times to get where I need, and that's not effective. When an item in a certain category is not done properly, it can either lock up a system or not complete the process. We see it on a daily basis and we have to figure out a workaround to solve it. It's a technical issue that SAP's had since the beginning, and it hasn't yet been solved. With SAP everything has to be categorized. If it's not, it causes system issues and then you have to decipher the issue to try and undo it. It's an algorithm argument flaw. In the near future, I'd like to see better user interfaces and better connectors between modules.

I've been using this solution for about eight years. 

The solution is rock stable now. We have an SAP team and five or six people fixing day-to-day issues with up to 30 people working on it all the time. There is an additional team that implements new functionalities. 

It can scale infinitely. We have 12,000 users internationally and we use the product extensively. 

I have previously used Salesforce and I don't like it. It runs like a 1980s webpage in the current era.

The initial setup was painful and required a lot of work. Systems would go down all the time because there were initial errors with the SAP system. but once it was up and stabilized, things were good. It still has flaws but it's a good solution as a whole. They've implemented extra modules from SAP. If you don't implement it properly you'll feel the pain. It probably took around six months to solve all the issues because SAP is so big and so integrated and so integral, it can take a while to fix the problems. You can limp along until things are solved and find workarounds, but it takes a lot of effort. SAP helped us with the implementation. 

SAP is expensive but it's a good solution for what it does. You're going to get a $20 answer, for a $20 product. For all the functionality it offers, the cost is worth it.

It's important to plan and then plan again before implementing. If you don't plan properly, you will fail. The solution requires planning the implementation, making sure your company is the right size for the product. If you're an SMB, this might not be the right product for you. It might cost you more than you think. If you're enterprise size, you should look at getting into SAP, because it is the right solution. It's a solid product despite some minor issues - if SAP were to fix them it would raise the level of the solution. 

As a user, I rate the solution eight out of 10.