SAP HANA Reviews

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.

We are primarily using the solution for the BW system of SAP. We also use the legacy reporting, which is very good.

The solution is quite fast.

We hoped to move all our BI systems to work with HANA, unfortunately, there are a lot of performance issues, even after remodeling the BW models.

The memory is the solution's most valuable feature. It's the main feature of HANA. Others are still the regular IT databases that are on storage and are therefore much slower than HANA. The solution is quite fast.

Unlike other databases, it lacks management features that legacy databases like Oracle or SQL servers have. They need to make the solution easier to manage and offer tools that make management more effective. A lot of things you have on traditional databases you have to develop into HANA.

I've been using the solution for about 3 years

The solution is less stable than traditional databases. We have encountered several cases when the database just flows. For some reason, that database took a lot of memory, and when we opened a case with SAP, we had to send a lot of logs, which did nothing because at the end, they couldn't find the root cause for this issue. This happened in several cases. We had production down and that's not acceptable for our business.

The solution is very scalable. We have about 10,000 users.

Each of those is not connecting to the database per se, but we are using HANA to take all the data and a lot of users. Several other software applications are also connecting to it.

Technical support is okay, but not great. It seems like there are a lot of SAP support packages that are coming out and lots of versions. For me, this indicates that the product is not quite ready or stable enough.

We've contacted technical support in the past and did not get good results. Eventually, we just created some parameters that we have configured into the system. We solved the problem by ourselves by creating a workaround that avoided the problem. SAP never gave us a straight answer about what we should do in our case.

The initial setup was quite complicated. We had to do a migration, so it wasn't a fresh installation. We had Oracle as our legacy system and had to move everything over to HANA. We had to do half a year of testing and had to do several cycles of tests and migrations before deploying. Once that was done, we deployed over a weekend.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd advise others to wait until the software will be much more stable before implementing it.

I'd rate it eight out of ten. If it was more stable and more manageable, I'd rate it higher. If people could have the ability to do things on their own within the solution, to read the software logs on their own, and get the root cause of any problem, and not just send it to the support, it would be much better.

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 currently using the solution for planning, sourcing, and ordering from a contract perspective.

We have found that the Fiori Apps are particularly good.

I would like to see improvement on the feedback from the road-map; it is currently extremely hard to get insight in this area.

I have been using this solution for four years.

The stability of this solution is extremely good.

We have found it to be extremely scalable.

The initial setup was complex, but this was due to the nature of the current project which is large and complex. However, for smaller projects, it has been more straightforward.

The implementation was carried out in-house, and we also implement the solution for our customers.

The price of licensing is dependent on the size of the project, however, we have found that there is scope to negotiate the cost.

If the solution is implemented on-premises there may be some extra costs for hosting etc.

I would rate this solution as a seven out 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. 

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.

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. 

The user interface is very good. You can do any kind of reporting analytics from the platform.

The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities.

There could be some debugging techniques when the solution goes wrong or if some of the data is wrong.

The solution needs to work a little bit faster.

When you do a report on a non-SAP platform, you face some compatibility problems.

I've been using the solution for seven years.

HANA is currently a stable solution after many upgrades. It's been seven years in the market, so it's fairly mature. It's been working fine for many clients here.

Scalability is good. That's the reason many customers like it. Initially, it was not so good and there were some problems with the software when it came to the market. Now it's fool proof in terms of running solutions for many clients. We typically handle enterprise-level businesses, so companies that have 500+ employees.

In terms of technical support, it depends on what partnership you have with SAP. If you're a platinum partner or a gold partner, for example, you can expect a certain level of support. 

The initial setup is straightforward. It's not too difficult to install if you are experienced with the solution.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I'd recommend the solution. It's a very good product to learn and it's easy to use once you have an understanding of the technology. It's a nice product to work on.

I'd rate it eight out of ten.