SAP TechEd Barcelona, thanks for the great week!
This year McCoy & Partners was present at the SAP TechEd in Barcelona. Six of our consultants, varying from the field of Business Intelligence to Technology, attended many networking sessions, workshops and lectures. You probably have seen us wearing our beautiful orange t-shirts!
During all the attended sessions a lot of knowledge was gathered, best practices were exchanged and collaboration was done. A subset of some of the most interesting topics we have seen at this event were: Core Data Services (CDS), SAP HANA Vora & SAP Predictive Analysis.
Core Data Services
Core Data Services is positioned as the next generation data definition language used for defining and accessing database centric applications like SAP HANA. Using a common Data Definition Language (DDL), Query Language (QL) and Data Control Language (DCL) a complete model can be created, consumed and secured. Core Data Services can be defined in either HANA CDS or in ABAP CDS. This means that a customer running S4/HANA can create and use ABAP CDS. The interesting part is, that within your S4/HANA system CDS views are used to make real-time reporting possible using Embedded Analytics.
SAP HANA Vora
This separate product, even though the name implies it is part of SAP HANA, makes it possible to provide enriched interactive analytics. Vora, that sits on top of a HADOOP, makes effectively use of the internal memory. The problem with a HADOOP server is that it is really easily to store unstructured data, but that it is hard to read (and therefore analyse) from it. SAP HANA Vora tries to fill this gap. By supplying a OLAP modeler a user is able to create a analytics model and execute it on the HADOOP servers. With the use of specialized computing engines, it utilizes the maximum capacity of the HADOOP cluster in order to get the right analytics and the right time.
Of course you have the ability to integrate your unstructured data in HADOOP with your structured enterprise data in SAP HANA. It is even possible to apply data tiering and use Hadoop as a Near Line Storage (NLS) for SAP HANA. This makes SAP HANA VORA an interesting tool to consider when Big Data Analytics and HANA Enterprise are part of your organization.
Predictive Analysis
During a lot of lectures and workshops predictive analysis was a term mentioned multiple. Within this area of expertise, the Predictive Factory is something worth mentioning. The Predictive Factory is the new improved model manager of SAP BO Predictive analytics. It is not just a just cosmetic change. This platform is future proof resulting in better model management. Besides that, it offers a new intuitive user interface based on the Fiori principle and adds the ability for Segmented Time Series.
HANA 2.0
Last but not least, we cannot forget HANA 2.0 that got officially announced during the key note. With this new version SAP is pushing its HANA platform to the next level. It promises better database management, new features regarding analytical intelligence and more options related to application development, like the support of “Bring-Your-Own-Language” option, that enables developers to bring in third party build packs and runtimes to the SAP HANA XS engine. Hopefully SAP delivers more new interesting functionalities with coming Support Pack Stacks (SPS). So that our customers have a valid business reason to upgrade to HANA 2.0.
Interested in the possibilities of Core Data Services, HANA VORA or Predictive Analysis? Or want to know if it fits within your IT strategy? Don’t hesitate to contact us.