Independent report finds SAP HANA is a powerful driver of business innovation

Independent report finds SAP HANA is a powerful driver of business innovation

SAP HANA ‘critical’ tool for enabling digital transformation through innovation

Nottingham, UK - 22 February 2018 - Centiq, Europe’s most experienced independent SAP consultancy, today announced the results of its latest SAP and S/4 HANA research. Following on from its previous report, ‘Debunking the three myths of HANA’, this year’s ‘The Centiq State of SAP HANA 2018 Report’, is believed to be the largest ever independent research into SAP HANA.

The research delves deeper into how organisations perceive SAP HANA’s technical advantages, laying out how today’s organisations are relying on real-time data handling to deliver on the promise of digital transformation. The study demonstrates SAP HANA’s importance to businesses as a catalyst for innovation and reveals 90% of SAP HANA projects are driven by internal business strategy teams.

Some 250 HANA UK users, across many different sectors including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Retail and Distribution, and Technology and Telecoms is summarised below.

SAP HANA is a strategic data processing machine

As real time analytics become increasingly used in organisations around the world, organisations are able to make smarter decisions and functionality becomes smoother, which results in direct benefits for the customer. In the past year, SAP HANA has evolved to be more business-aligned than almost any other technology. Prime among the drivers are its ability to ‘process data for real time decision making’ (61%) and to ‘integrate data from multiple sources’ (60%) as well as for ‘deeper customer insight’ (59%).

SAP HANA projects are more likely to live in the Public Cloud

This year’s research shows SAP HANA platform selection is increasingly driven by an organisation’s wider Cloud platform strategy. However, it is Public Cloud not SAP Cloud which houses the vast majority of production and non-production SAP HANA instances. 88% of respondents deploy SAP HANA either entirely in Public Cloud, or in conjunction with on-premise or SAP Cloud solutions in their production environments.


SAP HANA is a business innovation driver

Overall 99% of respondents this year cite SAP HANA as a driving force for business innovation. In addition, organisations also revealed they use SAP HANA for accelerated innovation in data cleansing, process reconciliations and customer on-boarding processes. This year’s research shows organisations using SAP HANA to streamline internal processes, will see cost savings. For example, in the Media and Entertainment sector, 94% of all SAP HANA projects are focused on business cost savings.

Matt Lovell, COO at Centiq said, “ When SAP HANA launched in 2011, many initially struggled to create compelling business cases or measurable ROI. Seven years later, this has changed. Organisations both large and small need agility, responsiveness and deep customer insights to be competitive and they are mostly achieving this using Cloud-based IT services. Our latest research is incredibly revealing. The Cloud proliferates but it is still unclear what role Public Cloud, plays in SAP HANA environments. Yet, despite the confusion, there is a great deal to feel positive about based on the experiences of the SAP HANA community. On-time and on-budget projects have become the norm, and despite some shortages of key skills, the resounding message from our research this year is that SAP HANA is now delivering on the promises made at the time of its launch.”

About Centiq

Centiq is recognised for our expertise for in-memory applications and outcomes. Established for over 20 years, our specialist services for SAP HANA and converged infrastructure have enabled us to create amazing real-time opportunities for our customers including; Walgreens Boots Alliance, Unilever, Greggs and RS Components.

Our team develops Centiq’s own tools, processes and methodology to support our in-memory experts, who focus on enabling faster, more integrated and innovative outcomes for our customers. With our key application support partners, we now offer our customers functional support in all SAP HANA applications as well as SAP Business One.

We are vendor independent, which enables us to identify, provision and continually optimise our customers’ platforms for SAP HANA. Whether this is AWS, Google, Azure, Private Cloud, HANA Appliances or HANA Tailored Data Centre Infrastructure (TDI), as well as Hybrid environments.

For more information, visit centiq.co.uk