In a previous blog, I argued that SAP HANA (and in-memory computing) had the potential to bring a number of benefits to enterprises in the short term, including:
- elimination of lag time between data capture in the operational system and its availability in analytical systems,
- greatly increased query performance, and
- simplification of the IT landscape.
A second blog discussed scenarios in which HANA could be transformative to customers today. In 
summary, customers running SAP BW may find substantial benefits to moving to SAP HANA in the short term –read the blog for more details. It’s my opinion that SAP BW is the “killer app” for HANA. However, this is only a part of the answer, since BW is a platform on which customers run many different apps.
“Timeful” software
Why is HANA so interesting? In a sense, what the HANA team did is to look at all the assumptions underlying applications today. Given the enormous changes in the price of high-speed memory, it is now possible and economical to handle essentially all of our typical transactional applications – and a very large fraction of our analytical applications – on a data set in fast RAM, rather than on a slow disk.
As I was discussing SAP HANA with Vishal Sikka (SAP Chief Technology Officer and Executive Board member) and his team over the past months, I came to the conclusion that the software architecture embodied in HANA is a radical re-thinking of the assumptions underlying the enterprise software industry – and this could be transformative for the enterprise software industry and every industry it supports. Disruptive changes in speed and cost have always held the potential for transformations of industries, whether in transportation (from sailboats to airplanes), farming (from ox-driven plows to today’s automated equipment), or mining (workers with pick axes to earthmovers and dynamite). As these industries transformed, they also led to transformations in the industries around them, and society as a whole. For example, fast, cheap, reliable transportation led to transformations of every industry from agriculture to energy to trade to government and even to war.
Vishal recently discussed a concept he calls “Timeless Software” (blog,video). Timeless Software embodies the notion that software must evolve as customer needs – and technologies available to satisfy them – change. Business processes and data need to survive even as the technologies around them get invented, flourish, and eventually passed by with new and (usually!) better successors. But what about the situation where the business needs change extremely rapidly, and the business can flourish or perish based on its ability to respond in real-time?
You could think of this scenario, where time is of the essence, as “timeful software” – scenarios in which you could transform an industry by eliminating latency – or lack – of information. HANA’s speed allows batch processes to be performed more frequently, continuously, or transmuted into continuous processes. Can such speed – delivering information and insight into the hands of those who need it instantly when it is needed, or re-planning on an “as needed” basis rather than periodically – can such speed really transform an industry? Can moving information and deriving information in real-time make such a difference?
In many business processes, the answer is already, resoundingly “yes.” Hotels check availability before confirming your reservation. Banks check for sufficient funds before cashing a check at the teller. Airplanes get rerouted and rescheduled when a volcano erupts in Iceland. But there are many other business processes which are executed periodically, in batches, today due to the cost and disruption to production systems. If the cost (performance) and disruption (latency, system unavailability windows) could be eliminated – as they can be with in-memory computing systems like SAP HANA – then the economics of businesses and industries could be substantially improved.
These “timeful” scenarios listed below are illustrative of those which I think will be enabled by SAP HANA, and which will lead to dramatic efficiencies, competitive shifts, and improved service, creating value for customers in such a way as to transform an industry.
[For the scenarios, please see the original blog at this link.]
Killer App
A killer app is a typically thought of as an application that is so beneficial that it drives widespread adoption of a new type of platform. This term was invented for the computer industry, with VisiCalc (driving the adoption of personal computers) being a canonical example. Once individuals, and businesses, adopted personal computers to run VisiCalc (or Lotus 1-2-3 for MS-DOS, or Excel and Word on Windows), users started using those same computers for many other applications, ranging from word processing to e-mail to web browsing. The impact of these second set of applications is more profound than was the impact of the spreadsheet, but it was the spreadsheet that paved the way for these applications by bringing PCs into mainstream adoption.
VisiCalc, Lotus, and Excel were really just containers that held data and applications (“macros”), and it was those applications that made the tools into killer apps, used for everything from budgeting to tax preparation to production planning to homework. In many ways, SAP BW is exactly analogous to a spreadsheet like VisiCalc or Lotus. BW is a container that can hold data and applications – applications including the lists of processes above. BW, with scenarios like the long lists above, will drive widespread adoption of in-memory computing (and SAP HANA, more specifically). Once HANA is in place as the database under SAP BW, customers will find many more ways to use HANA to transform their enterprises to much higher levels of performance, much as word processors, e-mail, and browsers are transforming business and society.
Will SAP HANA have the same impact as the PC? Will HANA be VisiCalc or Excel in my analogy? Time will tell, but time is exactly what SAP HANA gives you. And, perhaps in the end, time is the real “killer app.”
Do you have additional scenarios to suggest for “timeful” transformations? Share them here!
Note: SAP is a former employer, and current client, of the author.
Hi Dennis,
Very timely post. It’s again one of these days when predicting that a new technology will open a new chapter is much easier than identifying which use cases will fill this chapter. And in these phases we are always looking for the killer app.
Remember when the Internet reached B2B, and the likes of Transora, CPGMarket.com or Covisint came up, built on the idea of aggregating buying power through an Internet platform? For a short while, they looked like the killer apps. And I am not sure to the day that there has ever been such, despite the fact that the Internet eventually and silently made its way into B2B computing.
We may just see the same with in-memory computing and SAP HANA. The technologists are turning every stone in the search for the killer problem that this amazing technology can solve and by doing that spread the idea behind until the business people with the problems link them to the new solution.
Let’s keep looking for the killer app. It’s worth the time in any case. And who knows, we may just find it.
Best
Stefan
Stefan –
Thanks for the great comment. A historical perspective is definitely beneficial. I certainly remember the last bubble, and I’m sure there will be other such bubbles in our future.
I think it was foreseeable that computerizing the procurement process could lead to significant efficiencies, in advance of that happening in the 80s and 90s, just as I would claim it was foreseeable that signing no long term contracts with suppliers and running every PO through an auction process would result in lower quality parts, higher overall prices, and shoddy supplier service. Nonetheless, your points are well taken!
In general, I tried to stick with scenarios that are plausibly improved significantly with the elimination of time. But as you say, it’s worth the time to look for these scenarios, and it will likely take more than just one blog entry to find them and validate them.
Thanks for the comments, hope all is well!
– Dennis
If BW is to electronic spreadsheets HANA would be to the PC/DOS. Something seems wrong in your last question about HANA being Excel or VisiCalc. Did you mean ‘will BW be excel or VisiCalc’?
Makes me think about the first (demo) spreadsheet apps- checkbook balancing, hardly what we think of as a killer app. When there is such diverse utility on a platform it becomes the killer ‘app’ for the next lower technology on the stack. Is it the number of apps, the speed in which they are adopted and the utility that make something killer? Searching for ‘an’ app doesn’t sit right with me.
Another great post, Dennis.
Best,
Kevin
Kevin –
Thanks – great comment!
Visicalc was the innovator that introduced people to the notion of spreadsheets, but is gone today. Excel, on the other hand, dominates the world created by Visicalc. In fact, Excel even dominates the database world, if you really think about it!
My question meant to imply – will HANA introduce the category but be replaced by something from another vendor, or will it have staying power? Given the emphasis SAP is putting on HANA, I suspect it has the staying power Visicalc lacked.
BTW, original spreadsheet apps in business were not checkbook balancing – they were budgeting and accounting. I remember using Lotus 1-2-3 on Hercules graphics cards to simulate distillation columns in chemical engineering courses I took in my undergrad education. I could program in FORTRAN, C, etc. at the time, but I could get so much more done in Lotus. Maybe Lotus had mostly accounting in mind with the spreadsheet, and that may have been the “killer app” that drove adoption and acceptability for PCs in business, but that’s not the only way spreadsheets delivered value …
Thanks for the kind words!
– Dennis
Thanks for the clarification. I would think that since HANA can slide under existing apps it has a huge advantage (built in business content/context). Will it have staying power to lead the new category?…I don’t know but It’s nice to see SAP leading again.
Let’s ask Dan Flystra what the first electronic spreadsheet ‘demo’ app was. Come to think of it Josh Greenbaum may have reported on it.
As I recall (trust but verify) the 3 in Lotus 1-2-3 represented database functionality. (I really should google these ‘facts’)
You share an interesting spreadsheet programming experience. Interactivity is a way one street.
Kevin
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