SAP lays out plans to become big player in databases, mobile

IDG News Service - SAP made a series of announcements on Tuesday as part of its bid to become a high-profile player in the database market alongside the likes of Oracle and IBM.

The HANA in-memory database platform is at the center of SAP's strategy, and will eventually underpin all of its products. Many SAP customers currently run the company's flagship Business Suite ERP (enterprise resource planning) application on rival databases, especially Oracle and IBM DB2. SAP is hoping over time to convince those customers to run HANA instead, but the necessary engineering work isn't yet finished.

To this end, SAP is also banking on Sybase ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise), a product acquired through the 2010 purchase of Sybase. The port of Business Suite to Sybase ASE would be generally available this month, executive board member and technology chief Vishal Sikka said during a press conference Tuesday in San Francisco.

Right now, HANA is best suited for analytics. On that front, SAP announced the general availability of its Business Warehouse platform running on HANA. "BW on HANA is a non-disruptive and dramatic improvement in cost and performance," Sikka said.

The "ramp-up," or early adopter period for BW on HANA, started in November and was the fastest in SAP history, he added. Some 80 units have shipped to customers and partners so far, he added.

In addition, SAP said Tuesday that it intends to create a US$155 million venture capital fund for startups that build applications on the HANA platform, as well as spend $337 million on an incentive program meant to lure customers to HANA.

Under the latter effort, SAP will provide consulting services for new customers who want to move from "legacy" databases to HANA. In addition, SAP will give HANA customers who have finished implementing the software "up to an 18-month exchange program out of their SAP HANA licenses to any other previously licensed SAP product if they are not satisfied," according to a statement.

SAP is also focused on making sure developers and database administrators have access to the best training materials for HANA, as well as development and test environments at no cost, said Steve Lucas, executive vice president of analytics, database and technology. "We need to build an environment where we can get a thousand flowers to bloom," he said.

SAP also provided further details, many not unexpected, of how other parts of the Sybase portfolio will play into its database plans between now and 2015.

Sybase IQ, a columnar-store analytic database, will be tied together with HANA to act as a store for older or "cold" data. The product is "envisioned to share common capabilities and life-cycle management" with HANA, SAP said.