Cloud is what I want; memory database is what I want. Can you have both?
When the SAP HANA Cloud cloud memory database is launched in China, a large number of Chinese companies will be able to accelerate the pace of digital transformation through this "both fish and bear's paw" cloud service.
Challenges facing enterprise data management
With the advent of the big data era, data has become the most valuable asset of enterprises, and enterprises also need to manage large amounts of data. However, with the rapid growth of data volume, many companies have to invest more management costs, storage costs, and operating costs to maintain and expand data centers, including supporting a large amount of stored data analysis.
A survey report from Gartner shows that in recent years, the amount of data has grown rapidly at a rate of 95% every year. Faced with the amount of data that has almost doubled year by year, more and more companies find themselves unable to make ends meet in data center investment and operation and maintenance. If there is a more advanced cloud environment at this time, facing the increasingly acute contradiction between data analysis and massive data, enterprises urgently need a more advanced, faster, and more cost-effective operating environment.
The emergence of cloud databases has helped enterprises greatly reduce the cost of data center construction and operation and maintenance, and has become popular with customers. Many enterprises have also seen rising demand for cloud databases. It is estimated that by 2022, 75% of local databases will be deployed or migrated to cloud platforms.
On the other hand, the intelligent application of AI artificial intelligence has been widely implemented, which not only brings more flexible and real-time services to enterprises, but also greatly reduces the total cost of TCO ownership, which also further stimulates the growth of enterprise demand for cloud platforms.
It is worth mentioning that the new crown epidemic raging around the world in 2020 also makes more and more companies hope to use the intelligent services of the cloud platform to launch new applications faster, achieve faster application iterations, and faster mining. Data value.
Cloud database will become the first choice of enterprises
For the majority of enterprise users, in the face of ever-increasing massive amounts of data and a large number of different types of data sources, what kind of database is their first choice?
Regarding the answer to this question, it is not difficult to find some clues from the changes in the Chinese database market trend.
From 2019 to 2024, China’s traditional data market is expected to reach 450 million euros (about 3.6 billion yuan), 90% of which will come from large-scale customers in traditional industries such as telecommunications, finance, and public utilities. 10% of the demand comes from small and micro customers.
During these five years, the market's demand for traditional databases will slow down, with an annual increase of about 4%. Customers are gradually considering building new data centers through cloud databases. In addition, due to the impact of the epidemic, database investment in 2020 will be significantly reduced, and digital transformation or cloud application innovation will accelerate development.
Correspondingly, thanks to the cost advantages of cloud computing and the innovative advantages of artificial intelligence, the cloud database market will show rapid growth from 2019 to 2024, with an annual increase expected to reach more than 16%. It is estimated that by 2024, the cloud data market will reach 960 million euros (approximately 7.7 billion yuan). Among them, innovative enterprises will become the main consumers of cloud databases, and drive more traditional enterprises to accelerate the cloud.
It is worth mentioning that during the 2020 epidemic, it is obvious that a large number of enterprises have shifted their investment in traditional databases to cloud databases, which will increase the growth of cloud databases by more than 35% in 2020. It is not difficult to foresee that in the future, cloud databases will become the first choice of the majority of enterprises.
The portal to all the enterprise data
From the official release of SAP HANA in 2010 to 2020, exactly 10 years have passed. In the past 10 years, IT technology has developed faster and faster, enterprises have more and more users, more and more data, and more frequent product iterations. At the same time, users also want to better control their investment in IT, hoping to spend more money on the blade. While corporate IT teams face a wide variety of and increasingly complex requirements, their own skill sets must also be updated in real time. These are challenges that enterprises have to face in data management.
We are in an era of data explosion, where most of the data increment comes from the cloud. According to IDC's forecast, the total amount of global data in 2025 will reach an astonishing 175ZB. By then, China's total data is expected to account for more than 27% of the world's total, ranking first in the world. In addition, all enterprise customers hope that cloud services can provide smarter functions and lower costs.
For enterprises, going to the cloud is definitely the general trend. But this does not mean that enterprises can completely migrate the original architecture 100% to the cloud in a short time. In fact, for a long period of time, On-Premise local deployment and Cloud will coexist for a long time, or even permanently. This also brings great challenges to database management.
In the face of increasingly complex requirements and challenges, the best solution is to be able to access all the data of the enterprise through a unified interface. At the same time, the program can also achieve flexible expansion according to user needs, and use a single solution to solve all problems. From the perspective of the IT team, the skill mix of employees can also achieve a smooth transition instead of frequent iterations.
SAP has seen the demand of the market, the trend of data development, and the trend of cloud development. According to all the above requirements and changing trends, SAP provides a complete set of solutions. The portal to all the data of the enterprise is SAP HANA Cloud.
SAP HANA Cloud realizes in-memory database on the cloud
As SAP's annual technology event, the China SAP TechEd Global Technology Conference held on December 15, 2020 has also become the focus of attention of many Chinese companies. At this annual feast, Xu Zhe, SAP Global Vice President and General Manager of the Greater China Digital Platform and Intelligent Technology Division, announced a grand event, that is, the SAP HANA Cloud in-memory database officially landed in China.
Compared with traditional databases, the advantages of SAP HANA Cloud are mainly reflected in three aspects:
1. Stimulate data vitality: Intelligent computing and multi-mode processing provide more mining capabilities; memory processing can shorten the response time from hours to seconds; automatically optimized real-time transactions and advanced analysis provide mixed processing modes.
2. Seamless data integration: Quickly connect SAP and non-SAP systems; provide virtualized and physical storage mechanisms at the same time; can process various types of data, including structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.
3. Ensuring credibility of data: user permissions, access control and behavior auditing to ensure access security; data encryption and authorization mechanisms to ensure data security; data management in accordance with GDPR standards to ensure data application in a safe environment.
In short, SAP HANA Cloud in-memory database closely combines the functions and performance of SAP HANA with the advantages of the cloud. It not only continues the performance advantages of HANA, but also has powerful cloud computing capabilities to achieve The effect of 1+1>2.
Features and application scenarios of SAP HANA Cloud
As a major product created by SAP, SAP HANA Cloud has in-memory computing, data pyramid, data virtualization, unique copy to provide data services for online applications, flexibility in deployment options, flexible resource allocation, platform for building smart applications, security and Ten features such as anonymity, extended data services through the SAP cloud platform, and simple and flexible pricing.
For enterprise customers, these ten characteristics of SAP HANA Cloud mean that enterprises can achieve a simplified IT architecture, higher data compression rate, faster speed, lower TCO total cost of ownership, and more High resource use efficiency, shorter development cycle, simpler deployment and operation, stronger scalability, more flexible resource deployment and configuration, more reliable security, more flexible freedom, and better cost-effectiveness , So as to realize the value of data faster in digital transformation.
In terms of application scenarios, SAP HANA Cloud mainly has the following typical application scenarios:
1. Cloud acceleration (achieved through hybrid deployment): If the enterprise already has a locally deployed SAP HANA environment, it can be extended to the cloud through hybrid deployment, and capacity can also be expanded.
2. Centralized data storage (achieved through the data lake): Take advantage of the high efficiency and low cost of cloud storage to build a data center on the cloud, and achieve centralized storage and management of all data through the data lake.
3. Simple access layer for all data (implemented through virtualization): Build a virtualized data access layer, combine advanced virtualization functions with flexible data storage, and achieve access to all enterprise data through a single entrance.
4. General database applications (achieved through the mixed features of transaction and analysis): Companies can use SAP HANA Cloud cloud memory database to optimize application development just like other cloud databases, but the operating environment should be faster and better.
SAP helps companies realize the value of data
In the face of massive amounts of data, how to realize the value of data has always been a focus issue for enterprises. For this reason, SAP proposed a value equation for data value, pointing out that the final output of the equation is a data-driven enterprise + SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform) business technology platform.
Among them, the data-driven enterprise level contains four elements, namely data usage, data capacity, data quality, and data span. To this end, SAP provides targeted SAP Analytics Cloud data analysis cloud, SAP HANA Cloud database cloud, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud data warehouse cloud, SAP Date Intelligence Cloud data intelligence cloud, respectively with data usage, data capacity, data quality, data The four elements such as span correspond to help companies realize the value of data.
In addition, in the face of the vast market prospects, SAP's new strategy has also opened the next chapter, that is, "6+1", including 6 solution areas and 1 platform. For this reason, SAP put forward the slogan of "One SAP, One Platform" (one SAP, one platform plan), which is the North Star architecture. Its purpose is to provide customers with a better experience environment, including no-code, low-code, and full-code development methods. This architecture will be more cloud-oriented and strive to become the preferred platform for customers to go to the cloud.
SAP’s original intention for launching the Northstar architecture was to witness the many bottlenecks and difficulties caused by the inconsistency of business and data platforms in many previous acquisitions. For this reason, SAP came up with an idea, that is, to unify all the application products of SAP into a data architecture led by SAP to form a unified platform, so that all customer applications and business processes can be implemented on the platform .
The introduction of the Polaris architecture can greatly simplify the intermediate integration of data processing and make enterprise applications run more smoothly. SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform), which is expected by SAP, is responsible for the implementation of the Polaris architecture, and SAP HANA and SAP HANA Cloud are important components of the Polaris architecture. In terms of Land-Adopt-Consume-Expand (LACE), the platform has a unique advantage, that is, it allows enterprises to quickly implement the project plan online and application in a shorter time , So as to realize the value provided by the cloud platform to customers more quickly and efficiently.