SAP HANA now for small, mid-sized firms

   SAP has announced two new services to deliver its HANA analytics platform to small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs).
   SAP’s HANA has been extended to power its new Business One application and the new Edge edition of HANA, allowing SMEs to see real-time data and analytics based on individual requirements. The platform is a data management software on SAP partner hardware that powers a wide range of analytics based on this data.
   For the Business One application, SAP offers a special product version of HANA designed for small businesses that is small-scale and includes operational reporting with SAP Crystal Reports software. The big push here from SAP is on speed, promising much faster access to relevant information and the production of interactive reports.
   The company said it plans to ramp up HANA for the SME market at the end of this month and offer general availability later in 2012.
   Dr. Vishal Sikka, a member of the SAP executive board on technology and innovation platforms, said “SAP HANA enables nearly 80 percent of our customers, which are small and midsize businesses, to bring together structured and unstructured data analysis from any source.”
   SAP and others are bringing these offerings to the table because even small companies need so-called “big data.” The size of a company may reduce its points along the supply chain that provide information, but regardless of size companies need data to see how well equipment is functioning, reporting data to find hiccups in processing or order fulfillment, and transportation data to verify when they receive shipments and when theirs are being delivered.
   SAP defines the SME market as companies with annual revenues of $500 million or less. The company did not provide information about costs for these new HANA services on its announcement call. — Geoff Whiting