IBM POWER’s Evolving Relationship With SAP HANA
A strong technology partnership resembles a good marriage. Spouses shouldn’t take their partners for granted or, more importantly, let the relationship grow stale. Instead, they spice things up to prolong the magic.
IBM keeps things interesting in their courtship with SAP HANA by regularly adding to its portfolio offerings for IBM Power Systems. IBM has been supporting SAP HANA across IBM POWER8 since 2015, but they continue to prove their commitment by developing new custom-designed solutions that make the most of in-memory computing.
The latest IBM releases developed specially for SAP HANA include 2 new Power System servers and POWER virtualization capabilities. With these new releases, companies using SAP HANA gain the agility needed to handle demanding workloads and run reports quickly.
Building a Better Data Warehouse
Companies often use SAP HANA for data warehousing because in-memory computing allows data to be stored, processed, and analyzed quickly for real-time insights. With SAP HANA Business Warehouse, companies gain a more comprehensive data processing solution that integrates storage with built-in analytics capabilities.
Catering to this common use, IBM recently released 2 Power Systems servers designed to provide tailored support of SAP Business Warehouse powered by SAP HANA. The servers are custom designed for 2 different warehousing environments. One server is based on IBM Power System S824 and is geared towards databases at least 256 gigabytes in size. The other server is based on IBM Power System E870 and is designed for databases up to 1 terabyte.
Both Power Systems servers are ideally suited to accommodate the performance needs of advanced analytics applications. Paired with SAP HANA’s in-memory processing, Power Systems enable businesses to draw data from ERP and CRM systems for complete business intelligence and smarter decision-making.
Optimizing Your SAP HANA Environment
The partnership between IBM and SAP HANA allows IT leaders to do more with less. IBM has announced new virtualization capabilities that enable companies to run multiple HANA instances on a single server.
IBM Power Systems server virtualization (Power VM) for SAP HANA helps organizations boost business continuity and achieve high availability. Running multiple instances of SAP HANA allows companies to create failover scenarios for backup and disaster recovery.
These virtualization capabilities also make innovation easier for companies. Typically, when businesses want to develop applications, they need to create a dedicated environment, separate from production. Instead, with Power VM, development, testing, and production instances can be run on the same server.
And lastly, capabilities allow organizations to reduce their data center footprint by using fewer servers to accomplish a higher level of performance. If customers are already using IBM POWER8, they can immediately create new Power VMs without having to provision new hardware.
Signs a Marriage of Technologies Will Last
When IBM invests in a technology partnership, the intention is to grow, thrive, and face the challenges of today’s modern world — together. IBM has been investing in their partnership with Linux for over 15 years. Like Linux, SAP HANA plans to stick around for the long haul.
As long as IBM continues to develop new Power Systems technologies that enhance SAP HANA’s capabilities, the passion will never be lost. By giving the partnership your blessing, you could start reaping the benefits now. SAP HANA already makes processing and analyzing crucial data easier and faster. By running SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems, you accelerate your speed to insight even more.
Originally published at convergeone.com on June 5, 2017.
