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    SAP Extends the Reach of Its SAP HANA Platform

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    As part of an effort to extend the reach of the SAP HANA in-memory computing platform, SAP this week announced it has delivered an SAP HANA Vora query engine that can be inserted into the Apache Spark clusters running in memory.

    SAP also revealed that it is making additional services available on the SAP HANA platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment that can be called via HANA APIs.

    Ken Tsai, vice president of platform technology at SAP, says these two initiatives are examples of how SAP customers will be able to extend the SAP HANA platform in multiple ways over time. Rather than having to develop additional applications and services themselves, Tsai says SAP will be making additional services available via its PaaS platform that are a simple API call away. The two latest services come in the form of an SAP tax collection service and an implementation of the SAP hybris e-commerce platform. Other services that have been integrated with the SAP HANA platform include an Internet of Things (IoT) offering, SAP Jam social networking software and the SAP Secure Mobile offerings that SAP provides to secure mobile computing applications.

    As for integration with the Apache Spark platform, SAP indicated that as part of a project then known as Velocity Raptor it will be focusing on tighter integration with Apache Spark at the recent SAP Sapphire Now conference. The goal is to turn Apache Spark, and by extension the Hadoop platform, into a data source for SAP HANA. Rather than having to move massive amounts of Big Data into the SAP HANA platform itself, queries can now be distributed out to an Apache Spark cluster from HANA.

    While SAP has made it clear in the past few years that it views SAP HANA as the future center of the enterprise IT universe, it’s clear that other in-memory technologies such as Apache Spark clusters are gaining traction as well. It’s in the best interest of SAP customers for SAP to be able to integrate HANA with multiple sources of data, but when it comes to next-generation in-memory computing platforms, HANA is not necessarily the only game in town.

    Mike Vizard
    Mike Vizard
    Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.

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