Two-thirds of 120 organizations running SAP have rolled out or plan to deploy HANA, according to a survey by the UK and Ireland SAP User Group, which shared its figures with The Register today. The user group says nearly one third have rolled or planned to roll out HANA in the next three years.
In 2014, 15 per cent had said they were using or planning to use SAP HANA.
The new data means one third said they didn’t plan to use HANA.
Paul Cooper, the user group's vice chairman, said the in-memory database is becoming attractive as old system start to die out, and organizations look for newer architectures.
“People are thinking how they might do it and how HANA might fit in with their technology requirements now their infrastructure is coming to an end,” he said.
However, Cooper noted, the business case still must be made for deploying HANA: if the database is only just appearing on an IT department's roadmap, it will be a while before it can be presented to a board of directors.
“There has to be a business requirement for doing it: the examples SAP has given in the past include faster processing and less storage," he said.
Accordingly, the biggest barriers to HANA deployment are a lack of time, money and skills. Of those responding to this year’s survey, 60 per cent said a lack of budget, 53 per cent said a lack of time, and 47 per cent said a lack of skill, prevents them from “optimizing” their SAP systems.
Interest in SAP’s big initiative – S/4HANA, unveiled in February – is low. HANA is the only database S/4HANA – the next version of SAP’s core ERP – will work on, for now. ®
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