As a relative newcomer to the world of Application Performance Management (APM) and the larger category of Application Intelligence, I knew I had a lot to learn. I came into this market having spent the last 15 years in the Analytics space. The idea of taking large volumes of disparate data and turning it into actionable insight is something I’ve always found compelling. Though people generally think of a flashy dashboard, Analytics is so much more. At Business Objects I got to be part of the evolution from standardized reporting through ad hoc analysis, data exploration, and predictive analysis. There was still a significant barrier though to making it work in the real-world where data volume, variety and velocity were too much to handle at the application level. Data had to be extracted and transformed before being made available in a data warehouse or mart where it became available to an end user. That’s an expensive and time consuming process that only offered the insight you’re looking for hours, days or even weeks later. However, at SAP our customers were finally able to realize the promise of these new capabilities with the introduction of SAP HANA (High-performance Analytic Appliance). That in-memory platform delivered amazing computing power capable of simplifying the infrastructure of application environments while giving the business real-time insight.