SAP SE has taken tremendous strides toward a completely unified stack with SAP HANA. By focusing technological research and product development efforts on their own platforms first, SAP is able to deliver an industry leading solution to market with advanced functionality while staying philosophically aligned with their overall vision and trajectory.
In light of SAP’s strategy, the release of HANA Cloud Integration (HCI) may seem surprising. Businesses want to know whether HCI signals a change in SAP’s strategy, and what it means for their long-term IT strategy.
In addition to SAP HANA’s renowned database services, companies benefit from its full range of capabilities, including optimized data analytics, modeling, integration and a native application development platform. Coupled with seamless SAP product integration, this offers organizations increased capabilities that are unmatched by any traditional RDBMS platforms.
In light of SAP’s strategy, the release of HANA Cloud Integration (HCI) may seem surprising. Businesses want to know whether HCI signals a change in SAP’s strategy, and what it means for their long-term IT strategy.
The Problem with the Unified Stack
SAP is not the only business software provider moving toward a catalog that would allow their customers to run a homogenous operational landscape — competitors like Oracle and Microsoft have been moving in the same direction.
But while the benefits of a unified SAP stack are appealing, many companies run on a foundation of disparate platforms and technologies. Often, processes are facilitated by customized interfaces and/or technologies that span several software and cloud vendors. As such, many face challenges as they look for ways to gain competitive advantage without disrupting processes that were built on a multitude of technologies, and are supported by specifically trained staff.
The Role of HANA Cloud Integration
While SAP will continue to focus efforts on its own technologies, it recognizes that the business world is reliant on a wide range of systems, software, and processes. HANA Cloud Integration addresses this by providing connectivity across multiple on premise and cloud solutions. Companies are now able to integrate data across their IT landscapes, while addressing cross-organizational, and business-to-business scenarios.
HCI leverages SAP HANA Cloud clustering technology to handle data transformation, runtime processing, transformation and routing of messages between relevant systems, while ensuring that customer data is segregated and secure.
How HCI is Reshaping Enterprise IT
HCI has the potential to substantially reduce the cost and complexity of enterprise IT infrastructure. It is already simplifying long term IT planning and reducing TCO by allowing customers to address process integration, data services, and middleware needs with a subscription-based license model.
Out-of- the-box integration is available via a web based Integration Content Catalog containing content for SAP and 3rd party on premise systems, and cloud solutions. This removes the burden of acquiring additional hardware and hiring or training integration skills. Incongruent landscapes and environments are no longer a cost prohibitive barrier to business flows, data movement, and transformation.
The Future of Enterprise IT
SAP and its competitors will continue to move toward unified product stacks, but HCI signals an awareness of the need for a universally accessible and compatible integration layer that harnesses the power and flexibility of the SAP HANA Cloud. There are plenty of advantages to unified deployments, but there will also always be particular use cases and cross-organizational situations where it’s not a practical solution.
Companies with a complex technology stack need to weigh the cost savings and ease of integration offered by HCI along with other factors when formulating a medium and long-term IT strategy. HCI can also be an important factor in partnerships or client relationships between businesses, as it gives organizations the ability to easily overcome technological differences.