Turning data into business value requires collaboration, innovation, and integration, especially along the value chain of data to enable the Intelligent Enterprise.
The Business Technology Platform is a portfolio of integrated solutions, both on premise and in the cloud, that helps customers not only manage but actively benefit from the growing volume of data and business processes that are the reality of modern business. The market categories of analytics, as well as database and data management are two of the four pillars that make up the Business Technology Platform. As a business-centric platform, it brings SAP’s unique industry and business process knowledge into our technologies and tools, helping enterprises to get the maximum value out of their data.
SAP Leads in Forrester Research Study
Based on the in-memory technology SAP HANA, we built an integrated set of solutions that span the value chain of data. From connecting to any source with SAP Data Hub and processing in real time with SAP HANA to managing data in for example, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, and visualizing it in SAP Analytics Cloud. We have been able to witness how these solutions – as part of the Business Technology Platform – benefit our customers. Recently, research and advisory firm Forrester evaluated 14 vendors and identified SAP as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Data Management for Analytics.
The report evaluated the latest releases of SAP HANA, SAP BW/4HANA, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, and SAP Data Hub. Of the 25 evaluation criteria, SAP achieved full marks — a score of 5/5 — on 16 of the criteria:
| Data ingestion/pipeline | Data modeling | Data transformation | Data access |
| Data governance | DMA platform | HA and DR | In-database analytics |
| Visualization | Use cases | Ability to execute | Roadmap |
| Professional services | Product revenue | Customer base | Partners |
Forrester recognized, “SAP’s key differentiators are its shared-nothing, distributed in-memory data platform for real-time analytics; optimized data streaming and query processing; integrated data services layer; advanced compression; and security.”
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is the most recent innovation to the data management for analytics portfolio. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud became generally available late last year and can be used as a standalone solution or to extend existing investments in on-premise SAP data warehousing technologies to the cloud. Based on the in-memory technology of SAP, we enable customers to securely connect to any data source, helping eliminate the need for unnecessary data movement. With SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, customers can now combine this with cloud elasticity to give more people access to data – simplifying data landscapes, improving security, and reducing costs.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is a central part of our vision for the future of data management and analytics, as the Forrester report mentions, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud provides “an analytical and persona-driven data warehouse-as-a-service designed for business and IT. [It] focuses on orchestrating various data sources and maintaining security, trust, and semantic information to accelerate business–critical insights.”
SAP Data Management for Analytics Portfolio Transforms the Patient Care Experience
HARTMANN GROUP, a global distributor of medical supplies, recently implemented SAP solutions from the data management for analytics portfolio into its architecture to help hospitals zero-in on patient care. HARTMANN required a data management for analytics environment they knew they could trust that could handle significant data volume and variety, along with the responsibility of enabling physicians to help patients get back to good health quickly.
“Currently, over 60 percent of medical supply orders are processed manually via phone and fax on a daily basis,” said Sinanudin Omerhodzic, CIO of Paul Hartmann AG. “There is no reason that physicians and healthcare professionals should be spending time on this function, when they can be treating patients and saving lives. With the help of SAP’s comprehensive data management, analytics, artificial intelligence, and IoT solutions, HARTMANN now has a trusted single source of data that has enabled us to already experience an improvement of service for our customers — and ultimately our customers’ patients. SAP was the ideal choice to lead our digital transformation and prepare us for continuous innovation to better serve the healthcare industry.”
Tight integration within all these solutions means that innovation at any stage of the data value chain — from data management, quality, storage, and its consumption in analytics — ultimately brings more value to the customer.
The recognition further validates for us that SAP is in a unique position to bring data and analytics closer together than ever before, enabling and empowering our customers to realize the full potential of their data.
To learn more about SAP’s ranking, read the full report here.
Gerrit Kazmaier is the executive vice president of SAP HANA and Analytics at SAP.
Irfan Khan is the president of SAP Platform and Technologies in Global Customer Operations at SAP.
“The Forrester Wave™ is copyrighted by Forrester Research, Inc. Forrester and Forrester Wave™ are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. The Forrester Wave™ is a graphical representation of Forrester’s call on a market and is plotted using a detailed spreadsheet with exposed scores, weightings, and comments. Forrester does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in the Forrester Wave. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.”