By Freya Purnell
An inability to identify a business case that justifies the cost of SAP HANA is the main reason SAP customers have not yet invested in the in-memory platform and its associated applications, according to a research report by the Americas SAP Users’ Group (ASUG).
Titled ‘SAP HANA Adoption: What do customers say?’, the study surveyed 382 SAP customers, including both those who had purchased HANA and those who had not, as well as partners, on their experiences and attitudes around adopting SAP’s flagship product.
The importance of a business case was also reinforced by partners, which said “better business case guidance” would be the top factor influencing their clients’ HANA purchasing decision positively.
Customers which had not purchased HANA also said other reasons for their decision were not having the skillset to implement HANA products, not understanding the HANA product roadmap, or needing to catch up on SAP upgrades first.
Despite the focus on HANA within SAP, customers also indicated a reasonable degree of confidence that the vendor would continue to support their existing systems if they didn’t move to HANA, with more than 60 per cent of respondents stating they believe SAP will continue support for at least five years. Thirty per cent believe that SAP will pressure them to encourage them to adopt SAP HANA during the next two to three years, and just under 10 per cent said they will likely be left behind if they don’t adopt.
Of the SAP HANA product set, customers were most interested in SAP NetWeaver BW on HANA, supporting the view that customers still primarily see HANA as an analytics tool and big data solution, while only 17 per cent said they would be most likely to purchase SAP Business Suite on HANA.
To date, more than 3600 customers have purchased HANA in some form, according to SAP. The survey found that among those who had invested, 65 per cent of respondents had purchased SAP NetWeaver BW, 26 per cent had purchased SAP Business Suite, 24 per cent had opted for SAP HANA Customer Analytics (including Predictive Analytics and Lumira), 13 per cent chose SAP HANA enterprise applications (such as COPA Accelerator or Fraud Management), and 10 per cent opted for HANA Enterprise Cloud or HANA Cloud Platform.
Despite the concerns over price expressed by some customers, for those who had adopted HANA, the number one identified business value was that it had helped them to “optimise costs” (34 per cent), followed by innovation in the CFO/finance function (25 per cent).
To be more successful with their SAP HANA projects now and in the future, customers said they needed more understanding of upgrade and maintenance requirements upfront, deployment processes and costs, and education and training. They also wished to hear from other customers in their industry about how they have benefited from implementing HANA.
“One thing is clear: SAP’s challenge to overcome is that its leaders, marketing pros and AEs have to help customers better understand the true costs of SAP HANA while also offering easy-to-understand implementation stories that demonstrate real business value,” the report said.
