Cloud Computing 101 - Hexagonal Clustering

Hexagon clustering is a technique to process geospatial data for identifying and visualizing things such as escape routes that avoid hazards in emergency situations or the optimal paths for utility pipelines that avoid restricted areas.

Developers can use it easily in new applications and combine it with other SQL predicates. Nobody other solution besides SAP HANA offers this capability, and it is laborious to implement it in other relational databases using the basic geospatial functions.

Why supporting Hexagonal clustering is important for SAP HANA customers? It allows to represent curvatures and is ideal for showing path connectivity or movement. It is extremely useful for all spatial data processing in all industries.

Real-World Examples: 

• Rescue management: finding evacuation paths and identifying evacuation zones. For example in case of a wildfire, you need to guide people from A to B, avoiding fire zones
• Trafficability: moving a battalion of tanks from A to B, without crossing risky muddy areas and woods.
• Utility grid planning: finding the right path for a new gas pipe, but you can't go underneath building, need to avoid protected lands and going over costly roads or rails.

Hexagonal clustering is a better way of getting insights from relational spatial data.  It assign geometries within free definable area to the identified hexagonal pattern. Using hexagon grids reduce sampling bias due to edge effects of the grid shape.

How SAP HANA uniquely supports Hexagonal clustering?
SAP HANA is the only database that offers Hexagonal clustering out of the box. 

SAP HANA clusters geocoordinates in a free definable area in an over-spanning grid of clusters in one SQL query. This can be combined with many other SQL features without coding (e.g. count(*), ST_UnionAggr, ST_Centroid, ST_Enveloper, …)) and runs on millions of coordinates in seconds.
Hexagonal clustering leverages SAP HANA spatial and graph capabilities.

Other exciting innovations to SAP HANA core spatial capability include:

• Memory footprint reduction by a factor 2 - To innovate faster and at a lower cost
• Open source support - SAP expanded support for geotools and geoserver: customers can now use free GIS systems instead of commercial GIS systems, expanding to new markets & targeting open source community. This is important and many GIS users prefer open source rather than commercial systems

New security and privacy features in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04

SAP recently announced the release of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04. SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 includes a mix of new and continuous innovations across the themes of database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

The new SPS 04 release of SAP HANA 2.0 provides important security and privacy enhancements addressing these challenges:

• Data anonymization KPIs increase transparency for decision makers when assessing anonymization scenarios, easy-to-understand new controls simplify the setup of anonymization views, and l-diversity enhances the k-anonymity method
• Audit retention policies let you specify a retention period after which audit log entries are automatically deleted
• Simplified authorization troubleshooting gets SAP HANA users up and running again quickly and with less administrative overhead

Data anonymization extensions
SAP HANA data anonymization, which was introduced with SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03, allows you to get analytical insights from data while protecting the privacy of individuals.

With the new release, SAP HANA introduces anonymization KPIs that help decision makers to assess critical variables for risk and utility. This makes it easier to achieve the right balance between the goals of protecting data privacy while ensuring that the anonymized data remains useful.

Real-time data anonymization was released with two anonymization methods: differential privacy and k-anonymity. Now l-diversity has been added, which is an extension to k-anonymity and provides additional protection for data sets with homogeneous sensitive attributes.

The setup of k-anonymity has also been simplified with the automation of generating hierarchies for generalizing quasi-identifying attributes, and data scientist can now control additional parameters when setting up anonymization views.

And finally, SQL views are now supported for data anonymization – previously only calculation views were available.

Audit retention policies
Fine-tuned retention management is an important building block for compliance. You can now specify a retention period after which audit log entries of individual audit policies will be automatically deleted.

But compliance requirements are not the only reason why you might want to delete audit log entries: you can of course also use this new functionality to free up database space, delete audit log entries that simply are no longer needed.

Simplified authorization troubleshooting
Authorization is a cornerstone of controlled access in SAP HANA. Defining authorization concepts requires careful thought and consideration. If authorization errors occur in either the test or productive landscape, they need to be quickly resolved so that users can access the database objects they require. The new authorization troubleshooting features introduced in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 aim to simplify troubleshooting by adding two new techniques.

Learn more at: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/08/address-business-challenges-in-security-and-privacy-with-sap-hana-2.0-sps-04/

New Innovations in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04

SAP HANA 2 is the business data platform for the intelligent enterprise. Leveraging state-of-the-art database and data management technology, advanced analytical capabilities and intuitive application development tools in the only all-in-one, in-memory-first data platform – SAP HANA 2 frees up valuable resources and human capital for new and innovative application development to meet your business’s strategic objectives.

SAP recently announced the release of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04. SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 includes a mix of new and continuous innovations across the themes of database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

Here are the latest innovations in SAP HANA from SAP.

• Data tiering enhancements for improved scale
• Persistent memory hardware availability
• Scale-out enhancements
• Data protection and privacy
• Smart data access and Hadoop integration
• Hexagon grid clustering for spatial data
• Data scientist and machine learning improvements
• Spatial performance enhancements and algorithms
• User experience optimizations throughout

Learn more about SAP HANA at: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/05/whats-new-in-sap-hana-2.0-sps-04-2/

Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, hosting and managed services, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Get started today...

SAP Demystified: Why is SAP HANA better than other traditional databases?

SAP HANA is an application that uses in-memory database technology that allows the processing of massive amounts of real-time data in a short time. The in-memory computing engine allows HANA to process data stored in RAM as opposed to reading it from a disk. This allows the application to provide instantaneous results from customer transactions and data analyses.

In-Memory First
SAP achieved a true transaction and analytical (i.e. translytical) platform by designing SAP HANA from the ground up with a new data processing architecture in mind.  This architecture greatly simplifies applications built on this platform removing many of the legacy overhead required to optimize applications on traditional disk-based database solutions.

SAP HANA is the only true in-memory columnar data store optimized for both high-speed transactional scenarios and also very fast query performance optimally supporting both OLTP and OLAP application scenarios. With SAP HANA, there is a single copy of data as there is no need to move data to external systems to offload analytic workloads or populate materialized views and in-memory caches to achieve acceptable performance.  This allows applications built on SAP HANA to process transactional and analytical workloads at high speed without any data duplication enabling businesses to have accurate insights based on the latest data.

Other solutions in the market typically provide an in-memory “option” to existing disk-based, row-oriented solutions, requiring a copy of data to be made into in-memory storage.  Row-based storages don’t yield the same level of data compression as columnar storages leading to higher costs and inefficiencies. These solutions may provide some performance improvements in certain use-cases, but they do not deliver the overall value that SAP HANA does by truly reducing the data footprint, increasing overall performance for all data and reducing management costs of the solution.

Scalability and Speed 
Based on the functionality of data being stored in a RAM chip instead of a hard disk, SAP HANA makes high speed processing a practical reality. Unlike the traditional process of data being read from the hard-disk and subsequently moved into RAM for data processing, the agility of SAP HANA allows organizations to achieve more with their data. For instance, an HR team could run real-time jobs in different batches without having to wait for the jobs to get completed before starting another. The fantastic capability of running multiple jobs at the same time and run them several times, if need be, gives SAP HANA an edge above the rest.

Simplicity
The biggest problem of traditional databases was their limitation of supporting and managing one business load at a given point in time. So, if a customer runs multiple businesses or has more than one line of operations such as marketing, customer support, logistics, manufacturing, finance, and more; the data in each of these systems will tend to get duplicated thus, increasing the complexity of the system manifolds. The process gets further complicated if the customer wants to view multiple kinds of data at one time. With SAP HANA integration, the simplicity of having one system for different business applications and its real-time access makes the operations extremely simple and user-friendly.

Predictive analytics and machine learning
Predictive analysis with SAP HANA includes native high-performance predictive algorithms for both expert and automated modes. Additionally, you can run open-source R scripts on SAP HANA through integration with R server and build machine learning applications with integration to TensorFlow. Some of the predictive algorithms run on streaming, spatial, and series data and are self-improving. The ability to perform predictive analytics on an entire body of transactional data lets you develop modern applications that forecast outcomes and help your business adapt processes in real time. Machine learning helps you build applications that can adapt and automate some of the manual business process step.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com

Approyo CEO Chris Carter Interviewed by techcompanynews.com

Approyo CEO Chris Carter recently say down with the folks at techcompanynews.com to talk about why he started Approyo, the big business benefits of SAP HANA, our new partnership with Bohh Labs and many other topics.

View the full interview at: http://techcompanynews.com/approyo-simplifying-sap-hana-adoption/

Q: What is the story behind Approyo, how did you start?
A: I started Approyo after meeting with a colleague at SAP and discussing SAP HANA. At the time, I was retired, and my colleague and friend at SAP came over to talk to me about this new technology called SAP HANA. After sharing a bottle of scotch and talking about my poor golf game, he convinced me it was worth looking at SAP HANA. At this point, I wanted to learn more, so I went to the SAP offices in Palo Alto and Germany to really get my hands-on HANA and see what it can do. I quickly saw that SAP HANA was truly a game changer. My next step was to become one of the early members of the SAP Startup Focus program. This program was a new initiative at SAP geared toward helping innovative start-ups grow their relationship with SAP and jumpstart their business. This program was instrumental in getting Approyo off the ground and growing in our early days. The rest they say is history… Over the years, we continued to build and grow our services, team and environments around SAP HANA. This focus continues to help us stand out in the SAP ecosystem and help companies and other SAP partners implement SAP HANA solutions.

Q: For the third year in a row, Approyo is on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s
fastest growing private companies. How important is it for you?
A: The ranking is very important at it continues to solidify our strategy and mission to become the leading global SAP Cloud Centric Solution provider. It’s not a question of “if” a company will move to the cloud anymore, it’s a question of “when” and “how”. This shift in thinking has helped us reach many clients who need to move their SAP environments to the cloud. When Approyo started, we really had to educate companies about the cloud. After many years of doing this, we are seeing the reward and we are viewed as a trusted advisor and true business partner.

Q: What are the major business benefits of SAP HANA?
A: SAP HANA provides a single in-memory data platform that supports both transactions and analytics on diverse data, a key requirement for applications supporting a modern, real-time digital business. In today’s digital economy, businesses cannot act on stale insights, thus a true in-memory data platform should support real-time processing for transactions and analytics for all a company’s data. This is a key differentiator of the SAP HANA platform against other traditional database vendors.

SAP HANA natively provides capabilities for machine learning, spatial processing, graph, streaming analytics, time series, text analytics/search, and cognitive services all within the same platform. Applications on SAP HANA can provide real-time actionable insights from a wide-variety of data types.
Combining these innovative technologies with SAP HANA’s advanced application development, modeling and custom algorithm support inside the database layer, more business logic can be executed close to the data. Specifically, SAP HANA’s support technology like stored procedures, business functions, core data services, rules framework, calculation views, and the application function library provide developers with a way to easily model complex data-intensive operations as close to the data as possible. Most competitive solutions require that you copy the data between core data storage and other technology stacks to perform these advanced analytics on the data.

HANA is also a powerful platform that easily integrates third party applications and data from other sources, such as social media and sensor readings, from the rapidly expanding Internet of Things (IoT). In today’s SAP environment, as much as 60% of applications supported by HANA are third party. The HANA platform enables on-the-fly business intelligence by quickly aggregating data from different sources and integrating it with SAP Business Suite, as well as third party tools.

Q: I read something about your partnership with BOHH Labs, how did that start and where do you see the relationship going?
A: The joint solution between Approyo and BOHH Labs is addressing the challenges enterprises face migrating to the Cloud and enables SAP customers to leverage the analytics capabilities of SAP HANA, while gaining a secure method to easily access all enterprise systems to quickly find, search and unlock the value of all their data. As more and more companies make the migration to HANA and the Cloud, they will need to leverage a trusted advisor and that’s where this partnership comes in.

Often companies are hesitant to migrate completely to cloud deployments due to security, performance disruption and accessibility. This includes migrating to the new SAP S/4HANA platform. The BOHH/Approyo partnership is reducing these setbacks.

View the full interview at: http://techcompanynews.com/approyo-simplifying-sap-hana-adoption/

Approyo achieves significant growth and adds new team members

Approyo, a leading enterprise SAP HANA Solutions Provider headquartered in Milwaukee has seen significant growth in a state that is also seeing substantial development in the technology sector.

The Wisconsin based company has added to its team with three new employees. Alfred Wedding, Tim Reiss and William Sean Beasley join the Approyo team and will be working hand in hand with its customers and partners to manage and support SAP environments.

• Tim Reiss joins the team as Senior Director of SAP. Reiss brings more than 20 years industry of experience to the Approyo team.
• William Beasley, Director of SAP has more than a dozen years of cloud migration and experience working with SAP.
• Alfred Wedding comes to Approyo as an SAP Basis Coordinator with multiple years of experience with supporting SAP. Wedding is a Naval Veteran and resides in Wisconsin.

 “We have a top-notch team and we will continue to grow our organization. We are proud to be based in Wisconsin, where there is an exponential amount of growth in the technology sector,” says Chris Carter, CEO of Approyo.  “It’s an exciting time to be part of the SAP ecosystem and we can’t wait to see continued growth over the next several years.

Approyo was recently ranked #895 in the Inc Magazine 5000 for the third year in a row. It is very rare for companies to achieve this recognition for three years in a row. In addition, Mirror Review has listed Approyo among the top SAP solution providers in its latest magazine, “The 10 Best SAP Solution Providers of 2018.”  The technology company was also named one of “The 10 Best Performing SAP Solution Providers, 2018” by Insights Success.

Approyo is one of many technology companies in Milwaukee that is adding to the economy.

Milwaukee is making significant progress developing as a technology-based employment cluster. A report titled, Milwaukee's Tech Talent Impact, was compiled in June by several key employers in southeastern Wisconsin and identified 76,000 technology workers in 89 distinct occupations, contributing more than $27.6 billion in economic impact.

3 Major Business Benefits of SAP HANA

SAP HANA provides a single in-memory data platform that supports both transactions and analytics on diverse data, a key requirement for applications supporting a modern, real-time digital business. In today’s digital economy, businesses cannot take action on stale insights, thus a true in-memory data platform should support real-time processing for transactions and analytics for all of a company’s data. This is a key differentiator of the SAP HANA platform against other traditional database vendors. Here are the top three benefits of deploying SAP HANA according to SAP.

In-Memory First
SAP achieved a true transaction and analytical (i.e. translytical) platform by designing SAP HANA from the ground up with a new data processing architecture in mind.  This architecture greatly simplifies applications built on this platform removing many of the legacy overhead required to optimize applications on traditional disk-based database solutions.

SAP HANA is the only true in-memory columnar data store optimized for both high-speed transactional scenarios and also very fast query performance optimally supporting both OLTP and OLAP application scenarios. With SAP HANA, there is a single copy of data as there is no need to move data to external systems to offload analytic workloads or populate materialized views and in-memory caches to achieve acceptable performance.  This allows applications built on SAP HANA to process transactional and analytical workloads at high speed without any data duplication enabling businesses to have accurate insights based on the latest data.

Other solutions in the market typically provide an in-memory “option” to existing disk-based, row-oriented solutions, requiring a copy of data to be made into in-memory storage.  Row-based storages don’t yield the same level of data compression as columnar storages leading to higher costs and inefficiencies. These solutions may provide some performance improvements in certain use-cases, but they do not deliver the overall value that SAP HANA does by truly reducing the data footprint, increasing overall performance for all data and reducing management costs of the solution.

Managing Data of All Sizes
Does it always make sense to have all data in-memory?  Realistically, this is not necessary. SAP HANA provides an innovative way to manage hot and warm data storage in an optimal way to strike the right balance between price and performance.

SAP HANA Dynamic Data Tiering provides multistore table partitions which easily allow a single table to span across memory and disk.  This greatly simplifies access to hot and warm data in consuming applications and greatly reduces the administrative effort to manage large data volumes. This provides for much lower total cost of ownership by reducing the amount of hardware needed, lower administration costs, and more efficient IT operations overall.

Foundation for a Modern Data Platform and the Intelligent Enterprise
SAP HANA is a modern multi-tenant in-memory platform to build next-generation Big Data, IoT, translytical, and advanced analytics applications. SAP HANA allows advanced analytics using a single data platform.  How is this done?

SAP HANA natively provides capabilities for machine learning, spatial processing, graph, streaming analytics, time series, text analytics/search, and cognitive services all within the same platform.  Applications on SAP HANA can provide real-time actionable insights from a wide-variety of data types.

Combining these innovative technologies with SAP HANA’s advanced application development, modeling and custom algorithm support inside the database layer, more business logic can be executed close to the data.   Specifically, SAP HANA’s support technology like stored procedures, business functions, core data services, rules framework, calculation views, and the application function library provide developers with a way to easily model complex data-intensive operations as close to the data as possible.  Most competitive solutions require that you copy the data between core data storage and other technology stacks to perform these advanced analytics on the data.

View the full post on www.approyo.com

SAP HANA in-memory and Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is a top priority. IT systems must adapt quickly to technologies and business models that arise at a dizzying pace. Let the SAP HANA platform replace complex systems and isolated applications to help you transform IT. It supports modern applications that help you reimagine business processes and deliver real-time insights from data that’s always fresh.

SAP HANA is one of the first data management platforms to handle both transactions and analytics in-memory on a single data copy. It combines a state-of-the-art database with advanced analytical processing, application development capabilities, data integration and data quality. You gain a single secure environment for all your mission-critical data assets, so you can manage large volumes of structured and unstructured data efficiently to reduce total cost of ownership. At the same time, you can simplify your  IT landscape and reduce administrative effort by consolidating multiple workloads onto SAP HANA. Being able to Run Simple helps you deliver insight into ongoing transactions, so your organization can respond in real time to market change, seizing new opportunities more quickly than your competitors. And you can develop innovative applications on SAP HANA that combine transactions and analytics and deliver engaging personalized experiences over any device.

Reimagine your database
SAP HANA is built on an in-memory columnar store that optimizes the benefits of multicore processing and the single-instruction, multiple data instruction set. It’s fully compliant with requirements for atomicity, consistency,  isolation, and durability (the ACID standards).

Intuitive modeling tools and preconfigured function libraries let you run complex business logic directly inside the database. That means you avoid latencies from moving data between the database and the application servers. Stored procedures take advantage  of optimized in-memory calculation engines  to run faster.

When you set up multitenant database containers, you can manage several databases as one while maintaining their isolation from one another. You can perform administrative tasks such as backup and patching on all tenants at once and optionally allocate resources to each tenant separately to protect performance. You can handily meet service-level requirements while lowering capital and operating costs.

With multistore tables in SAP HANA dynamic tiering software, you can keep frequently accessed data in-memory while moving rarely accessed data to disk, managing Big Data economically without the constraints of memory size. Applications can access data independent of storage location, and you can modify storage preferences whenever demand changes.

Accelerate analytics exponentially
With in-memory processing, you can run  on-the-fly aggregation, eliminating the need for pre aggregates, materialized views, analytic indexes, or database accelerators. Business users can quickly retrieve high-level summaries and also drill down to granular details.

SAP HANA includes native high-performance predictive algorithms and integration with Microsoft R Server to reveal meaningful patterns in data that help you create predictive models. Text search and text analysis extract meaning from semistructured text and transform it into a data model for analysis. SAP HANA provides native support for spatial data – points, lines, and polygons – and spatial functions. Base maps in SAP HANA – with political boundaries and points of interest – help accelerate development of location-aware business applications.

You can also process and analyze streaming data from sensors, plant equipment, the Internet of Things, or financial transactions with SAP HANA. Series data processing helps you store and query time-series data like price fluctuations, seasonal trends, and information on machine efficiency and network flow. Finally, SAP HANA can store highly interconnected graph data in a dynamic data model.

SAP HANA is a single platform for building applications that combine text analysis, spatial analysis, predictive analysis, and graph data processing on the same live transactional data, streaming data, series data, and data from external sources. A wealth of new possibilities helps you reimagine business models, design new services, and expand into new markets.

Optimize data access, integration, and quality management
SAP HANA offers functionality to manage data virtualization, quality, and synchronization, so you can retrieve and use data inside and outside your organization with unprecedented ease.

With smart data access, you can federate queries to external data sources such as other databases, Apache Hadoop, and Apache Spark to perform queries without costly data movement. When you need to move data across SAP HANA and multiple data sources, smart data integration can help you do so to support informed decision making with complete  visibility. With smart data quality, you can validate and match entities such as names, phone numbers, and addresses to help ensure accuracy. Finally, features for remote data synchronization help you synchronize data bidirectionally among databases in SAP HANA and the SAP SQL Anywhere® suite that are embedded in devices located beyond the reach of high bandwidth connections. That means you can synchronize devices at distant locations and shorten response times across the enterprise.

Read the full blog post... 

SAP HANA and the Digital Economy

IT groups no longer need to rely on 20th-century technology while seeking a strategic role in 21st-century business innovation. The revolutionary SAP HANA® platform lets you perform all transaction and analytic processing in-memory and make data instantly available from a single system. Fend off competitors by building smart, insight-driven applications your business needs to take immediate action and capitalize on change.

INCREASE EFFICIENCY, DEEPEN INSIGHT,  AND ADAPT TO CHANGE QUICKLY
Help your business accelerate the pace of innova-tion by moving to SAP HANA. Choose the game-changing in-memory platform that combines a database that complies with the standards for atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) with advanced analytical processing, appli-cation development, and flexible data integration capabilities. Remove the burden of maintaining separate legacy systems and their silos of data, so you can Run Simple in this ever-changing digital economy, where new technologies and solutions emerge at Internet speed.One of the most challenging roadblocks to innova-tion today is the sheer complexity of IT systems. SAP HANA can help you simplify your infrastruc-ture. As illustrated in the figure, SAP HANA con-verges database, advanced analytical processing, application development capabilities, and data integration in-memory to process transactions; analytics; text analysis; and spatial, streaming, and machine data processing in one system. You can operate in real time and accelerate business trans-formation by integrating core business processes with customer data, supplier data, and data from the Internet of Things.

The massively parallel, in-memory paradigm underlying SAP HANA speeds information pro-cessing by a quantum leap. This architecture converges online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) opera-tions on a single data copy in one in-memory, column-based data store. SAP HANA, in short, eliminates data redundancy, disk latency, and data movement among applications and analytical tools. And it provides advanced integration capa-bilities such as data virtualization, replication, bulk loading, transformation, cleansing, and remote data synchronization in the same architecture. This further simplifies application development and processing across Big Data sources.

SAP HANA is the platform for all existing applications – your legacy software, third-party software, and SAP software – and the optimal platform for building and deploying next-generation, real-time applications; machine learning applications; and predictive analytics. You can perform business operations and data analysis in minutes rather than hours, untangle your data center operations by integrating all data into a single truth, and lay the groundwork for reimagining business models. Plus, you stand ready to help expand and diversify your business with minimal IT growing pains.

View the full blog post on www.approyo.com

What is the SAP Intelligent Enterprise?

One of the most talked about topics at this years SAP SAPPHIRE NOW in June was The Intelligent Enterprise. This topic was  in nearly every keynote, speech and marketing material at the event. So what exactly is SAP's new strategy.

The next era of enterprise computing will be defined by intelligent technologies

For more than 45 years, SAP has been on a journey with our customers, helping them create value for their organizations by applying technology to solve some of their most complex challenges. In each era of enterprise computing, SAP has evolved our strategy – and product portfolio – so our customers can run better. In the 1960s and 1970s, as mainframe computing gained popularity, we enabled our first customers to automate their plant floor operations with material-requirements planning software. In the 1990s, as companies expanded their use of the Internet, SAP helped connect our customers’ headquarters with their subsidiaries through SAP R/3® software for enterprise resource planning.

And, over the past 10 years, as cloud computing and Big Data have become ever more pervasive, with SAP HANA software, along with SAP's extensive portfolio of cloud applications, has helped our customers begin their own digital transformations. Now, as technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), advanced analytics and blockchain become mainstream, SAP has a new opportunity – to help turn our customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises, with new capabilities that enable their workforces to focus on higher-value outcomes.

Intelligent technologies will drive a next-generation value economy

Advances in machine learning are enabling algorithms to become highly accurate in natural language understanding and in image and speech recognition. Businesses can use these  increasingly sophisticated capabilities to  drive the next level of intelligent business- processes automation and eliminate  repetitive manual tasks.

Automation can now also be  implemented far more cost-effectively, because it is embedded more and more  within business processes. All of which  means that the workforce will be able  to focus on high-value activities like customer success, strategic planning, and innovation.

Advances in ubiquitous connectivity  and edge computing are creating a step change in business productivity.  This connectivity, coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning, can  be used to analyze petabytes of data to affect real business outcomes.  IoT can connect the entire value chain,  from design to production to supply chain, and data-driven insights of customer  preferences can inspire better design, lower material costs, and reduce risk.

Real-time analysis of machines can predict maintenance needs, identify potential  quality problems in manufacturing  processes before they occur, and reduce  asset downtime by as much as 50%. The integration of advanced analytics  capabilities into applications allows  business users to analyze data on the fly  and informs better decision-making. Empowered users, benefiting from embedded analytics in business  processes, can get real-time visibility  into their changing environment, simulate the impact of business decisions, and achieve better customer outcomes.

Future business challenges will be radically different 

The global economic growth of the last nine years has been powered largely by technology. Record corporate profits and new business models can all be tied to technology-driven innovation. On average, an S&P 500 company is now being replaced once every two weeks. This “tumble rate” is accelerating – with the difference between winners and losers tied to their ability to embrace digital technologies. The next decade will, of course, bring about even greater tectonic shifts. To address these challenges, businesses need to make sense of a growing volume of data, create a step change in productivity, and innovate with relentless clock-speed. In other words, they need to accelerate value creation. This is the heart of the Intelligent Enterprise.

To help businesses become Intelligent Enterprises and achieve breakthrough outcomes, SAP provides three essential components:

Intelligent Suite - Will offer unparalleled, breakthrough business value. SAP provides intelligent, integrated applications that enable our customers to automate their day-to-day business processes and better interact with their customers, suppliers, and employees. These applications will be industry specific, global, and applicable to large enterprises and to small and midsize enterprises.

Digital Platform - Will enable data-driven intelligence and innovation.
With the SAP Cloud Platform and SAP HANA Data Management Suite, SAP will facilitate the collection, connection and orchestration of data, as well as the integration and extension of processes within the intelligent suite.

The Intelligent EnterpriseIntelligent Technologies - Will embed intelligence in applications and facilitate new co-innovations.
With SAP Leonardo, SAP will embed intelligent technologies in customers’ core processes, enabling them to use their data to detect patterns, predict outcomes and suggest actions. For customers who want to innovate even faster, SAP solutions will offer industry innovation kits and open innovation services, which apply design thinking methodologies to new business models by industry.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com

Transform Consumer Products with SAP Powered by Approyo

The retail and consumer goods industries will change more in the next 10 years than they have over the past 40. One primary force is responsible—digitalization—and it has already begun.

• Consumers demand more than just a product – they expect an outcome.
• Consumers change buying decisions in the moment based on newly received information.
• Only real-time, collaborative networks have the ability to deliver meaningful consumer experiences.

These trends have one major thing common: They pose a threat and open new opportunity. The decisive movers will take advantage of these opportunities and turn them into competitive advantage.

SAP Solutions powered by Approyo
SAP HANA powered by Approyo is at the center of what makes digital transformation possible, and let’s you thrive in this unprecedented era of digital transformation. It is by far the best enterprise platform-as-a-service option for SAP customers. 

SAP HANA can help consumer products companies’ knowledge about consumers and aids in creating a 360 degree picture of what motivates consumers, and what will help them on the buying journey. It helps extend the user experience to multiple devices and easier interfaces. SAP HANA extends your existing analytics into something more powerful and meaningful on a one-to-one level. It can help you extend your existing business into the exciting new world of Internet-of-things and leveraging new technology like beacon and sensor data. And SAP HANA extends the collaboration possible at every link of the value chain.

SAP HANA intigrates your cosnumer products and related systems into one cohesive system allowing you to leverage the resulting synergies.  With SuccessFactors and Fieldglass you can staff up contingent workforce as needed for that busy holiday season. Directly tie your existing inventory management solutions with SAP Ariba and so on.

Finally, with the velocity of change now possible in the digital era, you can build new solutions and business models in a rapid manner.  You can quickly build solutions and efficiently combine them such that they will not impact existing business models.  And this can be done in weeks and days instead of years or months. 

Once you understand how you customers want to be treated,  make sure your systems and process allow exactly that: Extending your Cloud and On-Premises Apps let you tailor your current applications to differentiate your customer engagement.

• Extend your current cloud apps to add new features and personalization unique to your brand, its people and goals
• Easily modernize your current on-premises applications into beautiful, mobile-ready assets your team and customers can use right now
• Deploy pre-built app extensions created by SAP and our partners to quickly and easily achieve results in new outlets, markets and geographies

REIMAGINE CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT 
Nowhere is the impact of digital more profound than in processes and technologies that directly touch consumers. A great omnicommerce consumer engagement must include:

• Knowledgeable store associates armed with as much or more information than consumers 
• Social engagement involving brand, employees, and consumers 
• In-store technologies to augment shopping experience 
• “Segment of one” merchandising, marketing, and loyalty 

REIMAGINE BUSINESS MODELS
If technology was not a limitation, how would you fundamentally change business models based on real-time and complete consumer and business data? Many possibilities exist, such as:

• Automated, dynamic, and contextual pricing based on a consumer’s digital footprint 
• Flexible supply networks enabling short lead times and “make-to-order” assortments 
• Tracking and tracing along the supply chain with connected warehouses 

REIMAGINE PROCESSES
With digital playing a larger role in commerce, it’s easy to envision new processes that help create and capture new sources of value. Examples include:

• Data and insights help not only in growing the core business but also in creating new businesses that directly monetize data 
• Business networks and marketplaces are enabling agile fulfillment
• The ability to activate hyper-local execution 

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com

What's new in SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03

SAP recently announces the upcoming release of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03 planned for April 2018. Read the official announcement from SAP for the full details. Here are some of the major highlights from this exciting release.

SAP HANA 2 is the business data platform for the intelligent enterprise. Leveraging state-of-the-art database and data management technology, advanced analytical capabilities and intuitive application development tools in the only all-in-one, in-memory-first data platform – SAP HANA 2 frees up valuable resources and human capital for new and innovative application development to meet your business’s strategic objectives.

SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03 includes a mix of new and continuous innovations across the themes of database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

• Database enhancements allow for advanced data and privacy protection. Improvements for high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) will further increase system availability and help protect enterprise-critical applications. Enhancements in the areas of multi-tenant database container (MDC), dynamic tiering, workload and performance management and analysis further improve performance and usability.
• Data Management enhancements include new data integration and federation sources with additional supported data types to bring you a broader view of the business. Enhanced and simplified functionality helps you to further improve the quality of your data.
• Analytical Intelligence enhancements further increase execution performance and productivity for data scientists as well as extended features that will allow you to gain the most insight from geocoding your business data. Improvements for graph support more complex analysis and scenarios for your connected data. And new sentiment analysis for additional languages means you can cover larger markets with text analysis.
• Application Development and Tool enhancements simplify development, improve performance, expand use cases and enable a new class of security for applications. Additions to officially supported runtimes in XSA provide more options for your application server layer of development.

Read the full announcement on www.approyo.com 

SAP Solutions powered by Approyo

Never before have there been so many promising breakthrough technologies available — and so many businesses ready to capitalize on them. From Machine Learning to Blockchain, from Cloud to the Internet of Things (IoT), smart devices, Analytics, and more, companies are eager to run smarter and take advantage of the new business possibilities they offer.

Organizations in every industry and region recognize the need for a digital core to meet today’s – and tomorrow’s – business needs. When insight, flexibility, and responsiveness are critical to success, companies cannot rely on yesterday’s technology. Enter SAP Solutions powered by Approyo.

Approyo - Your SAP Partner
Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, and product procurement, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Our extensive partnerships in the industry allow us to offer top-tier SAP procurement and logistics to meet all our customers’ SAP technology needs.

Approyo will help you to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing software licenses, the underlying application infrastructure and middleware or the development tools and other resources. Our solutions take the enterprise system of record and supercharges it with the tools of digital transformation – coupled with a design thinking process specifically created for business modernization and agility.

SAP Solution powered by Approyo

SAP HANA powered by Approyo
SAP HANA is an in-memory data platform that lets you accelerate business processes, deliver more business intelligence, and simplify your IT environment. By providing the foundation for all your data needs, SAP HANA removes the burden of maintaining separate legacy systems and siloed data, so you can run live and make better business decisions in the new digital economy. With Approyo, you can deploy the latest version, SAP HANA 2.

SAP Hybris powered by Approyo
SAP Hybris focuses on rapid transformation and agility across all channels, getting you close to your customers and delivering a consistently great experience at every touch point. SAP Hybris makes products that cut cost, time and complexity, freeing you up to focus on innovation and strategy. SAP Hybris covers five main areas – commerce, marketing, revenue, sales and service – and offer you the insights and flexibility you need to lead.

SAP Leonardo powered by Approyo
SAP Leonardo is a holistic digital innovation system that seamlessly integrates future-facing technologies and capabilities into the SAP Platform. This powerful portfolio enables you to rapidly innovate, scale new models, and continually redefine your business.

SAP Leonardo delivers new capabilities in future-forward technologies, which add tremendous value along your company’s digital journey. But it’s made even more valuable because it’s built on SAP HANA, to support real-time business. Plus, SAP Leonardo works seamlessly with every SAP application from SAP Ariba to SAP S/4HANA, making them more powerful, intelligent, and capable.

SAP S/4HANA powered by Approyo
Written natively for the SAP HANA platform, SAP S/4HANA is an entirely new generation of SAP Business Suite that is characterized by simplifications, massively increased efficiency, and compelling features such as planning and simulation options in many conventional transactions.
SAP S/4HANA signals a move away from the transactional system that merely records data toward giving end users active decision support in real time that is based on data from both internal and external sources.

Download the Whitepaper - SAP Solutions powered by Approyo

Transform Sales with SAP Solutions powered by Approyo

The digital economy is changing your customers’ buying behavior. Living in a world where sensors, artificial intelligence, and social structured and unstructured data flows are just one click away, customers expect individualized products and a unified buying experience on any device. Digital technology is changingthe game,and companies that adopt new sales and distribution strategies are changing the rules. To   succeed, companies need to streamline their front end processes - marketing, sales, commerce, services, and billing, to drive value and optimize customers’ experience across every channel of interaction. Leading companies are learning what new technologies can do for their sales and distribution organizations.

There is a step-change in the cost and effectiveness of distribution and billing processes. Your customers expect shorter and more reliable delivery times for goods, and much simpler ordering, invoicing, and payment processes. At the same time, they expect more individualized products and services; for certain industries, this individualization has reached a lot size of one. The additional complexity that this level of personalization causes in sales and supply chain processes can be resolved only through an integrated, real-time technology platform such as SAP HANA.

SAP S/4HANA enables substantial increases in the productivity of your internal sales workforce. Additionally, it enables unified multichannel e-commerce and flexible billing for B2B and B2C businesses with business network collaboration. It provides detailed insight into action summaries and increased automation tailored for the internal sales representative. Integration between SAP S/4HANA Sales and the SAP Hybris sales solution enables your sales teams to work together as a well-oiled machine and equips your sales people with tools to sell anytime, anywhere, on any device. SAP Hybris delivers the agility and power to find answers, engage in meaningful customer conversations, and deliver the right impact every time. Companies can now connect every part of the business and provide every business unit with the information they need to create the best, most consistent, and most targeted customer experience.

Reduce Sales-Related Costs by providing real-time and contextual analytics to improve process performance
Give the sales team a complete view of the sales  process and facilitate ad hoc collaborations to  accelerate sales decision-making related to  contracts, pricing, and negotiation.

Reduce Inventory-Related Costs through live inventory visibility, optimal allocations, and agile response 
Simplify and visualize processes related to order fulfillment tracking. Use instant communications between key stakeholders to take actions immediately and reduce cycle times. Respond quickly to unforeseen events, such as delayed shipments or changes in customer orders, through increased inventory visibility. Improve order fulfillment and allow for inventory optimization along the supply chain and across warehouse locations.

Reduce Days Sales Outstanding by supporting wider billing scenarios and automated tracking of account receivables
Enable faster billing with reduced administration. Introduce flexible and dynamic search capabilities of the customer invoice list and tracking real-time orders and accounts-receivable status through the integration of CRM with contract-to-cash cycles. Leverage automated subscription  billing to speed up processing times, and enable new business models.

Increase Market Share, Share of  Wallet, and Customer Satisfaction by 
providing a holistic view of customer information
Gain a single view of the customer and enable better engagement along the buying journey, including data from Web streams and social channels, past  interactions, propensity scores, and “in-the-moment”  interactions.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

See your business clearly with SAP HANA

You swim today in exploding amounts of data from internal and external sources. Keep afloat by taking advantage of the integrated data quality, data integration, and data virtualization capabilities of SAP HANA, a next-generation platform for in-memory computing. Help simplify your IT landscape and enable successful information management for all your analytical and operational implementations.

DELIVERING TRUSTED, COMPLETE, AND RELEVANT INFORMATION
Job one in the 21st century is digital transformation. But how exactly do you become a digital enterprise? At SAP, we designed SAP HANA to help you harness the latest digital technologies in the service of these overarching goals:

• Faster time to insight and action with real-time analytics
• Improved operational efficiency and productivity
• Agility to respond to rapidly changing market conditions
• Simplification of the IT landscape with integrated capabilities

Managing your valuable information successfully is the key to thriving today. With the data access, integration, and quality capabilities of SAP HANA, you can deliver immediate and targeted insight, so all stakeholders can act in the moment and make quick decisions based on complete, timely, and accurate data. You can also streamline processes to make your operations more efficient and effective – from your inner core outward to the edge of your global business network, including cloud platforms, mobile devices, and the Internet of Things. And you can seize fleeting moments of opportunity, reimagine long-standing business models, and create radical new sources of value that propel you to a leadership position in your industry.

Data Federation: Query data remotely – without moving it
Give information workers instant access to all of your organization’s data – with SAP HANA smart data access technology. Federate queries on remote data sources – including Hadoop, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP ASE), and other databases. And retrieve relevant answers without the cost and effort of migrating data.

Data Integration and Replication: Deliver data from anywhere, when and where it's needed
Maintain business continuity with data that is always available. With SAP HANA data integration capabilities, you can move data across multiple sources and targets to satisfy a host of business needs. Ensure high availability and disaster recovery, make informed decisions based on the latest information, and more.

Our smart data integration technology also provides a single user interface for real-time data replication in batches or in real time. It offers pre-built adapters to common data sources and an SDK adapter that lets you get data from any source – for a 360-degree view of your business. 

Data Quality: Improve data quality and reliability
Deliver accurate, trustworthy data to decision makers – with SAP HANA smart data quality. Manage quality issues across all domains and sources, and cleanse data with SAP HANA. Now you can standardize, validate, and match entities – names, titles, phone numbers, e-mails, and more – to ensure accuracy. You can also use geocoding to enrich address data with location intelligence.

Remote Data Sync: Make your data available remotely
With SAP HANA remote data synchronization, you can bi-directionally synchronize data between SAP HANA and thousands of SAP SQL Anywhere databases – whether embedded in devices or located at the edge of your network. You can make enterprise data available to remote workplaces or locations beyond the reach of high-bandwidth connections. And you can collect and analyze remote data to monitor devices at distant locations – enabling your entire business to be more responsive.

Ask Approyo - What new technical functions are available in SAP HANA 2 compared to the older SAP HANA versions?

Lately, we have talked a lot about SAP HANA 2.0 and how it can impact your company. We are seeing more and more deployments of SAP HANA 2.0 environments across our customers businesses and the impact it is having. And with recent updates like SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 02, now is the time to make the move to SAP HANA 2. What are some of these new functions that can help your business?

The next-generation of SAP’s in-memory platform, SAP HANA 2.0, simplifies database and data management – and makes it easier for application developers to deliver smart, insight-driven apps. The platform’s new capabilities are optimized for innovation and can help your business compete more effectively in the digital economy. And because SAP HANA 2.0 is a continuation of the existing platform, you’ll have access to a stable, highly available, and secure data environment for your applications.

Key SAP HANA 2 features and enhancements to help IT transform include:

• Database management: There are multiple enhancements for high availability and security. For example, the new “active/active read-enabled” option allows IT organizations to leverage secondary systems – previously used only for system replication – to off-load read-intensive workloads for improved operations.
• Data management: The SAP HANA-based Web application SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer allows customers to visualize the impact of new technologies on their architecture before they are implemented. In addition, a tiered storage enhancement allows the distributed storage of data by priority regardless of where it resides. These are two of the many enhancements that have been developed for enterprise modeling, data integration, and data quality.
• Analytical intelligence: SAP HANA 2 is ideally equipped to enable customers to more effectively integrate additional insight obtained by analyzing text, spatial, graph and streaming data into their applications. For example, there are new algorithms in the predictive analytics library for time series, classification, and regression analysis to empower data scientists to discover new patterns and incorporate machine learning into customer applications.
• Application development: Application developers will benefit from enhanced functions for application servers, new development tools, and development languages. In application programming, a new file processor interface enables developers to extract metadata from documents in order to gain newer, deeper insights.

Read the full blog post at www.approyo.com 

The Cloud Helpers Blog Series - In-Memory Computing

Welcome to our blog series, The Cloud Helpers. This series will focus on cloud computing topics and help you understand how the cloud can impact your business today and in the future. Today we are going to focus on In-Memory Computing.

What is In-Memory Computing?
In-memory computing is the storage of information in the main random access memory (RAM) of dedicated servers rather than in complicated relational databases operating on comparatively slow disk drives. In-memory computing helps business customers, including retailers, banks and utilities, to quickly detect patterns, analyze massive data volumes on the fly, and perform their operations quickly. The drop in memory prices in the present market is a major factor contributing to the increasing popularity of in-memory computing technology. This has made in-memory computing economical among a wide variety of applications.

SAP HANA and In-Memory Computing
SAP HANA relies on in-memory computing to quickly analyze massive amounts of data. In-memory computing is a technology that allows the processing of tremendous quantities of data in main memory to provide immediate results from analysis and transaction. The data is available for processing or analysis immediately after it is created. SAP HANA's performance is 10,000 times faster when compared to standard disks, which allows companies to analyze data in a matter of seconds instead of long hours.

To achieve the preferred performance, in-memory computing adheres to the following basic concepts:

• Keep data in main memory to speed up data access.
• Minimize data movement by using the columnar storage concept and compression, and performing calculations at the database level.
• Divide and conquer by using multi-core architecture and multi-processor servers to meet growing demands.

Some of the advantages of in-memory computing include:

• The ability to cache countless amounts of data constantly. This ensures extremely fast response times for searches.
• The ability to store session data, allowing for the customization of live sessions and ensuring optimum website performance.
• The ability to process events for improved complex event processing

Innovating with In-Memory Technology
A recent study by IDC on Innovating with Real-Time Data and Insights with SAP HANA revealed three important examples  that illustrate  some of the ways SAP HANA  and In-Memory Computing customers are changing their businesses:

• Enablement of core customer-facing services: “SAP HANA is part of a greenfield buildout of an entirely new capability that didn’t exist anywhere, and no one else is doing this with a completely new use of technology. We didn’t have an existing service that SAP HANA snapped into; we built it from the ground up.”
• Understanding and responding to business patterns. One retail organization is achieving better business results because its stores “now have better and precise knowledge of consumption and because we can keep inventory up to date with SAP HANA.”
• Customer support teams. Granular and more robust insights about customer behavior enabled more effective support of customers for the 50-person team at one organization. It noted: “We’re using a tool driven by SAP HANA that allows us to be ahead of our customers so that we’ve already spotted anything that they see. So we’ll have already found that little nugget of information and have come up with ways to address their issue.”

Approyo WhitePaper: 9 Reasons to Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA Today

SAP S/4HANA isn’t just the solution that can transform your company for the future. It is the solution that can grow your business right now. The ability to unite enterprise-wide processes into a synergistic digital core allows you to address today’s challenges, as well as position yourself for success tomorrow.

Why would you choose an enterprise management solution that impacts just one or two business areas, when you can use a single solution for all of your business needs? Learn more in our new SAP S/4HANA White Paper. We dive deep into the top 9 reasons to move to SAP S/4HANA right now.

9 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA right now:

• Improve order fulfillment
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Reduce manufacturing error rates
• Reduce procurement costs
• Respond to market fluctuations faster than ever
• Streamline your supply chain
• Improve your manufacturing cycle time
• Streamline your supply chain
• Reduce unplanned downtime

Download the Whitepaper: 9 Reasons to Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA Today

SAP S/4HANA is The Next Generation Business Suite For A Digital World
The opportunity exists to transform business processes and achieve the digital transformation of your business with more automation and real-time visibility. Our SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA and Big Data solutions address these important these needs and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.

Rethink the Possible with SAP HANA

Why SAP HANA? Capabilities include database services, advanced analytics processing, app development, data access, administration, and openness. The benefits? SAP HANA helps you manage data in a single in-memory platform – so you can take action in the moment. Accelerate the pace of innovation and run live in this new digital economy.

Database Services
Take action in the moment by using in-memory database services to process high-speed transactions and analytics. Manage large database volumes using multitenant database containers and dynamic tiering across multi-tier storage.

Analytics Processing
Gain new insights from advanced analytics processing in SAP HANA. By leveraging  in-memory data processing capabilities – text, predictive, spatial, graph, streaming, and time series – you can get answers to any business question and make smart decisions in real time.

App Development
Develop next-generation applications that combine analytics and transactions, and deploy them on any device. Take advantage of best-in-class development tools – and deliver personalized experiences with the right data served at the right time for users.

Data Access
Gain a complete and accurate view of your business by accessing data from any source – internal or external. Access data where it’s located, integrate or replicate relevant data into SAP HANA, and ensure data quality to increase confidence in decision making.

Administration
Simplify system administration and IT operations with tools that help you monitor processes, ensure data and application security, and achieve continuous availability. Keep your business running smoothly and effectively – from any device or location.

Security
Keep your communications, data storage, and application services secure with robust identity and access management controls. Rely on best-in-class software security, patching, and encryption – and use a dashboard to monitor all KPIs related to security. 

Innovation needs Digital Transformation. Approyo can help!
Don’t let the new digital world pass you by. Approyo can help your company deal with the changing world. Our SAP S/4HANA and Big Data solutions address these important questions and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.