SAP launches HANA Data Management Suite

SAP does not own its own hardware infrastructure. That has had large implications how it delivers the HANA database, where SAP doesn’t manufacture the database box, but instead certifies OEM partners to deliver it. And that’s the design pattern that’s driven SAP HANA Data Management Suite, which is aimed at integrating and managing data in federated environments, inside and outside SAP, and in and out of the cloud.

Release of the data management suite this week is not exactly a mystery as SAP disclosed its direction in a public blog post earlier this year. But it is making it official this week at its annual SAPPHIRE event that kicks off today in Orlando.

For now, this suite comprises a collection of existing products based on SAP HANA, SAP Data Hub, SAP Cloud Platform, Big Data Services , and SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer (EA Designer) offerings. While SAP HANA Data Management Suite includes some familiar products, the launch includes a number of new features. The headline is a feature in the SAP HANA database itself: HANA 2.3 adds support for the new Intel Optane DC persistent memory (previously code-named 3DXpoint), announced just last week. As an in-memory database, Optane could significantly boost SAP HANA’s effective storage capacity thanks to NVRAM technology that delivers almost the performance of memory but at SSD prices.

Before reviewing the key enhancements, it would help to understand what each of these SAP products actually delivers. SAP HANA, of course, is the in-memory database that powers transaction and analytic processing. SAP Data Hub handles the integration of real-time data pipelines involving enterprise databases (like HANA) and big data coming from feeds as varied as IoT devices, messaging, logs, and manages data governance. SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer handles the master data. In turn, SAP Cloud Platform and Big Data Services provides a cloud implementation of a data lake using Hadoop.

Among the other new capabilities coming with this release include real-time anonymization for GDPR or other data privacy mandates, but only for data stored in SAP HANA. Rules can be documented in EA Designer governing which entities must be anonymized, and how.

SAP Data Hub 2.3 adds metadata cataloging that can discover relationships between data in distributed environments; support for SAP Cloud Platform, Big Data Services deployment on public clouds orchestrating containers with Kubernetes. EA Designer has added the ability to move repository content from on-premise and the cloud and automatic generation of physical data models from conceptual ones. Another new feature is the ability to analyze blockchain data with enterprise data.

Of course, the big question here is, what makes this a suite rather than “markitecture.