SAP was an early pioneer in the concept of using in-memory technology for improving performance and columnar databases to gain high data compression rates. TREX and SAP Enterprise Search were the first solutions to use these concepts. Building on the strength of these early products, SAP then released the very successful SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse Accelerator (SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator).
With SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator firmly established in the market, SAP expanded its vision to other purposeful ways to leverage this in-memory technology to further benefit its customers. SAP’s focus on Business Intelligence (BI) led to the decision to combine the BI functionality from SAP BusinessObjects with the in-memory analytical engine of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator, creating an accelerated BI solution called SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version for SAP BW.
With a focus on openness and heterogeneity, SAP then evolved SAP BusinessObjects Explorer by including data integration. This allowed the solution to access and accelerate any data, and all information beyond structured data in SAP NetWeaver BW. This latest wave of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version, was released to market to in Q2 2010. Building upon the success of this accelerated BI solution, SAP has delivered SAP HANA for real-time analytics and a new class of applications, such as SAP BusinessObject Strategic Workforce Planning and SAP Smart Meter Analytics (available in H2 of 2011), powered by SAP HANA.
By Richard Blumberg