Nice Try, HANA

About a year and a half ago, we blogged about SAP on i. At that time, it seemed that running SAP on i should have been a no-brainer decision - to customers, that is. Far simpler to implement and manage, providing a superior TCO. As the comments showed though, common sense is apparently not at all common in the SAP arena.

As we pointed out at the time, we suspect that most companies considering an SAP installation weren’t even offered IBM i as a platform for SAP - even those shops who already have IBM i in house. We suspect it’s because the consultants who almost inevitably get involved in making these proposals make their money on consulting and implementation and support activities - and the more complex the environment, the more consulting support is needed. Simpler is not better - at least not if you make your money on support hours!

So, what’s new in the land of SAP? The new, highly touted SAP HANA in-memory database. Wow - an in-memory database. That sounds fast, right? Surely IBM i using DB2 for i couldn’t hold a candle to that kind of dramatically new technology.

Of course it can! And we now have the benchmark to prove it. Interestingly, the benchmark was apparently designed to showcase HANA’s superiority in complex ad-hoc queries with random selection criteria. Nice try - in the benchmark results, IBM i running good ol’ DB2 for i (OK, not so old, really - running 7.1) scored better on the ad-hoc steps per hour.

Of course, the IBM i benchmark ran on a single IBM i system - and a single partition - compared with the published benchmark results with HANA running on HP where separate servers were needed for the HANA database and the application. So the promise of “simplification” that the marketing material for SAP HANA proudly states would actually appear to be a bit more complicated - at least compared to IBM i running DB2 for i - the platform that has simplification down to an art.

We encourage you all to continue reading about this in the recent post by fellow IBM Systems Mag blogger - and technical leader of the SAP on IBM i team (yes, there is one!), Ron Schmerbauch.

At the risk of stealing just a little of Ron’s thunder, we especially like his conclusion that companies running SAP on IBM i can “spend time focusing on business challenges instead of worrying about when and where they need to plug in the next x86 server to keep their infrastructure from toppling.” Amen, Ron. Just like IBM i shops running most any business application - even SAP.

There is a lot more on the recent benchmark and on the value of IBM i as a platform for SAP in Ron’s blog and on the SAP on IBM i developerWorks page. Follow Ron on Twitter @SAPonIBMi to keep up to date with the team’s news and activities.

SAP and IBM i - it should be a no-brainer. Let’s spread the word and make this common sense common knowledge.

 

 

 

SAP on IBM i

You've all heard it: "My company is switching to SAP ..." - sadly the next part of the sentence often includes a statement to the effect that IBM i will not be part of the new environment. There are many reasons for this, ranging from pure ignorance on the part of the management/consultants involved in the decision to willful ignorance.

Willful ignorance? Well, if you talk to an SAP consultant who has been actively involved in installing SAP on IBM i they will tell you that it typically takes less time and effort to install and tune the software on IBM i than on other platforms. But SAP's value proposition, at least to those marketing it, has always been about selling consulting and customization services - the actual base cost of the software is a relatively small component.

Consequently when an SAP installation is based on IBM i it will end up costing less than if hosted on another platform. That should be a good thing, right? Wrong! Hardware and software sales are an ever-shrinking component of the cost of new systems. Services are the new profit center - even for IBM. If you have any doubts take a look at IBM's latest financials:

"... Our Services businesses delivered powerful margin and profit growth with combined pre-tax income up 17 percent. Services revenue growth was again led by growth markets which were up 13 percent at constant currency..."

Easy Pickings

As we've discussed here before, many IBM i shops have allowed their applications to stagnate in the green screen world and as a result it is rarely difficult to convince senior management that they should dump their "old fashioned AS/400". Heck, even IBM's own SAP consulting practice rarely recommends that the IBM i be used as the server for new SAP deployments, even when the shop is an existing IBM i user. That is truly sad and something that the folks at IBM really need to fix. We have encountered many situations where IBM i customers were already well into an SAP conversion to a different platform before they even realized that hosting on IBM i was an option. No one had told them - they didn't find out until they went to SAP conferences, etc., and met IBM i users there. "Too late" came the cry.

But there is good news. There is finally sufficient awareness of the IBM i option in the marketplace that at least people are beginning to ask for advice from their fellow iBM i professionals BEFORE it is too late. IBM themselves have published a few success stories - this one relates to a conversion from a Windows SAP install. There have also been a number of threads on different internet boards ranging from this one on Midrange.com to this recent thread (one of several) on LinkedIn.

This "SAP question" is one we are constantly being asked, so if you can contribute anything to the discussion please add your comments. The more material we have the better.