When the concept of Big Data was first introduced, the industry collectively described this new phenomenon using the four V’s of Volume, Velocity, Variety and Veracity.
For businesses, however, Big Data can be distilled down to two basic needs: they need nearly infinite data storage and instant results to analytic queries.
Enterprises can meet both of these needs very effectively by combining SAP HANA’s real-time analytics with the distributed data processing architecture of Apache Hadoop. HANA + Hadoop is a powerful one-two punch that enables enterprises to analyze massive amounts of structured and non-structured data for real-time answers with unlimited scale. The HANA-Hadoop combination does this without the need for a lot of the pre-analytics staging normally associated with traditional business intelligence initiatives such as data warehouses.
Although there is no shortage of powerful, scalable Big Data solutions on the market today, there are several aspects to the HANA-Hadoop solution that make it an ideal fit for many enterprises:
HANA can virtually access any data.
The smart data access capabilities of SAP HANA work across multiple data platforms—e.g., HANA, SAP IQ (formerly Sybase IQ), Apache Hive and many others—in a virtualized environment. This pushes the execution of the analytic query down to the remote data server (which means the HANA server needs less processing power to perform the query) and enables queries across tiered storage levels as they are, without the need for migrating or transforming data into a new data repository.
Hadoop is fast, big time.
Using the MapReduce process in a Hadoop environment means that enterprise can process large data sets in parallel for greater efficiency. SAP HANA and SAP IQ support this with their own application programming interface (API) for MapReduce that enables them to analyze massive amounts of data. Both SAP HANA and SAP IQ also feature integration with Hadoop that enables enterprises to combine Hadoop-based data with structured data in a traditional relational database management system (RDBMS) for new and unique insights.
HANA and Hadoop mean Big Data now, not later.
Enterprises can begin putting their big data to work quickly by loading data directly into Hadoop. With SAP Data Services, we can pre-process large volumes of text-based data in Hadoop, identify the relevant text and rapidly load it into SAP HANA or SAP IQ to perform real-time analytics, yielding insights that would otherwise be unobtainable.
HANA and Hadoop expand your (data) universe.
HANA and Hadoop expand the possibilities of data analytics by enabling more kinds of analytics against a greater number of data models (also known as “data universes”). These models can then be leveraged alongside data that resides in SAP HANA, SAP IQ, Apache Hive and other sources, and analyzed using SAP BusinessObjects, SAP Predictive Analysis, SAP Lumira or other analytical/visualization tools.
Although SAP HANA and Hadoop are amazing technologies, it takes an experienced solutions integration partner to bring them together for maximum value. At AdvizeX, we have an entire SAP Big Data practice dedicated to helping enterprises do just that. To learn more about how AdvizeX can help you achieve instant answers and near-infinite storage with Hadoop and SAP solutions, send me an email. ▪