Since the beginning of enterprise computing, SAP have been rebuilding the business applications whenever major technology shifts have occurred.
Some key moments in SAP’s application development history include:
- 1979 – SAP invents ERP. SAP builds standard business software based on mainframe technology. The name, SAP R/2 supports and integrates major business functions in real time and handles multi-country and multi-currency implementations. (R means real time, and although there was an R/1, this is not regarded as the first major release.)
- 1992 – With the rise of the personal computer, the introduction of client/server architecture means another rewrite of the applications to exploit the power of a layered, three-tier architecture approach, in which processing is split across three layers - client, application, and database. It is the end of the mono-chromatic, text-based, messy green screens and the start of a new graphical interface to improve the end user experience. This is the birth of SAP R/3.
- 2004 – Now the Web is firmly established as the common business network and customers demand better integration between their business applications and the Web. SAP develops a new integration application platform called SAP NetWeaver in order to enable this. All SAP applications run on a common platform, and customers and partners can build and integrate existing applications easily using widely adopted Web standards, such as service-oriented architecture (SOA). Additionally, a little later, a new switch framework is introduced to allow customers to selectively enable only the new functions developed by SAP in order to avoid disrupting their core processes. The SAP R/3 name is now replaced by SAP ERP. ERP is part of a larger family known as SAP Business Suite, which also contains many other line of business (LOB) applications from SAP, such as SAP CRM.
- 2015 – A new wave of advances in hardware architecture brings massive computing power at decreasing costs. Huge memory and multi-core processors arrive to offer massive computing power. The underlying design of existing SAP applications does not fully exploit the power of the new hardware. A rewrite of the complete Business Suite is required. The new business suite is called SAP S/4HANA.
With so much memory available, we can now store the entire database of even the largest organizations, completely in memory. This gives you instant access to all data, and eliminates wait times caused by data loading to memory from disk to memory. We can lose the mechanical spinning disk and the latency it brings, and rely on memory to provide all data instantly to the CPU. Even though Solid State Devices (SSD) storage is faster than disk it still can not compete with memory. So memory is no longer the bottleneck it once was. To address large amounts of memory, we also use 64-bit operating systems. Traditional 32-bit operating systems cannot address the large amounts of memory now available. In addition to huge memory, CPU performance continues to improve at a phenomenal rate. We now have high-speed, multi-core CPUs that can take on complex tasks and break them up so then can be processed in parallel to provide incredible response times. This means that response times for even the most complex analytical tasks, such as predictive analysis, can be carried out in real time. So with huge memory and faster multi-core CPUs we have now have access to huge amounts of computing power. We can now easily slot more servers into our landscape to add more processing power or memory in order to scale to any size.
SAP rewrote its business application software to fully exploit the new hardware. SAP worked closely with leading hardware partners who shared the product blueprints of their new CPU architectures, so that SAP knew how to write the very best modern software to extract as much power as possible.
Cloud computing technology has matured in the last few years and is now a compelling deployment option for our customers who do not want to take on the complexity and cost of the installation and maintenance of IT landscapes. Virtualizing machines means lower costs associated with running enterprise-wide applications. Public cloud services based on subscription models increase access to everyone to the latest solutions, reducing the costs and simplifying everything.
In the past, it was necessary to move data away from transactional applications into dedicated systems so that data could be harmonized and cleaned. As a result, multiple copies of the data were created. But even worse, there was latency between the systems while data was transferred. This means that we did not have a consistent picture of data across the enterprise at any moment.
In many business landscapes today, transactions are managed in systems where both the hardware architecture, database design and the data models are built around fast read/write processing at the record level. Analysis systems take on a different design approach. The hardware, database, and data models are built around batch loading, aggregated storage, and a focus on read-intensive queries and caching. That is why online transaction systems (OLTP) and online analytical processing systems (OLAP) are often separated and linked through interfaces through which data is lifted and shifted periodically. This approach means delays in analysis on the transactional data. It is not unusual to have to wait the next day before analysis can begin on the transactional data.
SAP HANA is able to bring transactional and analysis requirements into one platform. The acronym for this type of consolidated system is Hybrid Transaction/Analytical Processing (HTAP). The database, hardware, and data model of SAP HANA are built to handle combined transactional and analysis processing. No movement of data is necessary and transactional and analytical users work from the same, single copy of the data. This means we have live data available to all applications in real time. This reduces the complexity by removing the need to move data using separate software and interfaces. It also means that new innovative applications can be built that combine transactions and analytics such as those found in SAP S/4HANA.
