The event lasted 3 days and of course many different and interesting topics were discussed. But I wanted to just highlight a couple of things.
The excellent live demo of SAP Analytics cloud during the keynote address made it very clear that a lot of progress was made in the development of the product. New functionality is added constantly without breaking the existing content. SAP put a lot of effort in the product and it pays off.
The topics during the conference ranged from BI to SAP Basis and Security. But, the absolute connecting, and main topic was HANA.
My top 3 HANA highlights in the latest release:
- On the fly data anonymization
- SAP HANA Spatial service
- Next support pack expected in 2019
The real time data anonymization support is a first on a database platform and should make GDPR compliancy a lot easier in future.
The GEO spatial service allows for querying the database directly with request like give me the top 20 best-selling branches within 50 km of a certain place of your choosing out of the box.
The next support pack is due in 2019. This reduced release schedule gives customers more breathing space implementing HANA 2.0 in their environments.
There were lots of interesting sessions both high level, on administrative topics and technical hands on with SAP Analytics Cloud. Ample opportunity to mingle with the speakers and attendees during lunches or network events.
A session I particularly liked was the session on BW/4HANA: Do I Still Need SAP BW with SAP S/4HANA? It made a very strong case to capitalize on the BW investment already made and improve and harmonize the analytics landscape by employing a sidecar model in HANA. This sidecar model allows more traditional data warehouse techniques to further integrate data far more flexible than previously in BW.
To sum it up, a fun learning experience in a beautiful city. See you next time at SAPInsider!
Want to know more? Let me know via: maarten.baan(at)datamotive.be
Maarten
