SAP (System Applications and Products in Data Processing)

Universitatea Transilvania Brașov

 SAP program is an integrated standard business software product for large,
small and medium-sized companies, to manage the individual divisions of the
company. It can be used in the following areas:

• Accounting
• Controlling
• Distribution
• Purchasing
• Production
• Storage and human resources

In the past, companies either had to enter data manually, which could lead to
errors, or they had to design their own system, which is a very costly effort. In
addition, each sub-area often had its own database system, so that the individual
databases were not compatible with each other. As a solution, SAP developed a
standard software that is applicable to the different functions. SAP is an ERP software
made up of different modules. The classic SAP R/3 modules are essentially:

• Finance/Controlling
• Materials Management
• Sales and Distribution
• PP (Product Planning) and HR (Human Resources)

When a company grows, the management of the processes becomes more and
more complicated. Salaries have to be calculated and paid, benefits administered,
supplier invoices paid and the budget adhered to. At the same time, customer
relationships must be cultivated and new customers must be acquired. Software can
help companies to support these tasks and automate many daily tasks. The terms SAP
and ERP are often used synonymously in this context. ERP is the acronym for
Enterprise Resource Planning and the SAP ERP system is among the best on the
market.

What is SAP software used for?

Traditional business models often rely on decentralized data storage, where

each business unit stores its own operational data in a separate database. This makes it
difficult for employees in the different departments to access information from each
other’s departments. Duplicated and stored data not only increase IT costs, but also
increase the risk of data errors. SAP software offers a centralized data management
system that enables a uniform view of all data throughout the company. This enables
companies to manage complex business processes more efficiently, as employees in
the specialist departments receive real-time insights into all areas of the company. In
this way, they can speed up workflows, increase their operational efficiency, increase
productivity, provide a better customer experience and ultimately increase their profits.

What is SAP HANA?

SAP HANA is a modern development of the classic SAP ERP software, which
represents most of the business processes of many companies. The special feature is
the new architecture, which accelerates the speed of analysis by many times. This is
achieved by using an underlying in-memory database. This makes it possible to store
large amounts of data in fast RAM and to retrieve them if necessary.
The next step, which many companies are planning to take in the coming years,
is a change from the simple SAP or from SAP HANA to SAP S4/HANA. This
migration puts the ERP software on a completely new code base, which optimally
supports the interaction with the in-memory database.

Why SAP HANA?

 The main purpose of SAP HANA is to perform complex queries of any kind in
the shortest possible time without aggregating the data in advance - and thus losing
information. At its core, SAP HANA uses in-memory technology for this purpose,
with which even large amounts of data can be analyzed in seconds. This real-time
processing is made possible by the fact that SAP HANA uses the main memory and
various caches of today's hardware and has even been able to influence the
development of new generations of processors.

How was SAP HANA developed?

The competition of the companies and the increasing complexity of the business
processes place ever higher demands on every business software. This has to represent
all important functional areas such as material management, production planning,
controlling, sales, document management and many more. In recent years, this has
resulted in ERP systems being equipped more extensively by their manufacturers,
making them more cumbersome, unclear and, above all, slower. Due to the enormous
growth in data alone, the databases behind the software have reached their limits. This
is why many companies installed numerous additional systems, whose only task was
to extract data from the main system, to sum it up and to present it quickly and clearly.
Hasso Plattner Institute and Stanford University therefore worked together to
find a way to analyse huge amounts of data in real time. In 2008, they found a way to
keep the main part of a database in a volatile, fast storage and to make it available for
analysis. Special mechanisms prevent the RAM content from being lost when the
server is shut down. The hardware must be specially designed for this purpose, in
particular the equipment of the RAM reaches previously unusual dimensions. During
the development phase, several code names for the new in-memory database were in
circulation. After “NewDB” and “SanssouciDB”, HANA (Hasso’s New Architecture)
prevailed. The database, coupled with the existing SAP ERP system, was presented to
the specialist public as SAP HANA in 2010. In 2015 the SAP S4/HANA application
was launched, which is fully aligned with the new technology. The coexistence of the
two variants, SAP HANA and SAP S4/HANA, is planned by the manufacturer for
several years.

In-memory platform

In-memory databases allow the fast processing of even very large amounts of
data. This in itself is already a significant advantage over existing technologies. In
addition, there are other options for developing new applications with a practical
business benefit:

• The integration of data from different formats such as text, image, video, for
example in the form of virtual access – where the data is not transferred to SAP
HANA – a real-time transfer, a time-controlled integration or, for example, the
integration of data stored in Hadoop clusters
 • Development of applications directly on the platform without additional
separate application servers
• Availability of functions on the basis of which the data can be processed
further, such as the representation of data in maps based on the Geo Spatial Engine

What is SAP S/4HANA?

SAP S/4HANA is a real-time ERP suite for digital business. It is based

exclusively on the SAP HANA in-memory platform and thus enables a simplification
of the data model. With SAP Fiori, users receive a personalized, role-based user
interface, as they know it from the consumer world - and often expect it in the business
world today: processes are consistently supported with SAP S/4HANA, media breaks
are avoided. For example, switching to a Business Warehouse to create a report or
manual steps outside SAP are no longer necessary.

What opportunities do SAP HANA and SAP S4/HANA offer?

SAP HANA is an innovation, primarily from a technical point of view. It is the

SAP Business Suite, whose underlying database is now the HANA-DB. This can only
be installed on a Linux operating system. Since SAP HANA is a hybrid, a
technological combination of the “old” and “new” world, the above-mentioned
database server also needs an application server for the ABAP part, which can be
installed on Linux or Windows. The interface of the suite, where the SAP consultants
make their settings and the end user works with the software, there are no major
functional changes. The response times of the software, particularly long-term data
queries and evaluations, are significantly faster than with SAP without HANA.
The next step for even more productivity is SAP S4/HANA. This can run “On
Premise” in the company or in the cloud. The software not only processes business
data flows faster than before, but also provides real-time information and is able to
handle big data. With SAP S4/HANA, additional analysis systems such as Business
Warehouse are expected to lose importance in the future. The still quite young SAP
S4/HANA system is actively developed by the manufacturer and regularly improved
by new support packages.

What are the added values of SAP S/4HANA and how can I identify them?
What are the Uses Cases?

SAP S/4HANA can be described by three characteristics:

• A new design that focuses on the user and their roll-specific needs, is browser-
based on all end devices and supports the communication of all process participants in
the system
• A modern architecture that makes it possible to map all processes in one
system on the basis of a simplified data model. This also applies to processes that
previously had to be mapped in different systems
 • A smart business approach that actively informs users when critical key
figures are under or overshot and is able to make predictions based on preview
algorithms

In the video "Getting off to a digital start with SAP S/4HANA" Wieland
Schreiner, Executive Vice President of SAP SE, explains why SAP S/4HANA is the
pioneer for the digital future. A product demonstration will show how decisions in
inventory management can be made more easily and better with SAP S/4HANA. This
allows safety stocks to be minimized and capital commitment to be reduced. One of
many examples of the innovative potential of SAP S/4HANA from which companies
can draw. (https://youtu.be/ou-iGd3mu5w)

Difference between SAP HANA vs SAP S/4 HANA

• SAP HANA is an in-memory database technology that runs the SAP

Landscape serving as the backend. SAP HANA is a column-oriented relational
database management system (RDBMS) that serves a computing platform for many
SAP applications.

• SAP S/4 HANA is a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution with
simplified data, a simple tool design, agile, easier to use, perform complex
calculations, and handling greater amounts of data. It can be deployed on-premise, on-
cloud or as a hybrid system.

• SAP HANA is an in-memory database technology which acts as the core

technology for a lot of other SAP or non-SAP applications whereas SAP S/4 HANA is
a new generation ERP solution which runs on SAP HANA database architecture.

S/4 HANA is a business suite launched as a robust ERP solution having both
ERP and BI capabilities utilizing HANA’s in-memory computing power. It is an in-
memory version of the ERP Business Suite as it only runs on SAP HANA.
Before SAP S/4 HANA was introduced as the new generation ERP solution,
SAP ECC6, Suite on HANA, etc were used as ERP business suite solutions.
There are two functional versions of SAP S/4 HANA; S/4 HANA Finance and
S/4 HANA Enterprise Management(EM).
 Conclusions

What SAP HANA is all about

HANA is the backend that runs the SAP landscape. Its central feature is an
innovative, column-based Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), which
is used to store, retrieve and process data on core business activities. SAP HANA itself
doesn’t determine what sorts of tasks a business does, it can accommodate any type of
data. Businesses install applications that run on top of HANA, such as SAP
applications for finance, HR, and logistics. As such, companies have to make choices
about what software best meets their current needs.
SAP HANA isn’t just a new choice for enterprise computing; because it handles
data very differently from other databases, it is designed to run SAP software. SAP SE
has been reworking their core ERP applications to better harness HANA’s speed and
flexibility, and will only support older versions of the software until 2025, at which
point customers need to have completed their SAP HANA migration, and upgraded to
the new software.

What SAP S/4HANA is all about

SAP S/4HANA is the shorter form of SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, which
means it is the fourth version of SAP Business Suite. It is designed to run only on SAP
HANA. The transition of SAP users to SAP S/4HANA is similar to the earlier
transition from the ERP versions, SAP R/2 to SAP R/3.
The next generation Business Suite of SAP is SAP S/4HANA which is
designed in a simplified way specifically to work with SAP HANA and to replace the
SAP ECC/ERP.
As per the SAP, developers feel the changes in SAP as they find ERP system is
more agile, simpler to understand and use. This change is termed as the opportunity for
businesses to reinvent business models and re-generate revenues with the advantage of
the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data by connecting people business networks and
devices by the SAP.
As per the SAP, Batch processing is not required for S/4HANA this makes the
businesses to simplify their processes and drive them in real time which mean that the
business user can access insight on data from anywhere in real time for prediction,
execution, Planning and simulation.
SAP Simple Finance is one of the main components of S/4HANA, which aims
to streamline financial processes and enable real-time analysis of financial data.
Simple Finance helps companies align their financial and non-financial data into what
SAP refers to as a “single source of truth.” Some Business Suite users are deploying
Simple Finance as the first step in the road to S/4HANA.

The popularity of SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA has led to widespread usage
across the globe. The demand for these modules is very high and a smart professional
must leverage this trend in order to take advantage of the market demands.

Bibliografie

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