SAP Targets Business Intelligence through In-Memory Database Appliances

It goes without saying that a lot of SAP-related news has to do with their cloud-based ERP offerings, or lack thereof. Thankfully, their SAPPHIRE conference last week gave us something else to talk about—like how they’ll be competing with Oracle on yet another level: in-memory database appliances.

A software giant’s business is never done, it seems, and with this latest announcement SAP is attempting to undermine the “one-stop shop” image Oracle has projected since acquiring Sun Microsystems last year. The product hasn’t been named yet, and SAP is still looking for beta customers so they can finish developing the appliance and give it a general release at the end of the year. Non-IT types might be asking, “And what does an in-memory database do, exactly?” It transfers information to be processed into main memory, rather than reading and writing it from disks, and thereby boosts performance.

These in-memory database appliances will be compatible with both SAP’s more modern ERP implementations and the older ones, like R/3, and when CTO Vishal Sikka announced the appliances, he apparently stressed the fact that they’d be easy to accommodate. This will significantly boost SAP’s status in the business-intelligence sphere, as these new products can easily be marketed as business intelligence accelerators to BI customers.

To that end, it will be interesting to see if SAP carves itself a serious niche in business intelligence. That segment has enjoyed on-the-rise status ever since IBM’s Smart Analytics Cloud was announced last November, and it’ll be auspicious for SAP if they manage to perfect BI-ERP integrations before that market reaches an apex.

Tags: Business Intelligence