SAP : Named a Leader in Cloud Database Management Systems

As the amount of data increases, SAP customers continue to benefit from a database and data management portfolio grounded in a deep understanding of how businesses use data and SAP's clear vision for the Intelligent Enterprise.

Organizations are looking for more flexible solutions to manage their data assets and cloud solutions are, more often than not, part of the equation for new data management investments. However, for SAP customers, it is about more than just where the data resides. It is first and foremost about how to derive business value from that data.

We are proud to share that Gartner has recognized SAP as a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems (DBMS) report. This is the first Gartner report to cover both operational and analytical database management requirements in the cloud. SAP [HANA Cloud] was ranked second highest across all four of Gartner's Use Cases for Critical Capabilities for Cloud Database Management Systems for Operational Use Cases: Traditional Transactions, Augmented Transactions, Stream/Event Processing, and Operational Intelligence.*

In our opinion, the Gartner report evaluates completeness of vision and ability to execute, where the cloud DBMS market is defined as a fully provider-managed public or private cloud software system that manages data in cloud storage. These management systems include specific optimization strategies designed for supporting traditional transactions and/or analytical processing covering one or more of the following seven use cases: Traditional Transactions, Augmented Transaction Processing, Data Warehouse, Logical Data Warehouse, Data Science Exploration/Deep Learning, Operational Intelligence, and Stream/Event Processing.

Devising a Data Management Strategy that Works for Businesses

Gone are the days when business functions could operate in silos and decision-makers could wait for days for the next business report. Customers need real-time updates across their operations to help them to respond to changing customer behaviors and disruption in their supply chains.

Ten years ago, we introduced SAP HANA, developed based on the bold new vision that our customers should be able to run analytics on live transactions. Answers should be instantly available and always up to date without the need to export data and run parallel systems to manage transactional workloads and operational reporting.

SAP has continued to build on that vision to account for the significant increase in data volume and variety and the proliferation of hybrid deployments. Making the transition to the cloud is at the forefront of our customers' minds.

Gartner states that 'By 2022, 75% of all databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform, with only 5% ever considered for repatriation to on-premises.'** Moving to the cloud can help companies easily and cost-effectively scale to meet their needs.

However, the path to the cloud for many organizations is less clear. Some customers want to go to the cloud right away. Some still want or need to say on premise, and some are beginning to extend their on-premise solutions with hybrid scenarios.

We want to enable customers to move to the cloud at their own pace. The result of our focus on these trends and supporting our customers is an ecosystem of cloud-native offerings centered on SAP HANA Cloud, which provides a single gateway to all data, no matter where that data is stored. SAP HANA and SAP HANA Cloud are at the center of our intelligent enterprise vision and the foundation of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). Additionally, we have been working with our cloud line-of-business applications to support them in their migration to SAP HANA, and the majority of them have completed their migration projects.

By positioning SAP in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Cloud DBMS report, we believe it highlights not only our track record, but also the steady adoption of SAP HANA, the breadth of functionalities, cloud database presence, and infrastructure choices, which are all essential aspects of our goal of guiding customers on their journey to becoming intelligent enterprises.

Embracing Data Management in the Cloud to Achieve Business Outcomes

The breadth of functionality is essential to account for today's complex data landscapes and the pivotal role that data has in every activity a company undertakes. Users may need to capture transactions, apply machine learning to incoming data streams, analyze diverse, distributed data in context, predict outcomes, and provide instant responses to users across various devices. SAP has this covered.

To address our customers' top data management priorities, we have complemented SAP HANA and SAP HANA Cloud with other solutions in SAP BTP. For example, we know that shortening time to insight is essential for our customers, but this cannot be achieved at the expense of establishing trust in the data or complying with data privacy regulations. This is why our solutions are designed to empower business users within an IT-governed environment. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is the innovative solution designed based on this vision.

SAP's cloud database presence and infrastructure are essential to helping our customers make the journey to the cloud at their own pace, as well as allowing them to benefit from the unique capabilities of SAP HANA without being locked-in to a specific vendor with multi-cloud, hybrid, and various on-premise deployment options, including appliance, hyperconverged systems, virtual machines, and bare-metal installations from a large variety of vendors.

For more detailed information, read the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud DBMS report.

Baré Said is head of Database for SAP HANA and Analytics at SAP.

*Critical Capabilities for Cloud Database Management Systems for Operational Use Cases 24 November 2020 by Merv Adrian et al, Gartner.
**Gartner The Future of the DBMS Market is Cloud, June 2019, Donald Feinberg, Merv Adrian, Adam Ronthal
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Tags: Database and Data Management, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP HANA, SAP HANA Cloud