According to a study by IDC, 50% of expenditure by Latin American companies on IT infrastructure, software, services and technology will be based on cloud solutions by 2020. Another study by the same consultant indicates that 83% of companies believe that having access to the right information at the right time is critical to their business.
This is why a solution such as SAP HANA is an excellent choice for data analysis, due to its combination of three components: database, data processing and an in-memory platform for deploying applications. This platform provides companies with the analytical and predictive systems they need to make business decisions with real-time information. For example, it can indicate in advance the probability of reaching sales goals for the day, week, month or year. Furthermore, when these systems are hosted on cloud infrastructure, they can deliver the flexibility required to adapt to customer’s requirements.
There are Datacenter service providers in Chile, such as a SONDA, with cloud solutions to run SAP HANA applications. However, by 2020 the majority of SAP customers are expected to have migrated to SAP HANA.
The SAP HANA migration process has been improved with new tools that simplify this process. Previously a migration would require three stages; upgrading components using SAP Enhancement Packages, converting the database to Unicode, and loading a heterogeneous copy to SAP HANA. If these processes are to be executed individually, they would require testing at each stage, and longer downtime. Instead, the new SAP HANA migration tools can reduce the total production system downtime to a single project.
The main recommendations when migrating to HANA are: a) Be clear about the basic server infrastructure sizing, b) Identify the peak periods to take advantage of cloud flexibility, and c) Verify that the service provider has the capability to meet your needs. It is also important to identify your business’s security requirements.
A provider that can rise to these challenges is vital, one that has experience with data center and cloud services, ideally having achieved certified compliance with the ISO 20,000 and ISO 27,001 standards, which are fundamental these days, in addition to certified compliance with TIER III standards for data centers (covering design, construction and operations) and obviously with experience and credentials in SAP and SAP HANA technology. Our SAP certifications for Datacenters, SAP Certified in Cloud Services, SAP Certified in Hosting Services, SAP Certified in HANA Operations Services and SAP Certified in Application management services, guarantee a technological service aligned with increasingly demanding business needs, such as real time decision-making, without being distracted by IT infrastructure issues. Although 2020 is just around the corner, there's still time to prepare for this change. But we should not forget that time flies…