HP has announced the launch of a new Centre of Excellence (CoE) for in-memory computing that enables enterprises to leverage realtime transactional data to improve business processes and mitigate risks. 
Initially, the centre will focus on offerings for the SAP HANA platform and the SAP Business Suite.
By leveraging a virtual team of engineers, developers and other experts with operational experience with SAP solutions that spans more than 60 countries, 10 languages and more than 40 000 users, along with in-memory technologies, the CoE will accelerate customers’ transition to next-generation business applications built for in-memory computing.
Powered by HP Converged Infrastructure, the CoE will include offerings from:
* HP Engineering Labs – built in collaboration with HP Labs, the company’s central research arm, to create new architectures and platforms optimised for in-memory computing;
* HP Enterprise Services – to help improve business processes and application transformation that will be enabled by SAP HANA;
* HP servers, storage, networking and infrastructure management – to validate and optimise configurations for SAP HANA and the SAP Business Suite; and
* Application test and development – for on-premises, hosted and HP Converged Cloud deployments to accelerate time to deployment and quality.
“To succeed, organisations need to make fast, informed decisions by extracting large amounts of raw data from their systems to turn it into information that is meaningful,” says Bill Veghte, chief operating officer of HP.
“The HP CoE delivers the depth of expertise and services to help organisations drive high-performance data analysis, handling huge volumes of data in realtime for instant business insight.”
Compared to traditional methods of separating the data storage from the processing elements, in-memory computing allows for faster computation of big data sets. As a result, clients gain the ability to rapidly analyse data to drive innovation while reducing costs.
“We have seen unprecedented growth and adoption of SAP HANA, and this momentum continues to increase as companies see new and additional areas where HANA can bring more value to their organisations,” says Dr. Vishal Sikka, member of the SAP Executive Board, Technology and Innovation.
“At the same time, the tremendous innovation around SAP HANA that we will bring ourselves and through our ecosystem is just beginning. We will work closely with our ecosystem to drive open co-innovation to bring beautiful new systems, products and technologies that simplify the IT landscape.
“And we are doing all of this non-disruptively. Through this CoE, SAP and HP will bring new products and technologies, integrating transactional and analytics systems, that enable customers to run their businesses in realtime.”
Since the launch of SAP HANA, HP has been at the forefront of innovating leading benchmarks and solutions. The first HP roadmap milestone of the new CoE is an 8Tb, single image development platform tuned for the SAP ERP and SAP customer relationship management (CRM) applications on SAP HANA.
Codenamed “Project Kraken,” this platform is the forerunner to the large memory systems scheduled for future availability.
To help clients migrate to SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, HP offers migration and transformation services. Additionally, as a provider of SAP-qualified implementation services for SAP Rapid Deployment solutions, HP also offers rapid-deployment solutions to speed the transition to an in-memory database platform.
These services extend HP’s industry-leading application management services, which are based on the Run SAP methodology. With these comprehensive services, HP helps clients achieve the most value from their in-memory database platform.
HP Software also provides a test management infrastructure to improve efficiency, in addition to offerings for ongoing operations, management and integration with key SAP solutions, including SAP Solution Manager.
HP Operations Orchestration for SAP solutions also provides IT process automation and integration capabilities to help clients streamline the life cycle management of SAP systems by automating repetitive tasks.
HP has designed many of the largest implementations of SAP systems in the world and is working with product engineering teams and SAP to develop an authentic testing environment for next-generation in-memory technologies with full mission criticality and high availability.