We all like reports.  Reports that include graphs and pie charts are even better!  One thing we don't always consider is how fresh the data in we are looking at is?  In a typical Business Intelligence scenario, the data we can access is normally already a day old.  For long-term planning this is probably acceptable, but nowadays is day old data really enough to be competitive?  What if manufacturing efficiency suddenly drops in your factory or your online sales suddenly boom and threaten your stoke levels?  Do you really want to wait until tomorrow to find that our?  SAP don’t think so.

SAP HANA was developed to plug these gaps in reporting (as well as other ventures in the future).  HANA stands for "High performance ANalytic Appliance".  It uses custom In-Memory computing techniques to offer extremely high query performance.  Unlike BWA, HANA supports SQL and MDX giving it far more flexibility.  However, like BWA, HANA is an appliance, meaning it can only be ordered from and installed by specialist partners like Centiq.

With SAPs release of the High Performance Analytic Appliance, SAP HANA, I wanted to know...

How fast is SAP HANA?

Whilst the legal battle over Oracle removing development on the Itanium chip rumbles on IBM are increasing market share by offering a number of solutions to those customers who are fed up with either Oracle, HP or both.

Fed up with Oracle? IBM continue to develop and support the DB2 database platform on Itanium

IBM told the world that the new POWER7 range of servers were going to be fast.  We saw their benchmarks and read their white papers.  But I always reserve judgment until somebody else runs their own benchmark on a new piece of hardware.

Found a good blog on the evolution of memory management within Oracle, from 9i up to 11g

http://repettas.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/automatic-memory-management-amm-11g/

Speak to one of our technical experts now to see how Centiq can help your business by requesting a "call back" using the button to the right, or calling us on 0115 951 9666

The 5Ghz POWER6 processors are considerably more expensive than the 4.2/4.4Ghz alternatives and could be ruled out on grounds of cost on first inspection.  I was called upon by a customer the other day to perform a total cost of ownership study for 5 years including organic growth on a IBM Power p570 system

Included in the TCO calculation were power consumption, services, maintenance, hardware and software costs. The overall result was that the IBM p570 the 5Ghz system proved the lower cost option compared to the 4.2 or 4.4Ghz. The most significant factor was the reduced Oracle licence overhead. 

The higher performance rating of the 5.0Ghz core kept the licence count within the customers current licence entitlement that had been agreed with the POWER5 cores (0.75 licences per core compared with 1 per core for POWER6).

Speak to one of our technical experts now to see how Centiq can help your business by requesting a "call back" using the button to the right, or calling us on 0115 951 9666

Despite the apparent cost benefits of DB2 over Oracle (especially with Oracle's price rises last year) a  quick straw poll  asked;  What are the inhibitors to migrating from Oracle to DB2? The answers were pretty consistent.

1. Cost and time of application migration and