It has been always a big factor in decision making. And in case of HANA, it has some home become a frightening factor. Not sure how it got there, but it still is. Many of us think, HANA is all about a big investment in sophisticated database. I think we should look at ROI at the same time as well. Let’s have a close look at what it costs actually:
Confusion comes when there is NO standard price for the working solution, rather a worked out price based on what you use, how you use and how much you use.
SAP HANA Licensing Cost
- SAP HANA Standalone – For this scenario, license is based on data volume.
- SAP NetWeaver 7.3 BW powered by SAP HANA – For this scenario, license fee is based on database size.
- Applications (ECC / ERP) Accelerated by SAP HANA – For this scenario, license fee is based on percentage of SAP Business Suite maintenance base. Huuh!
SAP HANA Hardware Cost
- It can be based on T-shirt sizing of the hardware box, with the XS size box costing approximately £25,000.
- SAP also offers SAP HANA Box, with extremely limited use for approximately £10,000
- It all depends on the hardware vendor. Hardware is provided, configured generally by the hardware vendor themselves.
- Some of the known hardware vendors are: HP, IBM & SAP itself.
SAP HANA Implementation Cost
- Once license, software & hardware are purchased; configuration of the database, modelling of the data & data migration must be done.
- These often involve cost of service provider or project team. These also involve additional tool sets for data migration and data transformation, such as SAP-BODS (Business Object Data Services), licensing cost of which can add to the total investment cost.
- Now at this point, data is ready in SAP HANA, then comes the usage, for which HANA was required at the first place.
Other Tool Licensing & Implementation Cost
- So; comes the purchase of a reporting tool, or BI tool or a transactional system to hold application data. In case the business has all these, then it will be just a matter of integrating them with HANA for a regular flow of data and use SAP HANA as it was intended.
- If the BI tool or Transaction system is also a new asset; they will require configuration by third party service provider or by an in-house project team. How much it will cost, will depend upon how much work involves, which will be derived from what is the purpose of these BI tool and Transactional system.
- Well; wherever there is data involves, it calls for security and authorization concept to control the usage and leakage of data. So we will require some of these as well, which can be done at the BI tool end or at SAP transactional system end or at SAP HANA end or at all three system end, depending on the smartness in design. But flexibility is all yours!
As you can see, why it is so difficult to work-out a cost, on the fly! So; let’s have a approximate figure, in that case for a XS size database, data & implementation. Remember, it is just estimation.
Approximate Cost:
- SAP HANA Licensing Cost =
- SAP HANA Hardware Cost =
- SAP HANA Implementation Cost =
- Other Tool Licensing & Implementation Cost =
TOTAL COST = SUM OF ALL ABOVE!
Now; lets compare this “Total Cost” with your “Annual Software Maintenance Cost” or “Annual Performance Improvement Cost”. So; do we have a Business Case yet? Smiles!