Behind SAP’s Business Intelligence Accelerator
In an article published today, eWeek claims: SAP may have stumbled onto an Oracle killer: in-memory technology that could, in theory, quash the need for a relational database in some cases.
This Rather Incomplete eWeek Article Makes The Following Points:
With Business Intelligence Accelerator (BIA) SAP has sussed out a way to organize its business intelligence data in columns versus tables, storing and indexing the data in memory and then running it all on blade servers.
The result is faster queries than would be possible by tapping data stored in a data warehouse or relational database.
Coca Cola showed a 90 percent increase in reporting performance, with queries cut from 60 seconds down to 3 seconds in the case of Coca-Cola using BIA
SAP is working on in-memory data management capabilities that could go beyond BI to other areas of the application stack, replacing the need for a relational database in new software installations.
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Either eWeek Didnt Do its Homework or Just Flat Out Neglected to Mention:
SAP uses the same column-based or vertical decomposition approach for data compression within BI accelerator that has been employed for years by Sand Technologies and Sybase.
SAP customers that want fast queries STILL need ONE BIA server and BIA software licenses for each instance of SAP NetWeaver BI, in addition to the underlying databases.Â
So, BIA duplicates data from SAP NW BI into the BIA, adds another piece of hardware, and requires additional (optional) SAP BIA licenses. Net, Net, BIA adds complexity to already complex BW implementations.
SAP Business Intelligence Accelerator is SAPs workaround for poor performance and scalability of SAP NW BI systems.
SAP BW customers plagued by the notoriously poor performance and limited scalability of
SAP BW systems are now held hostage by SAP to purchase BIA as an expensive option to fix BWs performance and scalability problems.
SAP BW is already known to be the most expensive data warehouse to build and maintain (according to recent OLAP Survey). This additional set of costs only adds to the exorbitant TCO of SAP NW BI (and helps SAP recover lost SAP BW revenue streams from bundling BW for free with NetWeaver).
SAP BIA can only leverage SAP BW Info Cubes as a data source. It does not work with other SAP data sources such as an ODS, let alone other heterogeneous data sources. What happens when performance and scale are needed in a heterogeneous environment?Â
 No surprise here - a SAP BW implementation in a heterogeneous environment is like Big Foot, we all hear rumors about its existence, but no ones ever seen one.
There is currently no failover mechanism for BI accelerator (i.e., if the system goes down, the indexes will have to be rebuilt from beginning).
SAP BIA is compatible with SAP NW BI 2004s, so customers must first upgrade to even have the opportunity to pay more and complicate their infrastructure in exchange for performance.
Oracle already has a huge leg up when it comes to in memory database technology as a result of its acquisition of leading in memory database vendor, TimesTen
There are no independent benchmarks for BIA to date, only claims from SAP.
December 15th, 2006 at 7:16 am
Rita,
good to read that even Oracle´s Competitive staff is afreight of the BIA´s leading edge capabilities.
Things that are not good are not worth to comment - or?
Best regards, Volker
December 15th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Hi Volker,
Thanks for the comment and the chuckle. Is that why an SAP VP recently felt the need recently to comment about DBI in a press release??
Actually, in this case, the situation is to the contrary. While marketing hype is usually overly generous, BIA is a case where there is such a huge gap between hype and reality, that I thought some basic facts should be known.
Cheers,
Rita Sallam
August 28th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Though there are some limitations, SAP BIA is definitely not all market hype. There are published independent performance benchmarks for BIA (winter corp). Yes you do have to pay for better performance which is the case with any vendors. BIA has some degree of failover mechanism implemented across blades. Sybase was using vertical decomposition but not in memory. There are many dimensions to ‘poor’ performance., in many cases sub-optimal design, code etc., which can be true for all technologies and vendors. All packaged solutions do have their own pro’s and cons sam eis true with SAP BW. I would say BIA has its own limitations but definitely is not a Big Foot
A wild guess., author works for Oracle Corp??
Gopal
August 29th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Hi Gopal,
No one is doubting that BIA works. And yes, the Winter Group benchmarks do give independent validation of that. The paper also validates how poor SAP BW performance is without BIA. It is not the case that you have to pay for better performance with all vendors to correct the architectural flaws in the core product. Many vendors have high scalability and performance baked into the architectural DNA and core product - no need for additional products and hardware. SAP had to add BIA to fix the notorious performance issues of BW. Unfortunately for SAP customers, adding BIA only adds another piece of hardware, data duplication, cost and complexity to an already onerous infrastructure.
Would love to hear more about what you perceive as the BIA limiations, in case I have enumerated them all.
Wild guess, you work for SAP
Warm Regards,
Rita