The NBA Statistics Site powered by SAP HANA was a huge success for the NBA and SAP. It is a great example of taking "Big Data" and making it easily accessible with a graphical front end.
To make this project a success, it took a lot of talented people. One of those people was Jayne Gibbon from SAP's Chief Customer Office. Jayne is a superstar and somebody you want on your project to make sure it is successful. I asked Jayne what were the three keys to success. Here is what Jayne had to say:
Know what you want to achieve with SAP HANA, versus just generic “I want to run faster”
Be specific. Such as you want the reports to execute in less than 20 seconds or you want to reduce month end close time by 25%. By having this defined up front, it will help guide your development. In the NBA's case they wanted the users to be able to make adhoc queries and not be restricted to pre-defined cubes.
Test, test, test
Make sure you test with real production data volumes and real production user counts. Just like any complex system, there are a lot of variables that impact performance and the only way to tune is by testing, In the NBA's case, they simulated 20,000 concurrent users.
SAP HANA is continuing to evolve
SAP is investing heavily in SAP HANA. Therefore, during your project SAP will probably add features that you will want to use so put time in your project plan for product revisions. The revision process for SAP HANA is different than applying an OSS note for ABAP so make sure you read the release notes carefully. A great person to follow on Twitter is @eacrett. Michael Eacrett is VP of Product Management for SAP HANA and tweets information about revisions.
Please comment below on your success tips for implementing SAP HANA or contact me on Twitter @SAPChampions or mark.marcus@sap.com
Let's learn from each other.