SAP Business ByDesign

Comentarios: Must-use for all SAP customers, given that it is critical to SAP's success as an enterprise software company.

Puntos a favor: Started using HANA 5 years ago with v1 SPS5 back when it was just released for SAP BW. Back then it was "only" an in-memory DB. With each new SPS release, HANA became better with more DB features integrated. Fast forward to today, it is a full-fledged database platform with enterprise features that rival (and in some cases) even bests Oracle, MSSQL, DB2, et al. For customers who intend to use SAP for the foreseeable future, you would no doubt have HANA already as part of your existing if not future SAP roadmap, given that support for the traditional DBs is until 2025.
SAP HANA, which is re-written from the ground up to fully take advantage of today's modern hardware, supports multi-threaded CPU architecture, use of terabytes of memory to run its in-memory database capabilities, columnar & row based database with full-fledged compression, full support of PL-SQL and many other application components.
From a hardware perspective it is a 2-horse race with the commodity Intel x86 platforms becoming more powerful with each CPU iteration and better CPU core-to-memory ratio support, and IBM with their Power-based CPU architecture. As hardware prices continue to fall and become more powerful, it is only a matter of time before HANA hardware becomes truly commoditised.

Contras: Today SAP HANA is not only a competent database platform, but also is a very robust applications platform. As HANA continues to grow its feature set naturally there are more bugs as a result of a multitude of features. Development of SAP HANA is also diversified across multiple locations around the globe (Walldorf, India, etc.). SAP must do a better job in responding quicker to customers with issues.

Comentarios: For an all in one suite ERP, this is the best. Although some areas are not quite as robust as some would like, SAP really nailed it with this one. They address a huge span of customers with the one product, which is completely customizable if you want to spend the money. However, most of the time, companies find that they can walk with the product, no customizations for the first 6mos. Then they get a good feel for what they want to change.

Puntos a favor: SAP took all of the knowledge gained with ECC, B1, etc. & published it into this cloud solution. You buy the license, and you have access to all modules. It is not a new charge to add in Project Management for example. You just turn it on. Online help documents are outstanding, and you can literally learn the entire software functionality by following them. With it being a cloud solution, you get auto updates every 3mo, which is nice. It updates some of the default government fees, for all of the countries you have in your system. Expense reporting for example.
There is very little administration needed to let the software flow once you turn it on. And the best part is that you just need internet to access the software.

Contras: It is for mid-size businesses. So for larger organizations, the licensing can get pricey. There is a limited amount of knowledge in the field on the product, so it can take some time to get answers for some topics from the partners, or to find info online.