Steve Lucas has tried to answer perceptions a that SAP's Hana platform - built round in-memory database technology - has not been beneficial to businesses, a claim made in ASUG's survey published earlier this month. However he admitted that SAP needs to do more to convince customers of the value of the in-memory computing platform.
The survey found that 55 percent of 377 of ASUG survey respondents' organisations had not purchased Hana with 40 percent saying they had and 5 percent unsure.
Three-quarters of the respondents who hadn't bought any Hana products said they had no business case to justify the cost.
"According to the survey data, we have a high percentage of customers who haven't yet purchased SAP Hana and cite their lack of use case understanding for the technology. Fair enough", Lucas, President of The Platform Solutions Group at SAP posted online.
"SAP can always do more to ensure customers understand the opportunity SAP Hana gives them to reduce costs and simplify/accelerate their business processes.
"I get the intent of the question but asking people who don't own Hana what they think of it, is like asking people who have never driven a car what they think about the speed and handling capability of a Porsche"
A similar survey conducted by the UK and Ireland user group earlier this year found that only 15 percent of companies used or intended to use Hana despite the need for faster data-processing.
Respondents stated SAP roadmap, upgrades and employee skills as barriers to adopting Hana.
Lucas added that he was pleased that respondents who said they wouldn't adopt Hana felt SAP would support their infrastructure for some time.
He wrote: "One set of data I found most interesting was that nearly 75% of SAP customers who said they have no plans to implement SAP HANA at this time 'believe that SAP will support their existing environments in the future or for at least five years or more.' To me, this feels like a great thing.
"Customers don't feel forced or pressured to do something. That's the antitheses of what people perceive software companies to be. Furthermore it's the right thing to do - support our loyal customers and partners who invested in SAP a decade or two ago vs. only focusing on the here and now."
Saugatuck analyst Bruce Guptill questioned whether organisations were ready for the sort of Big Data tasks that Hana is designed for. "A challenge of equal or greater size is that too many user enterprises do not know what data they have, or even where it is, even when it comes to critical and tightly-regulated data" in a blog post on the survey.
He added: "What's going to make Big Data analytics solutions and platforms (including Hana) most useful will be their improved integration into the rising tide of Cloud-based business management software and services."