SAP offering customers 'simpler' way to buy its Hana in-memory platform

Those numbers show continued momentum for Hana, although SAP no longer breaks out the revenue total for it. That's because Hana "is attached to everything we have," CEO Bill McDermott said in an interview with IDG News Service earlier this year.

While SAP has long resold rival databases such as OracleOracle's to its application customers, the goal now is to move as many as possible over to Hana, albeit while still offering them a choice. Alles zu Oracle auf CIO.de

"Anything which cuts deployment time and increases time to value is a good thing," said John Appleby, global head of SAP Hana at consulting firm Bluefin Solutions and an SAP Mentor, the name given to especially involved members of the SAP user and partner community.

Now, it just remains to be seen how well SAP executes on its plans with customers, he added.

SAP will need to work "extremely hard" in order to achieve the promise of shorter deployment times for Hana, given the legal, licensing and corporate culture changes that are involved, Appleby said.