<p>SAP started with Business Warehouse on HANA, to make their reporting faster. Now they have ERP and CRM on HANA, to make the transactional system faster, and eliminate need (and cost) for separate relational database. That would be huge if it catches on. </p>
<p>But the concept applies to data crunching, the topic of this thread, whether you use SAP or another tool. The newer technology allows a lot more things possible in world of big data crunching, that couldn’t be done before. For example, pharmaceutical drugs can be tested in weeks, using math simulations, rather than months using clinical trials…</p>