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It’s SAP TechEd time again, and for the SAP HANA team, it is that time of the year where we have an opportunity to checkpoint our strategy with user communities, partners and customers.

 

For the last few years, the frequency of one particular request has increased from developers, ISVs, administrators and other HANA users.  These users want to run SAP HANA on a personal laptop – for learning, for developing next generation applications, and especially for ramping up on new projects.  

 

 

While the cost of RAM is rapidly reducing, the general availability of “memory rich” personal machines has not been that great - until very recently.   For the in-memory model at the heart of SAP HANA, we're exited about this trend - as it opens up some new opportunities to be creative.

 

We seem to be at the start of a new hardware refresh cycle – our customer surveys indicate that the adoption of 16GB laptops are on the rise, especially for software developers, data scientist and analytics practitioners.

 

Some of our hardware partners have started promoting DDR4 ready laptops, with “out of the box” configurations of 32 GB of RAM, upgradeable to 64GB, at a price point which is in-range for larger corporations.   There are other alternatives for the individual developers - Intel’s NUC technology is another approach to providing compute power at a compelling price point.     On my desk, I have been running a 32GB mini-PC for the last few weeks – estimated cost: ~$600!

 

 

This brings me to the announcement today at SAP TechEd – the general availability of SAP HANA, express edition. 

 

Optimized and streamlined to run on laptops, desktops, mini-PCs, and smaller commodity servers, SAP HANA, express edition includes a free license to use the technology productively, up to a memory limit of 32GB.

 

SAP HANA, express edition is delivered in 3 forms:

  • a native, binary install for Linux

  • pre-configured Virtual Machine images

  • via the SAP Cloud Appliance Library, which provides deployment options for public cloud platforms.  


 

The Virtual Machine Image is pre-configured, and ready to use, allowing you to start your HANA journey with the least amount of effort, and allows for deployment to Windows and Mac OS X environments.    The VM is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, and we have worked closely with Suse to optimize it for running in a resource constrained environment.   

 

The new SAP HANA, express edition launch page is the central location for registering and accessing the software, and is a central point for tutorials, samples, how-to’s, community support and technical resources.   The features and capabilities included in SAP HANA, express edition are also described on the launch page.

 

To get started with SAP HANA, express edition, follow this link.


 

 

Thank you to our preview participants - a crack team of HANA Distinguished Engineers, SAP Mentors and participants in our CEI project for your pro-active advice, guidance and early feedback.   

 

The Solution Brief can be found here.

Frequently Asked Questions can be found here.