SAP eyes SME data deluge

SAP is tapping small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for its real-time analytics tools, amid claims even little companies can be inundated with data.
 
The firm has adapted some of the analytic tools in its Hana platform to channel-only offerings in a bid to cut the cost of delivering the services, to make them more accessible to SMEs. SAP executive board member Vishal Sikka says the highly targeted service fits a growing need for SMEs to combine real-time software platforms with a simple IT set up.
 
“SAP HANA enables nearly 80% of our customers, which are small and midsize businesses, to bring together structured and unstructured data analysis from any source, as well as transactional applications and analytics, in a single highly scalable, elastic infrastructure for true real-time computing,” Sikka explains.
 
Gartner vice president Donald Feinberg believes the targeted analytics set-up will be attractive to SMEs as they deal with increasing amounts of data. “Looking at content such as audio, video, text, [and] documents, small enterprises have as much Big Data as large enterprises,” he says.
 
SAP is gearing to ramp availability of the SME analytic tools from end-February, with a general release due later in the year.