news SAP Australia has announced the opening of an SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service in Canberra, and revealed that the Australian Government’s Shared Services Centre is the service’s first customer.
SAP HANA (for high performance analytical appliance) is a cloud-based, in-memory, relational database management system that provides business intelligence and allows real-time response.
Established in a Canberra data centre in conjunction with “premium supplier” partner Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), SAP said this is the first cloud service of its kind in the Australian Capital Territory.
Further, it is specifically equipped to support Federal Government agencies, enabling them to “vastly simplify” their IT requirements and more speedily direct resources to developing and supporting “citizen-centric” services.
According to SAP, the Shared Services Centre of the Department of Employment and the Department of Education and Training is using the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud to reduce costs and increase efficiencies in areas including payroll processing and financial services.
The product provides the real-time capabilities of SAP’s in-memory platform, SAP HANA, in a private, fully managed cloud.
This offers “elasticity and flexibility”, SAP said, with all-inclusive subscription-based pricing for SAP software and infrastructure.
“SAP is committed to scaling the unique capabilities we deliver to our public sector customers, such as the Shared Services Centre,” said Damien Bueno, SAP Australia’s Executive General Manager for Public Services. “With a secure onshore cloud platform, built on leading-edge infrastructure, we believe all tiers of government can realise their capacity for digital innovation.”
The new Canberra facility also addresses the requirements of Australian Federal agencies that require real-time capabilities of in-memory computing in the cloud, but have concerns about hosting data offshore, according to Bueno.
SAP said HPE designed and built a robust infrastructure solution within the Canberra data centre that “integrates compute, storage, and networking resources”. The “highly scalable” service also supports a range of cloud deployment options, including fully managed and hybrid.
Alan Hyde, Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Group, HPE South Pacific, commented: “We are dedicated to providing a technologically advanced, low-risk solution to Australian businesses that leverages the significant R&D HPE has committed to the SAP platform.”
“HPE’s Converged Systems for SAP HANA, together with HPE Datacenter Care Services, provide a complete managed cloud environment to SAP customers, helping Australian enterprises effectively manage sophisticated SAP HANA workloads in real-time,” he said.
SAP explained that the Canberra facility is part of its global strategy to provide “full security and regional data compliance” to all customers, and follows its existing SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud data centre in Sydney, which opened in April 2014.
Image credit: SAP