A short time ago I asked on this blog if SAND CDBMS Nearline for SAP BW could enhance SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator. My question was based on an article from *SearchSAP.com*, but as you know, SAND prefers real world examples and real customer results.

Well, during a recent trip to provide training for a global energy company, one of our senior solution architects, Steven, sent me back the following:

>Mike,

>Aside from thinking SAND CDMBS Nearline for SAP was generally fantastic — [the customer] couldn’t stop talking about how much it made sense, especially when it comes to BWA and the new in-memory database.

>I know we see tremendous value here, but it’s another thing entirely when our customers keep repeating it. [The customer’s] point was — since nearline makes their online objects smaller, they can now add more of them to the existing BWA infrastructure with no additional costs.

>Also, preparing for the new in-memory database — which will merge BWA with the online data — would typically create the need for huge hardware with lots of horsepower and a giant price tag to go with it.

>With SAND CDBMS Nearline for SAP, however, the amount of online data is drastically reduced — while still staying immediately accessible — decreasing the hardware requirements, controlling costs, and *improving* performance.

>Part of the performance boost comes because, with a smaller foot-print, even more objects can be kept online within the existing hardware. In addition, as new data continues to accumulate, they can seamlessly move the older data to nearline. That means the online system remains stable and users retain access to more data than before, with increased performance and lower ongoing costs. Of course there is the increased performance for backups and the nightly batch processes, but that’s another groups gain 😉

>Steven

It’s not the first time we’ve heard this kind of feedback from our customers. It’s not even the first time we’ve heard it as early on as the training phase. If you’re running SAP BW and are looking to enhance BWA and/or in-memory database, we’d love to hear it from you as well.