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SAP Hanna - Is this really necessary?

I'm not very versed in SAP, so please excuse me if I get things wrong.

I have a feeling this question will be a quickie.

Background

We've got a customer with 5 retail locations who is managing inventory at all three locations through cloud hosted SAP Hanna managed by a 3rd party

The sites have onsite POS servers which send and receive data to SAP.

The customer modifies inventory on SAP which pushes the changes to the main POS server to be pushed to the other servers.

It is my understanding they also run various reports on SAP

The third party vendor created the apps / screens which the sites used to work with the data hosted on SAP.

Issue

Customer is contemplating replacing the SAP developer (third party vendor) "again"

This will be the 3rd one replaced due to being non-responsive in resolving or issues.

Because this is a specialized environment and we have no SAP exposure much less experience there isn't much we can do for them.

Replacing the developer is no light task, as it usually (in the past) involves code re-writes, and possibly host changes.

I was asked a question, and I wasn't sure of the answer so I thought I'd post it here.

Question

Is this (SAP Hanna) even necessary?

I mean, couldn't this be just as easily replicated (done) on a sturdy server running MariaDB (or whatever) and PHP, Perl, C (what ever)?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

ste5an

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kenfcamp

ASKER

Hey Ste5an,
Thank you for your time on this question

No. SAP/Hana is a HA solution ment to be run on-premisis on certified hardware or as cloud solution. There is no simple solution with MariaDB.

Right, What I meant was replacing SAP completely with something else (custom)

If SAP is only and I really mean ONLY used for inventory management

Yea, I'm doubting that it is. I'm sure they're running reports financials etc

SAP/Hana is a HA solution ment to be run on-premisis on certified hardware or as cloud solution. There is no simple solution with MariaDB

That I'm aware of. They inquired about getting a "Hanna Box" and we've so far been advising against it.
They're having enough problems with "developer/consultants" using the cloud.

ste5an

Right, What I meant was replacing SAP completely with something else (custom)

It's possible, but requires a lot of beforehand consultation and analysis. This is not an simple or easy project.

kenfcamp

ASKER

Agreed, Thanks