Accessibility and reliability are strong qualities in any software or hardware environment, but for the Hana cloud platform, being show-cased at SAP SapphireNOW conference, those are the bywords for design and customer approaches.

Irfan Khan, CTO of Global Customer Operations at SAP SE, sat down to talk with John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, about how Hana has affected its place in the tech market, how the market is responding and where the market will go from here.

From disruption to reliability

“Hana started off as a disruptive technology,” Khan noted, “which was perhaps conceived as being a response to a lot of internal challenges we were running into.” As the answers to these challenges continued to develop in finesse and versatility, the focus on data analysis grew more pronounced.

“Hana came into the market focusing on analytics to start with, going full circle into being able to do transactionality as well, and where we are today,” Khan continued. “I think Hadoop is now being recognized as a de facto data-operating system … but it’s still lacking the compute capabilities.”

SAP applications need to have a system of record, Khan emphasized, adding that “Hana is a system of record, it has a database capability, but ultimately Hana is not just a database, it’s an entire platform, with integration and application services, and of course with data services.”

Trends and growth

Khan explained that he thinks there are five prevailing trends that are fueling the need to go digital. “The first thing is about hyperconnectivity,” he said.. “If we understand that data and information is not just consumed, it’s created in a variety of places … and is connected. … The second thing is about the scale of the cloud. … And then you’ve got cloud, on top of which you’ve got cyber-security, and a host of other things, including IoT.”

These things are all fueling the need to become digitally aware enterprises, Khan explained, saying, “And what’s ultimately happening is that business transformation is happening, because somebody without any premises, without any assets, comes along and disrupts a business. … Digital transformation at the executive level is about not just surviving, it’s about thriving.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of SAP Sapphire 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE