Even we could not restore some of our systems by using some conventional methods. Instead of using the SimpliVity backup and restore methods, we can easily restore our data without any risk. That is the advantage of these systems.

For example, in healthcare data, there’s a large volume of data variety and velocity which requires processing as it impacts the care we deliver to our patients. We need to process and analyze easily terabytes of data and, at times, close to a petabyte.

Previously, with a traditional extract transform load process, it would take us three hours to load our large volume tables. Now, it takes us about ten minutes on SAP HANA on a ConvergedSystem platform. The speed with which we can process and deliver insights is of value to us within the patient care model.

The biggest improvement that we have seen is with respect to our backups.

It begins with a simpler installation. It provides a more advanced way to approach enterprise IT. It's still a nightmare, like every other converged solution out there. But we have done data center consolidation and data protection, disaster recovery for our services for DR. Desktops are globally backed up.

This is a beneficial system for organizations. Rather than having a separate processing system and backup system, Converged provides it all in one. 

Right now, all of our BI initiatives are running on HANA so we use that daily to create a new promotion for the marketing team that is in the field. So they can use it once and based on the behaviour of each customer, we can provide new promotions every day. That's the basis for our sales team.

We had an old system, but it got to a point, because of age, and the data limitations, that backup times and operations were taking too long. After we migrated to this environment, everything changed. Our applications are performing at their best and the backup times have been reduced from about four hours to 30 minutes.

Experience - HP has been doing it for a long time and they are not a new supplier. It’s a bit more expensive, but it’s safe. They have a lot more consultants trained on HANA already.

Evaluating - we looked at the IOPS. It's very much integrated with SAP as opposed to other vendors. 3PAR is strong and their appliances are strong. We already use the blade solution.

Migration - smooth and safe because we already know it.

Improvements to the organization depend on the customer, but usually, it assists them with consolidation. For example, they're replacing server racks with the converged system because they have too little space to have a rack full of servers.