GOVERNMENT

SAP-certified SAND Solution Integrates Seamlessly to Provide High Compression, Easy Accessibility for PSA Data, ODS Objects and InfoCubes: SAND Technology, an international provider of intelligent enterprise information management solutions, today announced that a large U.S. government agency has contracted with SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) as a nearline solution to manage the rapidly growing volumes of data in its SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) environment. The SAND/DNA solution, officially certified by SAP as an integrated ABAP add-on with SAP NetWeaver BI, was specifically developed to address the increasingly complex data management issues faced by companies running large-scale SAP NetWeaver BI implementations. This sale indicates increasing market acceptance of SAND/DNA as a nearline component of SAP's recommended Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) solution for SAP NetWeaver BI. The agency had been experiencing substantial growth in its SAP BW implementation, which was predicted to grow from five terabytes to more than 40 terabytes within four years. Working with a large systems integrator, the agency selected SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI as a nearline solution that could provide high compression rates for InfoCubes, ODS Objects, and PSA (Persistent Staging Area) data and change logs while still allowing users to access nearline data directly. The main reasons cited for choosing the SAND/DNA solution were SAP certification, extremely high data compression rates, seamless integration with SAP BW, data retrieval performance, excellent support from SAND, and high projected return on investment. To date, the SAND/DNA solution has been deployed with about 4 terabytes of data and has demonstrated compression of 94 percent (to about 250 gigabytes). Using the SAND patented capability of having the compressed data appear fully- indexed, any field is as quickly and transparently accessible to users as if it were online, and overall data management tasks are greatly simplified. With the overall savings achieved, ROI should be attained within six months. "We are very excited that this U.S. government agency has selected SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI as the nearline component in its Information Lifecycle Management architecture for SAP BW," said Jerry Shattner, executive vice president, SAND Technology. "SAND/DNA offers an extremely efficient way to store detail data in a very small footprint while keeping it readily available for analysis or for use in building new InfoCubes and ODS Objects. This enables very significant cost savings while allowing the data warehouse to continue to deliver required levels of service to users, even in the face of rapidly expanding data volumes."