SAP (News - Alert) AG has launched its High-Performance Analytic Appliance (SAP HANA) software after extensive testing and feedback from customers, according to a company announcement.

This first version of SAP HANA was tested by customers, such as Coca-Cola Hellenic, and the Future Group.

SAP also introduced apps based on SAP HANA, which are called BusinessObjects, and are used for strategic workforce planning.

"SAP HANA and the first applications built on it are already showing customers the unprecedented speed of in-memory computing, as well as the latency they have in the layers of their current IT systems," said Vishal Sikka, executive board member of Technology and Innovation Platform for SAP AG. "The customers we are working with are already recognizing the great potential of SAP HANA to deliver solutions that were previously not feasible, and re-thinking how to run their businesses better, now that they can analyze, simulate and react in real time."

To develop and test the software, SAP used data from customers. The customers are seeing improvements, such those witnessed at Hilti Corporation.

"We participated in the co-innovation program for SAP HANA and saw how SAP in-memory computing can dramatically improve our processes," explained Martin Petry, CIO of Hilti Corporation. "Hilti provided over nine million customer records to SAP. By loading these into SAP HANA, it was possible to comb through these records in a matter of seconds, versus the days it took previously to extract them from our data warehouse and SAP Business Suite. We're looking forward to further exploring the transformative impact of SAP in-memory computing on our business."

SAP HANA allows for “in-memory data processing” which the company explains is “leveraging advances in main memory, processor technology and application know-how -- to deliver unprecedented benefits to analytics and a new category of applications.”

The product announcements were made during the SAP TechEd 2010, in Bangalore, India.

In 2011, SAP plans to introduce additional apps based on SAP HANA. These will do such varied things as allow “utility companies [to] manage power supply in real time, provide retailers more timely analysis of point-of-sale data and enable more accurate sales pipeline forecasting for all types of companies.”

The 14th annual SAP TechEd 2010 was held in Berlin, Germany, between Oct. 12 and 14, and Las Vegas, Oct. 18 and 22, and is now underway in Bangalore, India and in Shanghai, China.

In other recent company news, TMCnet reported that SAP partnered with the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany to offer a course in enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to students in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.