Using SAP HANA to win new customers and perform internal analysis -- at the speed of light!

[Former Member]

Submitting on behalf of Rajan Patel

Palo Alto Networks protects thousands of enterprise, government, and service provider networks from cyber threats around the world.  It is the fastest growing IT security company in the market, with SAP HANA as an important tool to help manage that growth.  The company sees SAP HANA as a key tool in how it does business.

Palo Alto Networks uses SAP HANA to support internal analysis, providing cloud-based self-service functions to all levels of the company.  One key challenge was to integrate data from various sources, making it available throughout the business via fast, convenient access to self-service reporting – whenever and wherever it was needed.  “We consolidated data from a variety of SAP and non-SAP sources,” explained Srinivasan Karunakaran, SAP Development Manager - BI at Palo Alto Networks.  Analysts across the company could then create reports using SAP Business Objects BI solutions including Web Intelligence and Design Studio that were based on the same, unified source of data, powered by SAP HANA.  Each department had fast access to the same information, what Karunakaran describes as a “System of Truth.” 

Palo Alto Networks also uses SAP HANA to enable sales reps to quickly provide reports to prospective new customers while they are evaluating a security solution prior to making a purchase.  Customers could not only “try it before they buy it” -- but they could also see quantifiable results from the solution.  These fast, easily customizable “risk reports” use systems based on SAP HANA, showing the prospective customer how the solution was performing within their own environment.  With SAP HANA, these reports were often possible in under a minute!