The world is run­ning faster. Our use of com­put­er sys­tems has giv­en us the pos­si­bil­i­ty, the pow­er, and the need to process infor­ma­tion with a far high­er degree of imme­di­a­cy. This imme­di­a­cy has giv­en rise to the term ​“real time.”

We use real time to denote seem­ing­ly instan­ta­neous tech­nol­o­gy and use the label itself to describe real-time com­put­ing, real-time ana­lyt­ics, real-time encryp­tion, and real-time con­trol sys­tems — all of which may use real-time trans­port pro­to­cols and live inside real-time oper­at­ing systems. 

But What Does ​“Real” Real­ly Mean?

Here’s the spoil­er alert: There is no such thing as real time, because real-world real time moves way too fast for any com­put­er. I know time is sim­ply a rel­a­tive con­cept, but you get the point.

James Mar­tin summed up what real-time com­put­ing means in his 1965 book Pro­gram­ming Real-time Com­put­er Sys­tems. He wrote, ​“A real-time sys­tem con­trols an envi­ron­ment by receiv­ing data, pro­cess­ing [it], and return­ing the results suf­fi­cient­ly quick­ly to affect the envi­ron­ment at that time.” 

So, real time is just fast enough for us to per­ceive com­put­er pro­cess­ing to have been imme­di­ate with­in the con­text of the job at hand. Why all the clar­i­fi­ca­tion and expla­na­tion? Because as ASUG mem­bers will like­ly be aware, SAP HANA has been built to exe­cute data ana­lyt­ics jobs in real time. 

How HANA Hus­tles

SAP HANA achieves its real-time imme­di­a­cy using in-mem­o­ry com­put­ing. This allows it to process data (ana­lyzed, inte­grat­ed, com­put­ed upon, stored, etc.) in RAM mem­o­ry rather than hav­ing to per­form read/​write func­tions on and off phys­i­cal hard disks, which would con­sume valu­able input/​output time. 

If you’re still ask­ing why real-time ana­lyt­ics in the con­text of SAP HANA is impor­tant, it is because SAP HANA allows orga­ni­za­tions to run more ad hoc queries on their busi­ness data — and fast ad hoc queries lead to real-time data analytics. 

So, real time is all about speed, but it’s also about agility.

And Now, Real-Time Responsibility

With the pow­er of real-time data ana­lyt­ics comes a greater respon­si­bil­i­ty for data qual­i­ty. Orga­ni­za­tions will need to feed SAP HANA rel­e­vant, cleansed, and accu­rate data if they want to get the right kind of results, in real time or any­time after that. 

This is because SAP HANA can per­form data ana­lyt­ics on source data rather than hav­ing to go through an extract, trans­form, load (ETL) process. 

ASUG mem­bers will need to think about source data qual­i­ty along­side data gov­er­nance and com­pli­ance issues if they want to get the right real-time data ana­lyt­ics outputs. 

Enter SAP Data Services 

SAP pro­vides a solu­tion in the form of SAP Data Ser­vices, which is enter­prise-lev­el data man­age­ment soft­ware that can inte­grate, trans­form, and improve your data and make it avail­able for real-time ana­lyt­ics and processing. 

Relat­ed prod­ucts in this cat­e­go­ry include SAP Agile Data Prepa­ra­tion, SAP Data Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment, SAP Infor­ma­tion Stew­ard, and SAP Mas­ter Data Gov­er­nance. For all our talk of SAP HANA and the sup­port­ing ser­vices, SAP pro­vides a key access point to real-time ana­lyt­ics through SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud.

Real-World Appli­ca­tions

SAP points to cus­tomer exam­ples includ­ing Hoer­biger Hold­ing AG, a Swiss indus­tri­al machin­ery and com­po­nents business. 

Hoer­biger is using real-time data ana­lyt­ics to ana­lyze plant data and mon­i­tor ser­vice excel­lence in parts. The com­pa­ny estab­lished a report­ing sys­tem for its plants with glob­al­ly defined KPIs to improve plant per­for­mance by cre­at­ing cloud-based busi­ness dash­boards that pull data from the ERP with­out stor­ing it in the cloud. Ulti­mate­ly, Hoer­biger was able to short­en audit times and reduce the sup­port efforts in IT to free staff to work on more-strate­gic tasks. 

More and more busi­ness­es are using real-time data ana­lyt­ics and look­ing for use cas­es where they can apply this tech­nol­o­gy. Oth­er indus­tries like­ly to ben­e­fit from this tech­nol­o­gy include finance and medicine. 

How Data Has Rein­vent­ed Finance 

Look­ing more close­ly at finance: Banks are using real-time data ana­lyt­ics to crunch through tra­di­tion­al (mon­ey mar­ket) data and now incor­po­rate that with non­tra­di­tion­al (con­sumer trends, world news, or weath­er) data to cre­ate a wider view of the way any stock or share is about to swing. 

Also in finance, real-time data ana­lyt­ics is now a fun­da­men­tal func­tion used to under­pin the Markov mod­els used to iden­ti­fy anom­alies that can help to pin­point fraud­u­lent activities.

Clos­er to your own wal­let, banks and finan­cial insti­tu­tions are using real-time data to ana­lyze the exabytes-worth of trans­ac­tion­al data that users are cur­rent­ly gen­er­at­ing in order to offer new ser­vices designed to increase cus­tomer loyalty. 

Data as the Cure? 

Look­ing at med­i­cine, we know that batched data is use­ful to pro­vide us with ana­lyt­ics focused on long-term trends (e.g., shifts in mor­tal­i­ty rates for entire coun­try pop­u­la­tions and so on). But real-time data ana­lyt­ics is need­ed to con­nect smart wear­ables to cen­tral­ized patient man­age­ment systems. 

Real-time health­care data and the use of elec­tron­ic med­ical records can lead to actions in min­utes, if not seconds.

Where we could go next is to fuse dif­fer­ent data sources togeth­er (batched, his­tor­i­cal, clin­i­cal tri­al, wear­able read­outs, etc.) and tie those streams with patients’ phys­i­o­log­i­cal vital signs, elec­tro­car­dio­gram (ECG), heart rate mon­i­tors, and res­pi­ra­to­ry devices. As these devices become more inter­con­nect­ed and the crit­i­cal data sounds the appro­pri­ate alarms as need­ed, the future could be a health­i­er place.

The Real-Time Road Ahead

The future for real-time data ana­lyt­ics is pos­i­tive, but with caveats. New busi­ness mod­els will have to be devel­oped. A deep­er respon­si­bil­i­ty for data qual­i­ty and gov­er­nance aris­es. Orga­ni­za­tions will need to cre­ate ​“human guard rails” to pre­vent real-time mis­takes from occur­ring as these new sys­tems emerge.

Tech­nol­o­gy ana­lyst firm For­rester esti­mates that IT depart­ments could save as much as 37 per­cent on their oper­a­tional costs if they used real-time data ana­lyt­ics prudently. 

The real goal for ASUG mem­bers to think about is how they will now gen­er­ate a cul­ture based around what we might call ​“deci­sion man­age­ment.” Not data man­age­ment or busi­ness process man­age­ment. (I’ll assume you already have those func­tions in place.) We’re talk­ing about deci­sion man­age­ment, where we now look close­ly at the way real-time ana­lyt­ics could change the course of live busi­ness­es every day. Real-time infor­ma­tion paves the path away from reac­tive and toward proac­tive decision-making. 

If you’re look­ing to learn how your peers are doing more with busi­ness intel­li­gence and ana­lyt­ics, read more in our Insights.