RI-Solution GmbH Selects SAP Nearline Solution from SAND

SAND/DNA for SAP BI to be used by major German retailer

Hamburg, April 25, 2006 – RI-Solution GmbH, a Munich-based IT service provider specializing in information systems, services and solutions for retail companies, has licensed SAND/DNA in conjunction with SAP NetWeaver BI 3.5 to meet the needs of a major retail client. The SAND solution, officially certified by SAP as an integrated ABAP add-on with SAP NetWeaver® Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver® BI), was specifically developed to address the increasingly complex data management issues faced by companies running large scale SAP NetWeaver BI implementations.

“We were interested in finding a way to control the explosion of data inside SAP NetWeaver BI, so that we could fulfill our Service Level Agreements while optimizing resource usage. After thoroughly analyzing the market, we decided to perform a test installation of SAND/DNA for SAP BI, which was successfully completed in January. The results showed that this solution satisfies our needs perfectly, and implementation is now underway,” explains Bardo Gutberlet, Head of SAP System Development / Management at RI-Solution.

SAND/DNA for SAP BI was selected by RI-Solution because of its ability to compress selected SAP BI data so that it takes up substantially less space, while still keeping it immediately accessible for analysis or for building new ODS Objects and InfoCubes. This capability was particularly applicable to the large volumes of SAP Persistent Staging Area (PSA) data that are used in SAP NetWeaver BI. For RI-Solution, reproducing this data from the source systems would have been very difficult, if not completely impossible, since it either no longer exists or would take too long to load. However, the customer, a large retail enterprise, needed this data to build new analysis objects in response to constantly changing user demands. “In our opinion, SAND/DNA for SAP BI represents the best solution in this area. On one hand, it significantly reduces the volume of data currently stored in SAP NetWeaver BI and therefore keeps our data management processes lean; on the other, the data is not simply erased or archived, so we are able to access just the required portions quickly and satisfy the requirement of our IT department for flexible and efficient provision of information content,” Gutberlet added.
“We are very pleased that RI-Solution has decided in favour of nearline integration using SAND/DNA for SAP BI,” comments Roland Markowski, Managing Director, Central Europe for SAND Technology. “This installation clearly demonstrates that SAND/DNA for SAP BI is an efficient nearline component giving SAP NetWeaver BI customers the ability to keep their total costs under control, despite continued growth in the overall volume of data,” he concludes.

SAND/DNA Access
SAND/DNA Access allows organizations to effectively balance impressive storage economy with high levels of data availability. Its unique, highly compressed storage format typically occupies 5-10 percent of the space required by a traditional indexed data warehouse while allowing business users to access the data directly using standard SQL-based tools and methods.

SAND/DNA Access can work with any structured data sourced from any operational system or data warehouse. It stores a read-only copy that can serve as an auditable record of the data as it stood when it was loaded into the nearline repository. Users can search this nearline data using standard business intelligence tools, without having to decompress it first. Selected data can be extracted, decompressed, and loaded into SAND/DNA Analytics or any database or data store for further analysis.

Compatible with most popular hardware and software environments, SAND/DNA Access brings highly economical and accessible nearline storage to existing data warehouse systems.

RI-Solution GmbH
RI-Solution GmbH, a company that specializes in information systems, services and solutions for retail companies, was founded as an IT service provider on January 1, 2002. The company has some 200 employees at its sites in Munich and Vienna. RI-Solution specializes in meeting the needs of retailers and wholesalers and has in-depth know-how with regard to the trading processes in areas such as agro, technology, building materials and energy. RI-Solution supports its customers in all areas, from analyzing processes to performing feasibility studies, project planning, implementation, installation and ongoing operation of a flexible, high-performance and economical user and systems environment. More information is available under www.ri-solution.com .

SAND Technology
SAND is an international provider of intelligent information management software. The SAND/DNA product suite scales to help any size enterprise cope with exploding data requirements, now and into the future. SAND/DNA Access allows for retaining all potentially relevant data in a tiny footprint while providing instant access to just what’s required. SAND/DNA Analytics allows for complex what-if analysis to meet any planned and unplanned business need. Sharing SAND’s patented “ask-anything” DNA, together they provide a just-in-time approach to data management with unparalleled productivity and cost-effectiveness.
SAND/DNA solutions include SAP-certified information management, CRM analytics, and specialized applications for government, healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, retail, transportation, and other business sectors.
SAND Technology has offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Central Europe. For more information, visit www.sand.com

Investor Relations
Ron deJong & Associates, (760) 943-9065, sndt@dejong.org
North American Press:
Sabrina Sanchez, (925) 875-1968, sabrina.sanchez@ventanapr.com
German/Central European Press:
Richard T. Lane, IMC International Marketing Communications,
+49 61 31/89 13 89, lane@imc-pr.de

This release was published on openPR.