Intel Skylake has been announced and the self-described HANA “market leader”, HPE, is curiously trailing the field

Intel announced general availability of their “Skylake” processor on the “Purely” platform last week.  Soon after, SAP posted certified HANA configurations for Lenovo and Fujitsu up to 8 sockets and 12TB memory for Suite on HANA (SoH) and S/4HANA (S4) and 6TB for BW on HANA (BWoH).  They also posted certified configurations for Dell and Cisco up to 4-socket systems with 6TB SoH/S4 and 3TB BWoH.  The certified configurations posted for HPE, which describes itself as the HANA market leader, only included up to 4-socket/3TB BWoH configurations, no configurations for SoH/S4 and nothing for any larger systems.

It is still early and more certified configurations will no doubt emerge over time, but these early results do beg the question, “what is going on with HPE?”  I checked the most recent press releases for HPE and they did not even mention the Skylake debut much less their certification with SAP HANA.  If you Google using the keywords, HPE, Skylake and HANA, you may find a few discussions about HPE’s acquisition of SGI and my previous blog posts with my speculation about Superdome’s demise and HPE’s misleading of customers about this impending event, but nothing from HPE.

So, I will share a little more speculation as to what this slow start for HPE in the Skylake space might portend.

Option 1 – HPE is not investing the funds necessary to certify all of their possible configurations and SoH/S4.  Anyone that has been involved with the HANA certification process will tell you that it is very time consuming and expensive.  As you can see from HPE’s primary Intel based competitors, they are all very eager to increase their market share and acted quickly.  Is HPE becoming complacent?  Are they having financial restrictions that have not been made public?

Option 2 – HPE’s technology limitations are becoming apparent.  The Converged System 500 is based on Proliant DL560/580 systems which support a maximum of 4 sockets.  These systems utilize Intel QPI and now UPI interconnect technologies, i.e. no custom ASICs or ccNUMA switches are required.  The CS900 based on the Superdome X and the MC990 X (SGI UV 300H) utilize custom ASICs and, in the case of Superdome X, a set of ccNUMA switches.  As I speculated previously, Superdome X is probably at end of life, so it may never see another certification on SAP’s HANA site.  As to the MC990 X, the crystal ball is a bit more hazy.  Perhaps HPE is trying to shoot for the moon and hit a number beyond the 20TB for SoH/S4 that is currently supported meaning a much longer and more complex set of certification tests.  Or perhaps they are running into technical challenges with the new ASICs required to support UPI.

Option 3 – MC990 X is going to officially become HPE’s only high end offering to support Skylake and subsequent processors and Superdome X is going to be announced at end of life.  If this were to happen, it would mean that anyone that had recently purchased such a system would have purchased a system that is immediately obsolete.

If Option 1 turns out to be true, one would have to concerned about HPE’s future in the HANA space.  If Option 2 turns out to be true, one would have to be really concerned about HPE’s future in the HANA space.  And if Option 3 turns out to be true, why would HPE be waiting?  The answer may be inventory.  If HPE has a substantial inventory of “old” Broadwell based blades and Superdome X chassis, they will undoubtedly want to unload these at the highest price possible and they know that the value of obsolete systems after such an announcement would drop into the below cost of manufacturing range.

So, you pick the most likely scenario.  Worst case for HPE is that they are just a little slow or shooting too high.  Worst case for customers is that they purchase a HANA system based on Superdome X and end up with a few hundred thousand dollar boat anchor.  If you work for a company considering the purchase of an HPE Superdome X solution, you may want to ask about its future and, if you find it is at end of life, select another solution for your SAP HANA requirements.

Inevitably, more systems will be published on SAP’s certification page, https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/appliances.html#viewcount=100&categories=certified%2CIntel%20Skylake%20SP .  When that happens, especially if any of my predictions turn out to be true or if they are all wrong and another scenario emerges, I will post an update.

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