SAP HANA is an in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system developed and marketed by SAP. HANA’s architecture is designed to handle both high transaction rates and complex query processing on the same platform. SAP HANA was previously called SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance. In addition to the database engine, HANA includes an embedded web server and version control repository that can be used for application development. HANA applications can be created using server-side JavaScript and HTML.

SAP HANA developed or acquired technologies, including TREX search engine -an in-memory column-oriented search engine-, P*TIME -an in-memory OLTP database acquired by SAP in 2005-, and MaxDB with its in-memory liveCache engine. In 2008, teams from SAP SE working with Hasso Plattner Institute and Stanford University demonstrated an application architecture for real-time analytics and aggregation, mentioned as “HAsso’s New Architecture” in SAP executive Vishal Sikka’s blog. Before the name “HANA” stabilised, people referred to this product as “New Database”.The product provides Business Intelligence allowing real-time response. The first product shipped in late November 2010. By mid-2011, the technology had attracted interest but the conservative business customers still considered it “in early days”. HANA support for SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse was announced in September 2011 for availability by November.

In 2012, SAP promoted aspects of cloud computing. In October 2012, SAP announced a variant called HANA One that used a smaller amount of memory on Amazon Web Services for an hourly fee. In January 2013, SAP enterprise resource planning software from its Business Suite was announced for HANA, and became available by May. In May 2013, a software as a service offering called the HANA Enterprise Cloud service was announced. Rather than versioning, the software utilizes service packs.