SAP has launched SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA), an overhaul of its core software line designed at multinational corporate customers. SAP S/4HANA is a new product fully built on the in-memory platform, SAP HANA and is designed on the modern design principles with the SAP Fiori user experience (UX) for mobile devices. SAP S/4HANA promises to bring simplifications to SAP's customers. It will offer cloud, on-premise and hybrid deployment options.

The unified database platform promises to cut the time it takes to compile business accounts and forecasts to minutes, by analyzing vast amounts of data in local memory. This lets company planners drill down into actual financial transactions and draw on a range of both internal and external data instead of relying on statistical assumptions.

All major database vendors including Oracle, IBM, Microsoft Pivotal and Teradata now offer "in-memory" versions and dozens of rivals supply predictive analytics software in the cloud.