SAP HANA: An Introduction

SAP HANA as a DatabaseSAP HANA as an Application PlatformNew Developments in Data Modeling and ProvisioningHighlights:

Penny Silvia is a managing director and SAP HANA leader for Deloitte Consulting with a focus on SAP analytics. Penny brings more than 20 years of SAP experience to this role and has been helping SAP customers determine their analytics strategies since 1998. During her more than 20 year career working with SAP products, Penny has held leadership and executive positions at Cap Gemini, IBM, as well as small boutique firms. This range of experiences has allowed Penny to work with clients large and small, across many industries and geographies, and has helped to forge her global perspective that she uses to help her clients navigate the sometimes murky and confusing waters of maximizing their investments with SAP analytics tools and solutions.

Rob Frye served in the NC Army National Guard for nearly two decades, and is a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After retiring from military service, he received a bachelor s degree in computer science from Lenoir-Rhyne University, where he was the First Honor Graduate with a 4.0 GPA. He is the manager of ComeritLabs, in Huntersville, NC, which provides infrastructure, remote development, and training services for COMERIT, Inc. He is an experienced SAP HANA and SAP BusinessObjects developer, and has created content, training material, and processes for SAP HANA and SAP BW InfoObjects on SAP HANA for Fortune 500 companies.
He was the lead author for The SAP BW to HANA Migration Handbook, one of the first books to provide comprehensive, step-by-step instructions for completing the DMO (database migration option) process. He has provided live training on SAP HANA and the SAP BusinessObjects toolset in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South Africa. He is also a PhD student at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, where he is conducting research into natural language processing for authorship attribution in web content.

Dr. Berg is an internationally recognized expert in business intelligence and a frequent speaker at major BI and SAP conferences world-wide. He regularly publishes articles in international BI journals and has written five books on business intelligence, analytics, and SAP HANA. Currently, he is a partner at PwC, where he is leading an analytics and business intelligence practice. He has over 25 years experience in business intelligence development and data warehousing from several banks and consulting firms.
He holds a bachelor of science in finance from Appalachian State University, an MBA in finance from East Carolina University, a doctorate in information systems from the University of Sarasota, and a Ph.D. in information technology from the University of North Carolina. Dr. Berg also attended the Norwegian Military Academy, and served as an officer in the Armed Forces.