Which licenses are necessary for HANA PAK?

You want to know which licenses are required to run planning applications on the HANA Planning Application Kit (PAK)? In this article, I'll explain the license structure in detail.

SAP BW IP (Integrated Planning) can be extended by the so-called PAK (Planning Application Kit) to realize significant performance advantages. The Planning Application Kit introduces connectors to move the planning processes from the BW application server to the HANA database. The calculation at the database level leads to an additional performance gain through the use of the HANA database.

However, in order to enjoy the higher performance, the HANA license is required. In addition to the HANA license, another license must be purchased to use PAK. So if you want to read (report) data with high performance , you must buy a HANA license. If you also want to write (plan) with high performance, you also have to buy a PAK license.

In this article, we want to shed some light on the license jungle. First and foremost, the SAP licensing models for the HANA platform include different prices depending on the data volume (in GB of main memory) and functionalities. Therefore, the prices are highly individual and vary significantly. As an introduction to the HANA world, the HANA Runtime license can be used, which enables the operation of SAP Business Suite or BW on the HANA platform. However, in order to develop your own applications, the HANA Enterprise license is required. This can be extended by additional licenses for certain components (such as Predictive Analysis or PAK). The price for the PAK license in turn depends on the number of users and the number of stored data blocks.

So while no specific statement can be made regarding the prices, we can conclude that a HANA Enterprise license and a PAK license are required to operate PAK. But what about this PAK license?

According to SAP Note 1637199, the use of the Planning Applications Kit requires a license for SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). Even if you don't use SAP BPC, but only BW IP,  the BPC license is required to acquire the HANA performance. On the other hand - if you already use BPC, you can get the higher performance for free. The PAK license is therefore basically the BPC license.

PAK License = HANA License + SAP BPC License

Planning Tools compared - SAP BW IP vs. BPC vs. SAC

The breathtaking performance increases are therefore offset by (possibly equally breathtaking) licensing costs for HANA and PAK (or BPC). However, a high return on investment (ROI) can be achieved if HANA eliminates performance issues and enables you to close planning cycles faster. In addition, HANA enables complex planning scenarios to be realized for the first time ever.

In addition, HANA opens new opportunities such as simulations, forecast scenarios and use of big data for planning applications. Furthermore, functionalities from BPC, such as Business Process Flows (BPF - design of workflows) can be another argument for the investment.