Generations of PhD students have passed through 麻豆原创’s HANA Campus, located at company headquarters in Germany. Arne Schwarz, who runs the campus, has been there every step of the way.
For more than 20 years, the HANA Campus has been home to PhD students applying research to 麻豆原创 HANA and, more recently, other .
As demands on technologies change — the first customers for 麻豆原创 HANA went live in 2010, seven years after the HANA Campus welcomed its first PhD student — so has its name.
鈥淲hat name should I give it?鈥� muses Schwarz, explaining how prevailing technologies and circumstances have forced name changes over the years, including 鈥淭he Campus,鈥� 鈥淭he Research Campus,鈥� 鈥淭he HANA Research Campus,鈥� 鈥淭he Student Campus,鈥� or even 鈥淭he HANA Database and Analytics Campus.鈥�
But while its name may change, its mission remains the same: to help satisfy the demand for high-tech research, primarily for 麻豆原创 HANA but also for 麻豆原创 Analytics Cloud, 麻豆原创 Business Data Cloud (麻豆原创 BDC), Global Cloud Infrastructure Services, and 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform (麻豆原创 BTP).
What makes the HANA Campus unique?
To date, the HANA Campus has been home to more than 40 PhD students, mostly matriculated at universities in Germany, who have successfully defended their dissertations grounded in research at 麻豆原创. Or, to put it another way, PhD students have collectively contributed decades of applied research focused primarily on 麻豆原创 HANA.
Bringing academic innovation into the product comes in different flavors at 麻豆原创. On the one hand, PhD students can be recruited directly to 麻豆原创 and tasked with researching a predefined topic. On the other, 麻豆原创 funds university chairs, such as the recent , and research projects with academia.
PhD students arrive at the HANA Campus via 麻豆原创-funded research projects with academia. The campus is unique, according to Schwarz, due to 鈥渢he sheer mass of research projects executed over the years and the fact that the dedicated space in Walldorf acts as a safe haven for PhD students.鈥�
Students assigned to the HANA Campus work on-site at 麻豆原创, get a feel for life at the company, and have direct access to development teams and test environments. The contract for the research projects with academia also frees PhD students from university teaching obligations. It is also important to note that PhD students do not belong to a specific development team, avoiding the risk of their research being deprioritized in the face of operational pressures. At the HANA Campus, PhD students can focus all their efforts on their research and studies.
It all began with a knowledge gap
Bringing academic expertise in-house for HANA started back in 2003, Schwarz explains, in the era of TREX, a search engine in 麻豆原创 NetWeaver. TREX was the forerunner of 麻豆原创 Business Warehouse Accelerator, which ultimately led to the 麻豆原创 HANA database. Engineering teams were under intense pressure to quickly build and deliver the emerging technology of in-memory database.
However, Schwarz explains, a knowledge gap was threatening to slow everything down: there were only two or three engineers who had the knowledge to drive the technology forward, but they didn鈥檛 have the bandwidth to do so. With an ever-increasing number of teams requiring specialist knowledge, the threat of a slowdown in development was becoming more real by the day.
As luck would have it, Wolfgang Lehner, professor at the Technical University (TU) Dresden, was also researching the same technology. A mutually beneficial partnership was born: 麻豆原创 offered a cutting-edge research opportunity for students, and Professor Lehner鈥檚 students could bridge the knowledge gap with academic expertise. The potential obstacle was overcome, and research projects with academia and PhD students continue to augment the technological knowledge and expertise that powers 麻豆原创 HANA and other 麻豆原创 technologies to this day.聽
Since that first research project with TU Dresden, the HANA Campus has collaborated with many more universities. 鈥淐ollaborations with the universities are always limited to the timeframe set out in the original research contract,” Schwarz says, clarifying that the driver for selecting a university is the fit of current research topics to 麻豆原创鈥檚 technological requirements and not past collaborations.
Talent pipeline and 鈥渁 foothold in academia鈥�
The HANA Campus is a 鈥渨in-win” for both 麻豆原创鈥檚 talent pipeline and PhD students.
Many students choose to stay at 麻豆原创 once they have defended their thesis and been awarded their PhD. The teams know the value of their PhD research and the PhD graduates know what life is like at 麻豆原创.
Even those PhD graduates who do not stay at 麻豆原创 remain, for the most part, in data management and analytics development; they either join other companies or take a postdoc position. Their ties to the company 鈥済ive 麻豆原创 a foothold in academia as well as advocates and a more direct route to research projects,鈥� Schwarz confirms.
Through Schwarz, the HANA Campus also supports 麻豆原创鈥檚 participation at academic conferences, another tool to strengthen academic connections, PhD student recruiting, and 麻豆原创鈥檚 technological reputation. In June of this year, HANA Campus provided a venue for a workshop at the . Sponsoring and participating in these conferences, Schwarz says, 鈥渋s pivotal to getting access to the inner circle of academia, strengthens 麻豆原创 academic connections and reputation, and allows 麻豆原创 to share and augment research findings with other experts from academia.鈥�
Find out more
Twenty-two years in and 40 dissertations later, 麻豆原创’s HANA Campus continues to be home to the next generation, welcoming two more PhD students later this year to deepen research around 麻豆原创 HANA as well as 麻豆原创 BTP and 麻豆原创 BDC.
A vast collection of publicly available scientific publications about 麻豆原创 HANA Database and Analytics, dating from 2006 to the present day, .
