SAP to AI: HANA Co-Inventor's Next Bet on AI

As the co-inventor of SAP HANA, I helped redefine how businesses process and analyze data at an unprecedented scale. Now, I am embarking on a new journey—one that I believe will be an even greater technological shift than HANA for the SAP world.

The HANA Breakthrough

From 2006 to 2012, I led Prof. Hasso Plattner's research project on HANA at the Hasso Plattner Institute. I started the HANA project at the Hasso Plattner Institute (2006–2012), laying the groundwork for SAP HANA—the in‑memory platform that now underpins SAP S/4HANA. My work revolutionized enterprise computing and laid the groundwork for real-time data processing.

My book, In-Memory Data Management, co-authored with Prof. Hasso Plattner, serves as a foundational text on in-memory computing and its impact on enterprise data management. It details the architecture and principles that enabled SAP HANA.

A Decade Serving SAP Customers

After leaving SAP, I spent ten years as Global Managing Director and CTO of Accenture's SAP Business Group. I launched the Accenture Innovation Center for SAP HANA, drove more than 150 S/4HANA projects, and helped complete over 500 HANA programs in eleven years. Along the way, I led some of the world's largest SAP HANA transformations—multi‑billion‑dollar implementations, complex global rollouts, cloud migrations, and full‑scale digital transformations for Fortune 500 companies.

The Custom Code Crisis

Throughout my career, I've observed that custom code is often the biggest barrier to successful SAP transformations. Custom code represents critical business processes built over decades but becomes a massive liability during transformations. Companies spend a significant fraction of S/4HANA transformation budgets dealing with custom code—analyzing it, refactoring it, and testing the results. The existing approaches are manual, error-prone, and time-consuming. This fundamental problem inspired the creation of Nova Intelligence.

Nova Intelligence: The Next Evolution in SAP Transformation

This insight inspired me to co-found Nova Intelligence, a Silicon Valley startup and the world's first provider of multi-agent AI solutions for SAP Clean Core modernization. At Nova Intelligence, our subject-matter experts (SMEs) leverage our powerful multi-agent AI engine to build high-quality Clean Core applications. This AI-driven modernization approach guided by SAP experts enables us to accelerate project timelines by over 3×, cut implementation costs by more than 2×, and ensure best-in-class quality assurance throughout the modernization process.

Backed by Tier 1 VCs and angel investors from leading tech firms, our founding team—Emma Qian (CEO), Samuel Yang (CTO), and Prof. Dr. Alexander Zeier (Chief Scientist)—brings together deep SAP expertise, seasoned repeat entrepreneurs, and leading ML researchers from Google DeepMind and Meta AI Research.Looking back, HANA was groundbreaking, but Nova Intelligence is redefining how businesses operate. With decades of experience in the SAP HANA revolution, our team is now focused on this new transformation—solving the most challenging problems in enterprise software modernization.

Ready to Transform Your SAP Environment?

Book a demo or contact us at contact@novaintelligence.com to learn how Nova Intelligence can accelerate your journey to a clean, modern SAP architecture.