If SAP co-CEO, Jim Snabe, usually delivers his keynote address on the “state-of-SAP”, then SAP Executive Board Member, Vishal Sikka can always be counted on to update the audience on the newest innovations around SAP HANA.

This year, though, Sikka steered clear of a purely technological discussion of HANA. Instead, he put SAP HANA in the context of SAP’s overall technology roadmap and described the role that HANA will play in the future of the enterprise software industry.

Perhaps the decision to talk about SAP HANA in more relative terms was inspired by global current events like the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. and the debt crisis in Greece which Sikka referenced in his keynote. In today’s world, it is impossible to ignore the reality that everything – from the world’s economies to a company’s various software applications and platforms – is inextricably interconnected. HANA does not exist in a vacuum, and in fact, it is only truly useful and powerful when applied to other SAP products.

On that note, on the following pages, we’ll tell you about HANA in the larger context of SAP’s technology strategy:

• A grand dissolving of layers
• Business One to run on HANA in 2012
• Openness and choice
• Roadmap: SAP Technology Platform