SAP wants businesses struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation in its HANA in-memory database to relax as it readies a new version, to be known as HANA 2. Since introducing HANA in 2010, SAP has been releasing updates twice a year, providing customers with new capabilities but also pushing them to keep their software current to benefit from continuing support. The new version gives businesses two reasons to relax, according to Marie Goodell, vice president of product marketing at SAP. HANA 2 is designed to simplify things for the IT department, reducing the effort it takes to keep the lights on so that businesses can spend more time working on new, next-generation applications that take advantage of new types of data, she said. Even if they choose to keep upgrading, that should involve less work going forward. But for businesses that just want to get off the update treadmill, SAP will provide long-term support through May 2019 for the version released back in May, HANA Support Package Stack (SPS) 12, she said. When the time comes to upgrade, apps that run on SPS 12 should run on HANA 2 with no interruption, and companies that do choose to upgrade can look forward to a host of new features, Goodell said.