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SAP on Azure

SAP HANA Certification: How to Choose the Right Type for You?

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May 16, 2021

Topics: Azure NetApp Files Cloud StorageDatabaseElementary5 minute read

What is SAP HANA Certification?

 HANA is a system designed for efficient management of relational databases. To provide high performance and efficiency, SAP HANA uses in-system memory and data columns. HANA is commonly used by many organizations and data professionals.

SAP offers many types of certifications, which help organizations and individuals specialize in certain areas of SAP in general, and SAP HANA in particular.

This is part of our series of guides to SAP on Azure.

In this article, you will learn:


Benefits of the SAP HANA Certification

Benefits for organizations:

Organizations can encourage their employees to attain SAP HANA certifications, helping them acquire new skills, develop existing knowledge, and constantly advance in their chosen field. This can help promote greater productivity, performance, and efficiency.

Additionally, when your in-house staff hones their expertise, the organization’s trustworthiness and credibility increases. A certification helps customers know the organization has put time and effort into the learning required to provide expert service.

Benefits for individuals:

Technology has a dynamic nature—it evolves and advances constantly. Updates and patches are now an integral part of the cycle, especially when using containerization and microservices architecture. This level of continuous change, while beneficial to all involved, requires continuous learning.

Certificate programs help data professionals gain current knowledge, continuously hone their skills, and remain in sync with the ever-changing landscape of technology. Additionally, each certification provides recognition and serves as a stamp of approval, proficiency, and even mastery.

SAP Program Overview

SAP offers over 150 certifications in various languages. Each SAP certificate helps professionals learn how to use SAP products. There is a wide scope of categories to explore, and many classes are now taught online.

SAP certifications are offered according to levels:

  • Associate certificate—offered for new SAP users with beginner knowledge, from either training courses or manuals.
  • Specialist certificate—designed for gaining specific skills or advancement to certain roles, typically offered to those who already have associate-level knowledge and skills.
  • Professional certificate—built for professionals with a deeper understanding of SAP products and solutions, as well as hands-on experience.

SAP Certification Exams

To gain a SAP certification, professionals are required to pass an exam. For associate and professional certifications, the requirement is a single exam. Candidates studying for a specialist certification need to pass two exams: one on the associate level and another for the specialty.

To take the exam, candidates need to go to SAP’s website and purchase a voucher. Then, SAP offers three main locations for the exam: SAP Training Center, Pearson VUE, or in the cloud.

Related content: read our guide to SAP Cloud.

Stay Current Program

The purpose of the Stay Current program is to help candidates holding SAP certifications ensure their skills and knowledge base remain constantly current. The program is built for cloud SAP and is currently offered for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba Solutions, and Success Factors.

The SAP Learning Hub provides access to the program’s various materials, including webinars, tutorials, videos. Additionally, the hub provides content about any technology introduced during quarterly product releases. This program offers a Delta exam that verifies knowledge acquired about the new technology.

SAP HANA Certifications: 4 Options

SAP S/4HANA for Financial Accounting Associates

The SAP S/4HANA for Financial Accounting Associates certification can help candidates leverage SAP HANA for financial accounting.

The exam validates subjects such as general ledger accounting, financial closing, asset accounting, accounts payable and accounts receivable, process integration and organizational assignments. These are all in addition to an overview of SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA for Management Accounting Associates

The SAP S/4HANA for Management Accounting Associates can help candidates gain the skills and knowledge necessary to act as consultants.

The exam validates product cost planning, cost center accounting, profitability analysis, internal orders, cost object controlling, organizational assignments, reporting, process integration, and profit center accounting.

SAP recognizes this certification as an entry-level for the management accounting module on SAP HANA, and recommends taking a second exam—SAP Certified Application Professional - Financials in SAP S/4HANA for SAP ERP Financials experts—but only after attaining some years of experience and practice.

SAP Certified Technology Associate - SAP HANA

The SAP Certified Technology Associate - SAP HANA can help candidates acquire the practical skills needed to act as technical consultants.

The exam validates skills like installation and upgrades, monitoring, operations, system architecture, security, users and authorization, troubleshooting, backup and recovery, migration to SAP HANA, high availability, and disaster tolerance.

SAP Certified Technology Associate - SAP HANA 2.0

The SAP Certified Technology Associate - SAP HANA 2.0 can help technical consultants solidify their knowledge and understanding of SAP HANA 2.0.  

The exam validates a wide scope of areas, including sizing and OS preparations, understanding of database administration tools, installation of configuration of SAP HANA Cockpit, knowledge on SAP HANA architecture and deployment options, proactive monitoring and troubleshooting of SAP HANA, and more.

SAP HANA Certification with Azure NetApp Files

Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology, giving you the file capabilities in Azure even your core business applications require.

Get enterprise-grade data management and storage to Azure so you can manage your workloads and applications with ease, and move all of your file-based applications to the cloud.

Azure NetApp Files solves availability and performance challenges for enterprises that want to move mission-critical applications to the cloud, including workloads like HPC, SAP, Linux, Oracle and SQL Server workloads, Windows Virtual Desktop, and more.

In particular, Azure NetApp Files can accelerate SAP HANA deployments, reduce costs and development/testing projects, and provide increased agility for your business processes.

Want to get started? See Azure NetApp Files for yourself with a free demo.
Cloud Data Services Team
Cloud Data Services Team

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