HANA...

My first question when I into the diagram below is will HANA be able to replace the SAP BI (backend)? In my opinion, after going though some articles by Thomas Zurek , I do have the impression that the future data modelling and transformation can take place in the database-level modelling tool .In one of  the talk on HANA by Daniel Rutschmann, he answered the question by saying that BW will not be replaced as there is a need of having a datawarehouse system for harmonization and consolidation purposes, eg. to consolidate data from more than one ERP system in a company (But bear in mind, any multinational company out there will surely put aside a big budget to cut down cost of operation and to standardize the process through convergence of all the ERP systems into one single instance). John Appleby says 'No', with one of the reason being the business content (But it won't be a surprise that SAP is starting to look at building HANA around the business suites).

This is an interesting forum that discuss some of the confusion and in this clip, you can see how well SAP BO integrate directly with SAP HANA. This is also an interesting technical step by step document that demonstrate how a variable is applied in HANA modelling.

SAP HANA Overview and Roadmap