I was going thru the discussion on the SAP community and I have been seeing a lot of people talking about SAP HANA. well that got me to Google this because I was a little behind the curve and did not know anything about SAP HANA. See the ECN community gets you to think of thing you normally would not...good place to browse when you have the time. I came across this article I think explains SAP HANA the best.

http://sapignite.com/what-is-sap-hana/