SiliconANGLE is a regular at the SAP SAPphire NOW event – we attended the conference last year and we’ll be there again this year, live broadcasting news and analysis from theCube.  Held in Orlando, SAPphire 2012 will be held from May 14-16.

Even before the event kicks off there are a few early developments that hint at what we can expect this year, and it seems that HANA will be a huge focus again, as it’s been a full year since the platform was launched at last year‘s event.

ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett shared a small preview of the topics that will be covered in the event, in one form or another. Not surprisingly, cloud and mobile will be two big areas to follow, and the company will be revealing some improvements to its latter strategy – specifically what Hewlett referred to as the elimination of some internal ‘friction.’

It seems that, on top of all that, the HANA in-memory analytics platform is going to be a major highlight at SAP SAPphire. Now that the big data solution has racked up some mileage, there may be a few actual customer case studies available for show, rather than just proof of concepts.

“It desperately needs a public portfolio of stories that talk to unique, industry specific applications that cannot be built except with HANA. That’s how it differentiates and makes a credible case for HANA as both a database and applications platform. Talk to those issues and customers will prick up their ears.”

There are some early indications that seem to set the ground for any upcoming HANA buzz. A company called Passenger will be demonstrating a social media analytics solution based on HANA: AudianceID is supposed to help brands identify and reach out to  influencers that  could have a positive impact on their merchandising efforts.

SAP itself released an early announcement saying that it will publish the first edition of the HANA Essentials guide in real time, apparently in order to address companies better page by page.