SAP having three (or possibly more ?) SQL flavors to support databases is of course direct result of acquisitions. ASE, IQ and HANA representing three different starting points.
To Sybase's credit they realized the need to have one SQL flavor very quickly and made the two flavors in ASE and IQ almost compatible.
Hopefully SAP now will make efforts to standardize and enhance the new dialect.
I have seen ASE warm stand by, MSA and in few cases stand alone report servers (ASE/IQ) leaving OLTP on a separate server.
And need for HANA type of single database solution is borne out of not having to maintain different servers and efforts to keep the data in sync.
We have initiated process to look at "HANA Accelerator for ASE" to leverage existing logic built to use the ASE and eventually may start developing new Apps for HANA.
Cheers
Avinash