Lucas, p.s.:
The to_timestamp() on HANA does convert an ISO 8601 timestamp properly only if the format string is not provided; however it does not accept the "T" and "Z" as part of an otherwise valid format (e.g. to_timestamp('2016-01-19T23:45:22.678Z', 'YYYY-MM-DDTHH24:MI:SS.FF3Z') ).
This action seems counterintuitive to me, leading to the results I am seeing.
Donn