What is SAP Business Data Cloud
SAP Business Data Cloud is the newly launched analytics platform of SAP. It brings together what SAP already offered in Analytics and adds what was missing: a modern data (engineering & AI) platform - now enabled in partnership with Databricks: i.e. through SAP Databricks.
SAP Business Data Cloud thus combines SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, the link to SAP BW and a new component: "SAP Databricks".
What do we know
We know that...
- many SAP customers are struggling in modernizing the SAP BW platform & interconnecting it with a modern data Engineering & AI platform like Databricks. As such, this new platform is highly demanded & long-awaited.
- unlocking SAP data isn't smooth & easy and it has never been. Getting data out of the SAP ecosystem has always been prevented by licenses, audits and/or pure functionalities. As such, this new platform turns it around: bring all other data to SAP rather than getting your SAP data out...
- SAP data is for many customers a cornerstone as it runs ERP but often also broader. As such, this platform that also has a business-user interface ambition & the necessary Gen AI agent support (with Joule) comes as a gift: can it be a smart layer on top of the classic-old ERP interface?
What we don't yet know on SAP Business Data Cloud...
- Will SAP Databricks have all Databricks features as we know them? Will it have Serverless, will it allow to leverage federation, will it allow to connect to e.g. Azure Data Lakes or OneLake?
- Will SAP Databricks allow for outbound data sharing? e.g. will we be able to use SAP Databricks to easily delta share our SAP Data out of SAP Business Data Cloud to our existing (other) Databricks workspaces? This was what SAP was working on with SAP Datasphere yet it required an expensive SAP Datasphere license...
- What will the pricing be of SAP Business Data Cloud? All of the products it combines weren't necessarily cheap... what does this mean for SAP Business Data Cloud's pricing?
Where does this move come from
As used in the announcement call by the SAP spokesman: "SAP's analytics platform strategy has been a story of transformation". In the last years, SAP launched SAP Analytics Cloud - i.e. SAC (as alternative to Power BI & Tableau), it launched SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (as cloud data warehouse alternative of SAP BW but also as compete versus Microsoft Synapse, Databricks & Snowflake) and, quite some years back, it launched SAP Data Intelligence Platform (a docker-based Data Platform allowing to run any Python, SQL jobs on an SAP-managed Kubernetes environment). Many attempts to bringing thé best Analytics platform out there have been tried.
It’s no surprise that SAP is doubling down on SAP Business Data Cloud—the Analytics & AI platform market is evolving at lightning speed and is more valuable than ever. Tech giants like Microsoft and Databricks are continuously pushing the boundaries with new Analytics & AI platforms like Microsoft Fabric and Databricks itself. Today, companies are looking for broad Analytics & AI data platforms capable to end-to-end enable their (AI) data strategies, facilitate enterprises demand for data seamless & do this all governed, business-friendly & with self-service. The days of rigid data warehouses are fading and organizations want modern data platforms with flexible, semantic data layers that bridge operational systems with analytics. With BDC (Business Data Cloud), SAP is making a bold move to stay relevant, but the big question is: is it not to late & can they keep up?
SAP Databricks (running Databricks on SAP Cloud) might be an excellent move: by partnering with likely thé leading platform on analytics, SAP gives away part of the revenue & value but onboards a proven product leading the way on engineering & AI.
What is SAP Databricks
Just to be clear: Databricks isn't owned by SAP. Databricks is a standalone tech giant that builds, owns & monitizes its leading analytics & AI platform yet does this on various third-party clouds: i.e. Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud & also now SAP Cloud. Databricks emerged almost a decade ago by being very successful to enable organizations to process large volumes of data, perform complex data transformations, and do this all seamlessly & fast in an easy platform in the Cloud. While big data was their original USP, today, Databricks is considered one of thé big platform players in the Analytics & AI domain. Today, Databricks is very widely used by both big & small companies and considered a proven platform. Databricks is offered since many years on Microsoft Azure and AWS & since 2 years on Google Cloud.
SAP doesn't have itself a competing analytics product as broad & proven as Databricks. In comparison of many other data warehouse platforms, Databricks is a unified data analytics platform that integrates all capabilities needed to do data engineering, data warehousing but also Machine Learning & (Generative) AI development. Founded by the founders of Apache Spark, MLflow, and Delta Lake, Databricks provides a truly unified environment analytics & AI and they are pushing the boundaries by releasing new features & capabilities monthly.
What is Delta Sharing & why is this relevant
Delta Sharing is an open-source protocol developed by Databricks to boost that various platforms share data easier. It allows to share data without moving the data physically: you can query data in an Azure Databricks workspace while data resides in your AWS environment...
In this context of SAP, Delta Sharing is a big enabler. What we already know is that
- Delta Sharing will be used to enable SAP BW data to SAP Business Data Cloud: as such, the data will remain in SAP BW but will be queryable by SAP Databricks. This is big as it means you can write Databricks jobs on SAP BW data without moving the data. You can thus modernize on new data sources without touching that old legacy SAP BW data warehouse. However, as downside, it also means you keep your SAP BW running & you'll pay for it.
- Delta Sharing works between Databricks workspaces. As such, you can share data from AWS to Azure without actually moving the data. Similarly, we should be able to share SAP data (S4 or BW data) through SAP Databricks to our Azure Databricks environment without actually moving the data.
The question is thus: Can SAP Business Data Cloud allow to smoothly get the SAP data out of the SAP Ecosystem? With Delta Sharing in SAP Databricks it could (technically) and we are keen to know if this will be allowed & enabled. If so, SAP Databricks acts as an alternative for leading data integration tools like Fivetran or Qlik Replicate.
Many unknowns... we don't know yet how this will technically all work, when it will be available and to what license cost SAP Business Data Cloud will require...
Our reflections
With this announcement, SAP re-enters the game of Analytics Platforms. Until now, SAP wasn't often considered as pure player and often tools like Databricks were used in a mixed architecture. To enable that, niche tools exist to replicate SAP data into Databricks like Fivetran, Qlik Replicate or Theobald (each with their pros & cons). With SAP BDC, SAP simplifies & invites the leading analytics platform player Databricks 'into their home' to unlock the SAP data.
But a lot is unknown, the SAP BDC isn't yet openly available and pricing is unknown. As proven many times before, the proof of launching a new product at SAP (but also elsewhere) is the actual roll-out & making sure the functionalities promised actually work end-to-end.
What if you want Databricks on top of your SAP S/4HANA data right now
One strategy is to wait for SAP BDC & await how it will work out in terms of pricing, functionalities & stability... or you can decide not to wait & to work with what's already proven out there: for example by building out a Databricks platform on Microsoft Azure and integrating the SAP S/4HANA data as many organizations have already done before.
Read some of our recent use cases here:
- Strengthening Analytics at Darta as they move to SAP S/4HANA | element61
- How Renson tackled their Data Warehouse Migration | element61
What if you are modernizing your SAP BW to Databricks
You don't modernize anything by building a layer on top of it. None of the above changes anything to consider & reflect on a SAP BW migration strategy to Databricks. While SAP offers with SAP Business Data Cloud the capability to build a layer on top of SAP BW, this is in many scenario's not the best option.
If you are thinking or considering in modernizing your SAP BW data warehouse & rather connect directly Databricks to SAP data, above announcement of SAP Business Data Cloud gives you options: do you want to run Databricks within SAP (benefiting from integrating) or do you want to run Databricks elsewhere (benefiting from neutral ground and/or where your non-SAP might already reside).
Conclusion
We live in an exciting world. With this announcement, SAP opens up the questions on where to build which analytics platform: close to ERP or rather neutral from any of my systems. As element61, we are ready to assist in clarifying the options & all pros & cons. Our expertise in SAP & Databricks ensures that we can help you with a broad perspective. Do the reach out & let's openly discuss the pros & cons of various options in your context - contact us!
More information
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