Interview with Hagen Jander - SAP Business Data Cloud demystified

On February 13, 2024, SAP announced the introduction of the new Business Data Cloud (BDC) product portfolio, which marks a groundbreaking step in data processing and analysis. The portfolio integrates established solutions such as SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP Business Warehouse (Private Cloud Edition) under a unified commercial framework. The newly introduced components SAP Databricks and Insight Apps deserve special attention, as they promise innovative approaches to data-driven decision-making. Given the limited details available so far, many companies are justifiably wondering what specific implications the BDC has for their data strategy. With this blog series, we aim to provide clarity and in-depth insights into the technical and strategic aspects of the Business Data Cloud.

In this article, we present an exclusive interview with Dr. Hagen Jander, Vice President of Data Warehouse Product Management & Strategy at SAP, who gives us detailed insights into the vision and architecture of the BDC. Regular readers will already know Dr. Jander from our April 2023 post, in which he explained the then newly announced SAP Datasphere solution. 

In the coming weeks, you can also look forward to an in-depth interview with Databricks representatives about their partnership with SAP and technical integration with BDC, as well as our comprehensive analysis and assessment of the solutions presented.

Q&A about SAP Business Data Cloud

How do you currently classify the challenges for companies in handling SAP and non-SAP data and how does SAP Business Data Cloud support them in overcoming them?

With SAP Business Data Cloud, we help organizations address current requirements and challenges in combining SAP and non-SAP data. Among other things, our customers use it to realize:

• Easy access to fully managed SAP data products and “turnkey” Insight Apps – with a corresponding reduction in the cost, complexity and time required to extract and prepare data from SAP systems.

• Consistent aggregation of data across business units in a harmonized data model – with integration across SAP and non-SAP data.

• Creating a high-quality data foundation for AI scenarios and other digital transformation initiatives.

How is Databricks integrated with SAP Business Data Cloud?

Databricks is seamlessly integrated with SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) to provide a comprehensive data and analytics platform. This integration enables customers to use Databricks' powerful data processing and AI/ML tools with the semantically rich, pre-built data products from various SAP applications. Here are some of the key features of the integration:

1. SAP Databricks: This is the official product name for the SAP-managed Databricks service that is natively embedded in SAP Business Data Cloud. Users can launch and access the SAP Databricks workspace directly from SAP Business Data Cloud.

2. Bidirectional, zero-copy data integration: Delta sharing technology enables deep bidirectional integration that allows customers to share and integrate data without copies. This accelerates time to value and enables faster AI and analytics development.

3. Commercialization via SAP BDC: The Databricks component is commercialized via SAP Business Data Cloud capacity units in the SAP BDC subscription.

This integration provides customers with a powerful platform for achieving comprehensive business insights and analytical capabilities.

Insight Apps are understood as SAP-managed data products. How does SAP ensure that the customer-specific extensibility of these solutions is still guaranteed?

Insight Apps are pre-built SaaS components of SAP Business Data Cloud that provide users with intelligent insights into their data. The Insight Apps leverage the underlying data based on curated SAP data products from SAP business applications.

We address the requirement for customer-specific extensibility with various developments:

• Customer field extensions: SAP Business Data Cloud supports customer field extensions on a “pass-through basis”. This means that customer-added fields are included in the local SAP data product in the customer's SAP Business Data Cloud tenant. This allows customers to extend the data model with additional fields that they need for their business requirements.

• Semantic onboarding: For scenarios in which complete data coverage by SAP data products is not yet available, SAP offers existing semantic onboarding capabilities. This allows customers to integrate their data and metadata, ensuring that they can integrate their specific data requirements into the SAP ecosystem.

In addition, there is the option of using all the functionalities of SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud within SAP Business Data Cloud to implement or adapt specific models and analyses.

Watch the recording of our webinar:

"SAP Datasphere and the Databricks Lakehouse Approach"

SAP's strategic solution for modernizing business warehouse system landscapes for existing customers now appears to be SAP BW PCE as part of the Business Data Cloud. Is the BW Bridge still relevant?

With the integration of SAP BW PCE into SAP Business Data Cloud, we are offering an additional option and added value for the takeover and modernization of SAP Business Warehouse and SAP BW/4HANA landscapes in the cloud – for example, the transfer of InfoProviders into data products and their easy use in Databricks, which is currently under development. SAP BW Bridge also remains relevant as part of SAP Business Data Cloud and will continue to be supported and enhanced – for example, with SAP Datasphere as a source and SAP BW Bridge model import.

With the Datasphere Catalog and the Databricks Unity Catalog, we have two components of SAP BDC with the same name but different functionality. Can you explain how these components interact? What other role does Collibra play as a catalog solution in conjunction with the SAP Business Data Cloud?

The Datasphere Catalog and the Databricks Unity Catalog may have similar naming conventions, but they serve different roles within the SAP Business Data Cloud ecosystem and can work together to provide comprehensive data management and governance capabilities.

Together, these components provide a robust data management and governance framework within SAP Business Data Cloud, enabling organizations to leverage their data assets while maintaining control and compliance.

So far, SAP has relied on its HANA in-memory technology to enable high-performance reporting. What role does SAP HANA still play with regard to the new persistence in the object store?

To enable more flexibility and scalability, we decouple data storage in object stores from processing in SAP Business Data Cloud. For this, SAP HANA Cloud with powerful in-memory technology continues to play a central role.

What is the roadmap for SAP Business Data Cloud, and when can customers expect the announced features for your hyperscaler (Azure, AWS, GCP) to be available?

SAP Business Data Cloud is initially available on AWS data centers. In Q2 2025, we plan to offer data centers for Google Cloud and in H2 2025, we plan to offer Microsoft Azure data centers.

SAP Business Data Cloud - Thanks for the insights

We would like to thank Hagen Jander for his time and the exciting insights into the SAP Business Data Cloud - from integration with Databricks to customer-specific extensibility. We are eagerly following further developments.

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