Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud

In this lesson, we introduce you to SAP Business Data Cloud. SAP Business Data Cloud is a Software-as-a-Service solution equipped with data and analytics services. With SAP Business Technology Platform providing foundational services, SAP Business Data Cloud combines strategic solutions such as SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Datasphere, and SAP Analytics Cloud and their respective capabilities into one single solution.

One of the most important innovations of SAP BDC are the data products.

Data products are ready-to-use data sets provided and managed by SAP. Data products represent business subjects or entities such as customer, product, or sales invoice. Data products contain not just one field of data, but all the fields required to form a complete data set. Data products support transactional and master data, but very importantly, all data products include the essential meta-data that describes the meaning of the data. A data product also includes descriptive information that is used by business users for discovery. Data products cover all source applications across the entire SAP ERP and LoB application range.

By providing out-of-the-box data products, SAP has addressed the challenge of providing customers with easy and fast access to their SAP data.

Data products are fully managed by SAP which means the data replication from the source system to the SAP BDC storage is handled by SAP. Customers select the required data products from a user-friendly cockpit. They are easily installed by customers with just a few clicks. The need for customers to build complex data pipelines to pull data from SAP applications is no longer needed.

SAP BDC combines existing best-of-breed SAP solutions with new software components.

SAP has taken its two flagship data management and analytics solutions, SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud and they have embedded SAP Databricks. SAP has also provided the opportunity for customers to include their existing SAP BW in their SAP BDC landscape.

Let's list the software components of SAP BDC.

The existing SAP solutions that are part of the architecture of SAP BDC:

• SAP Datasphere - to provide the data integration and modeling layer
• SAP Analytics Cloud - to provide the analysis layer
• SAP BW - if a customer already has SAP BW, this can be used as a data source.

The new software components of SAP BDC:

• SAP Databricks - to provide AI and machine learning development tools.
• SAP BDC Foundation Services - to manage the data products in a single domain model.

SAP BDC is not a replacement for SAP Datasphere or SAP BW. SAP BDC is a super-set of those solutions and adds many more capabilities including machine learning and AI development. SAP Datasphere is an essential component of SAP BDC. SAP BW, if required, can also play an important role in SAP BDC. SAP BDC is an evolution of the data fabric that SAP began developing with SAP Datasphere.

SAP BDC can handle many use-cases including:

• Development of AI and machine learning models
• Data Warehousing
• Planning and BI
• Data Governance and Compliance
• Development of intelligent applications to support all business processes.

SAP BDC is built to serve all personas of the organization.

SAP BDC integrates and harmonizes data from all SAP line-of-business solutions (LoBs) such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, and Fieldglass. SAP takes care of ensuring the data from all source applications is replicated to SAP BDC in real-time so this is no longer the responsibility of the customer.

In the past, customers had to take care of preparing the SAP data and combining it before it was ready for use in analytic scenarios. Customers can now invest their time and money on added-value projects such as delivering AI solutions, and not on time-consuming preparation of data from the various SAP applications.

Data from all SAP applications is combined and made available to the business user under a single domain model. This means that in cases when different SAP applications define the same business entity, for example, customer or employee, SAP BDC brings them together under one new domain. This means that the business users do not need to care about where the data originates, because they only work with one harmonized definition of the entity. All valuable meta data from the source systems is also collected and stored with the entity so no business meaning is lost during the replication to SAP BDC.

A key deliverable of SAP BDC are the ready-to-run analytics known as Intelligent Applications.

Intelligent Applications are based on predelivered artifacts and objects that may remind you of the well-known SAP-delivered business content in SAP BW/4HANA, SAP Datasphere, or SAP Analytics Cloud. But there's a significant difference to the existing concepts. Unlike before, all artifacts, objects, and business data for a ready-to-consume full-stack application are included, and are fully managed by SAP. Specifically, here is what happens when you install an Intelligent Application:

• Automated generation of dashboards, the underlying data models and the data pipelines from SAP source applications.
• Automated data provisioning from data source to dashboard to ensure real-time data is provided to the business user.
• Automated generation of roles that can be assigned to authorized business users.

With just a few clicks, an Intelligent Application is installed and is ready to use by the business user who can get started quickly gaining insights from their SAP data. SAP is responsible for the end-to-end delivery and ongoing maintenance of the Intelligent Applications. There is no need for the customer to manage the initial and ongoing data replication from their SAP source applications, this is taken care of by SAP as a fully managed service. Installing an Intelligent Application is a straight-forward business administrator task and no longer a specialized IT task.

As well as the delivered out-of-the-box Intelligent Applications, SAP Business Cloud also provides the tools to develop your own analytical applications using custom data extraction, data models, and dashboards, integrating data from any SAP and third-party sources.

SAP BDC is built on SAP Business Technology Platform.

This means IT teams will already be familiar with the infrastructure and technology of SAP BDC.

Many of the services of SAP Business Technology Platform are used in SAP BDC, for example:

• Unified Customer Landscape (UCL) used to connect the SAP BDC components, such as SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud.
• SAP HANA Cloud provides the data storage and compute layer.
• Security and Compliance to manage access and permissions and regulatory compliance.
• SAP Build to provide developer tools to build your own applications on SAP BDC data.

Data from your SAP source applications is replicated to the Foundation Services of SAP Business Data Cloud. This data is then harmonized with other relevant business data from other applications. It is then transformed and enriched to become a data product.

At the heart of SAP Business Data Cloud is SAP Datasphere, which provides the foundational models on top of the data products. The models are provided by SAP to support the predelivered Intelligent Applications but custom data models can be added. SAP Datasphere also serves as a central tool for managing analytical roles and data access control, helping you to determine which business users can view specific data.

SAP Databricks is used to enrich your SAP data using AI and machine learning. SAP Databricks provides data scientists with a comprehensive set of tools for data engineering projects. SAP Databricks is the embedded version of Enterprise Databricks and has been specially developed through the partnership with SAP and Databricks to bring data science tooling to SAP BDC customers who do not already run, or plan to run, the Enterprise version of Databricks.

Customers who run SAP BW can include it in the landscape of SAP BDC. The approach means that customers can onboard their BW data into SAP Business Data Cloud, allowing it to be used to generate data products.

SAP Analytics Cloud stories are used to provide the required dashboard in out-of-the-box reporting scenarios with SAP Business Data Cloud Intelligent Applications. With its advanced visualization and planning functions, SAP Analytics Cloud serves the business user as a central tool for exploring the requested business insights or executing planning functions. Furthermore, using SAP Analytics Cloud, business users can run ad-hoc analysis, explore the provided data with AI-driven chat capabilities, or act on their insights with AI-driven suggestions, bridging the gap between analytics and their end-to-end business processes.

The SAP Business Data Cloud cockpit has an important role in the overall SAP Business Data Cloud landscape. With this tool you can browse and find predelivered Intelligent Applications and data products, install Intelligent Applications, and share data products with SAP Databricks to be able to extend them with AI, and machine learning capabilities.

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SAP Business Data Cloud and its associated data engineering and data analysis components (including the new Intelligent Applications) are covered in more detail in the Introducing Business Data Cloud course.