Positioning SAP Datasphere and SAP Business Data Cloud

SAP Business Data Cloud is a Software-as-a-Service solution equipped with data and analytics services needed in a modern world. Together with SAP Business Technology Platform providing foundational services, SAP Business Data Cloud is a platform that enables a seamless delta data lake house architecture and combines strategic solutions such as SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Datasphere, SAP BW or BW/4HANA PCE (Private Cloud Edition), SAP Databricks, and SAP Analytics Cloud and their capabilities in one single solution. The central goal is to provide intelligent applications as pre-defined solutions across all layers of modeling.

While the SAP Datasphere business data fabric architecture was a positive move, it did not fully realize the goal of a truly one unified semantic data platform. SAP Business Data Cloud addresses these limitations by:

• One software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and subscription model for all data & analytics needs.
• Unified Data Experience: By integrating these solutions, SAP aims to offer a seamless data experience that allows customers to access, manage, and analyze data across different SAP applications and third-party sources.
• Automating Data Integration: SAP Business Data Cloud provides SAP-managed data integration, including pre-built data products and intelligent applications, eliminating the need for customers to manually integrate data, even from SAP sources.
• Extending Analytics with AI/ML: It integrates SAP Databricks, expanding analytical capabilities and enabling comprehensive ML/AI use cases.
• Data lake house architecture: Offering cost-effective storage, data federation, and computing capabilities in a layered approach
• Delivering SAP-managed content like SAP Business Data Cloud intelligent applications, which simplifies deployment compared to traditional Business Content.

SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP Business Data Cloud) is a game-changer, providing a single, fully managed cloud SaaS platform for all your data and analytics . It brings together all your SAP data, integrates third-party sources, and offers powerful governance. SAP Business Data Cloud delivers enriched data products, advanced analytics, cross-analytics, benchmarking data, and AI-powered intelligent applications, empowering you to make smarter decisions and improve business results.. It empowers SAP ERP S/4HANA (PCE, Public cloud) and line-of-business applications (such as HCM, ISBN, etc.) with actionable insights to drive more impactful decisions. It offers business-specific data packages with Data Products, and supports BI, ML, AI services, Joule, a Knowledge Graph, and planning functionalities.

What makes SAP Business Data Cloud so powerful, is that it offers the tools and technologies to meet all data and analytics requirements of a modern and agile organization. SAP Business Data Cloud provides the latest technology to support the following use cases side by side on one platform:

• Data Warehousing: A manual and semi-automatic data integration and data modeling approach
• Data Science: AI and Machine Learning based extensions of data models
• Reporting: Innovative out-of-the-box reporting and data analysis capabilities for insights on business related data
• Enterprise planning: Powerful planning and forecasting functions

From this wide range of functions, different target audiences with different requirements can choose what suits their use case. With SAP Business Data Cloud, businesses can adapt, innovate, and thrive at scale, based on advanced automation, seamless cross-solution collaboration, and innovative decision-making.

Every part of the business is deeply connected. For data storage and integration, SAP Business Data Cloud therefore allows you to centralize data from SAP and non-SAP sources into a unified semantic layer and enhance it with AI capabilities. SAP’s AI agents leverage accurate, context-rich data of your enterprise and integrate cross-company data. Thus, businesses gain actionable intelligence to bridge transactional processes and drive AI-powered growth.

A key highlight of SAP Business Data Cloud is its out-of-the-box reporting capability, featuring SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud intelligent applications. The concept of this feature is based on delivered artifacts and objects that may remind you at the first glance on the well-known 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 process steps for a ready-to-consume full-stack application are included and fully managed by SAP. You create business insights with a single click, empowering informed decision-making.

By deploying intelligent applications, you can already gather many insights into your SAP data. However, what if you needed to execute some machine learning algorithms on top of that data? To save you the trouble and the cost of copying the data into another Machine Learning Platform, SAP decided to provide Databricks as a service with SAP Business Data Cloud. As it's been tailored to the specific needs of SAP, and does not include the complete Databricks architecture and capabilities, this component is called SAP Databricks.

Managing the current complex architecture of your data warehousing solution and your large volume of business data can be a challenge. At the same time, consider how Artificial Intelligence (AI) combined with SAP BW or SAP Datasphere data can be used to automate and improve efficiency and unlock the full potential of business data. Therefore, let's discuss the options for customers who currently use or want to use SAP Datasphere or SAP BW.

SAP Datasphere was published in 2023 as the logical successor of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud with a strong focus on integration of existing non-SAP sources and cloud-based sources into the SAP HANA platform. It follows a simplified data fabric approach, with agile and flexible data modeling, SAP HANA-optimized processes, and user-friendly interfaces.

SAP Datasphere is and remains the enterprise data fabric solution of SAP for public cloud deployment. Moreover, SAP Datasphere is the central component for modeling in SAP Business Data Cloud. SAP Datasphere will therefore continue to be improved by SAP. Many development projects are motivated by the goal to improve integration with other components of SAP Business Data Cloud.

The following list gives an overview of the role that SAP Datasphere plays in the context of Business Data Cloud:

• SAP Business Data Cloud leverages SAP Datasphere's native data integration capabilities, including third-party connections (data flows, replication flows, remote tables, etc.)
• SAP Datasphere models (tables, views, analytic models) are integrated parts of the SAP Business Data Cloud intelligent applications.
• SAP Datasphere models are the major models when customers develop individual apps.
• SAP Datasphere is used for the activation of Data Products which provide the basic structure for all upper levels in SAP Business Data Cloud.
• The data is stored in the SAP Datasphere object store, which is built upon the HDLFS.
• Customers can leverage the SAP Datasphere embedded object store for data access and storage.
• SAP Datasphere is leveraged for data management and governance.

Do customers need SAP Datasphere? Most customers will likely do so, especially to use SAP-delivered intelligent applications. However, it is an individual choice which components of SAP Business Data Cloud a customer uses. Customer 1 might choose a combination of SAP Datasphere, SAC, and Databricks, Customer 2 might opt for SAP Datasphere, SAC, and BW/4HANA PCE, While Customer 3 might opt for SAC only. SAP Business Data Cloud allows flexible token allocation of capacity units. So, you only utilize the services you need.

An online SAP Datasphere estimator is planned for that helps you to determine the appropriate sizing for your SAP Business Data Cloud components.

Existing contracts will continue without issue, and there will be seamless integration with SAP Business Data Cloud, both commercially and technically.

SAP Business Data Cloud allows you to leverage your SAP BW investment and combine it with predefined Data Products and intelligent applications in SAP Business Data Cloud. In addition to the transition paths presented in the previous unit, it offers another path:

There are three steps to your modernization path:

1. Lift - SAP BW to SAP Business Data Cloud
2. Shift - SAP BW to SAP Business Data Cloud
3. Innovate - SAP BW to SAP Business Data Cloud

For SAP BW 7.5, the mainstream maintenance will then be extended to 2030 instead of 2027. This extension will give you more time to gradually shift to SAP Business Data Cloud without going to an intermediate solution (SAP BW/4HANA maintenance is planned until 2040). If your strategy is private cloud, then you might not use SAP Datasphere at all.

Additionally, you can import SAP BW/4HANA objects, such as queries and their dependencies, using the SAP BW/4HANA Model Transfer via Semantic Onboarding without extensive migration efforts. When onboarding to SAP Datasphere, the import automatically creates new entities based on SAP BW/4HANA objects and retrieves the respective semantics. With this approach, certain SAP BW investments can be moved to SAP Datasphere, replacing corresponding data flows with proven capabilities of SAP Datasphere while focusing on creating new use cases with Data Products in SAP Business Data Cloud. You can explore SAP-managed Data Products and intelligent applications to gradually replace existing SAP BW scenarios and create new ones.

After lifting your SAP BW to the private cloud, you'll be able to use the Data Product Generator to shift your data into SAP Business Data Cloud. SAP Business Data Cloud will then consume your SAP BW InfoProviders through a Data Product created in the SAP Datasphere component of SAP Business Data Cloud. To innovate your models, generated BW Data Products can be consumed in SAP Datasphere like any other Data Product. You could create new analytical scenarios by mixing the SAP data with some external data or you can share it with SAP Databricks for ML/AI scenarios.

If your strategy is public cloud, then discontinuing the BW and using SAP Datasphere as the major software is a valid path. Suppose you envision a decommissioning of your SAP BW systems, and the SAP BW investment can be covered within the scope of SAP Datasphere, BW Bridge. In that case, you can completely replace the SAP BW 7.5 or SAP BW/4HANA systems with SAP Datasphere, BW Bridge via a tool-supported conversion. Even though there will be no major feature updates for BW bridge, BW bridge remains technically and commercially available. Customers who have a public cloud strategy and no prior BW system, can benefit from accessing S-API extractors and business content similarly to the SAP BW on-premise world. This can be done in combination with a greenfield SAP Datasphere approach. You can adopt Data Products and intelligent applications with SAP Business Data Cloud. Customers with existing SAP BW investments should use the data product generator in combination with SAP Business Data Cloud for keeping their investments and preserving the semantical definition.

The question which path is better is a question of your data compliance and product strategy. The new option of using BW in SAP Business Data Cloud and the data product generation tool allows you to leave your data/objects in BW and not spend time/money on transition projects using BW Bridge. Either way, you can keep your SAP BW investment.

You can find more information on SAP Business Data Cloud and the transition options here:

• Learning journey: Modernizing your Data Warehouse Landscape - From SAP BW to SAP Datasphere

• Learning Journey: Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud

• Blog: https://blogs.one.int.sap/sapnews_en/2025/02/sap-launches-business-data-cloud/