Harnessing SAP Datasphere’s capability in Business Data Cloud to unleash real-time SAP reporting.

“During the publishing of this blog, SAP announced the release of SAP Business Cloud (BDC). This blog focuses on SAP Datasphere’s native capabilities in BDC, and we will be releasing a follow up blog that will incorporate the exciting features of BDC”. 

At NTT Data we are constantly looking to deliver the best-in-class data platforms for organisations of all size. With a focus on both the technical implementations and the reducing total cost of ownership of the platform. 

While organisations are looking for a modern data platform (MDP) that provides real-time insights into their critical data, they are also wary of the costs of building out large-scale data platforms that require multiple steps of data handling and processing. 

This move is not just a technological upgrade but a strategic decision that can lead to greater levels of efficiency, scalability, and innovation. 

SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software. 

• SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce.  

• 99 of the 100 largest companies in the world are SAP customers.  

• 97 of the 100 greenest companies in the world run SAP.  

• 85 of the 100 largest companies in the world are SAP S/4HANA customers.  

• Approximately 80% of SAP’s customers are SMEs. 

These statistics also tell us that SAP applications are generators of highly valuable business data, across all lines of business, which is “fuel” for generating insights and data driven decision-making. 

With this series of blogs, we will be looking into the inherent advantages of using SAP Datasphere’s capability in SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) to unleash the power of SAP data.  Starting from looking into the real-time integration from SAP then CDS reporting and then the process of moving from SAP BW to Datasphere. 

SAP Integration 

There is an ever-increasing need to build actionable insights from this SAP data and is critical that the data is available in a manner which enables organisations to respond rapidly and effectively. 

Real-Time Reporting 

Real-Time reporting refers to building actionable data models that provide the data for analysis as soon as the transaction occurs in the SAP system.    

SAP Datasphere (within BDC) supports both remote tables for instant access to transaction data and real-time replication for near real-time (within seconds) transaction data. 

Changing between modes of replication from federation, replication and snapshots are all configured via the GUI as a table option and do not require a data engineer to configure.  There is no need to build control tables with timestamps to control delta loading. 

Federation with Remote Tables 

By default, remote tables federate data, and each time the data is used, a call is made to the remote system to load. Once a remote table is imported, it is available for use by all users of the space and can be used as a source for views.  This scenario is perfect for fast moving data such as sales transactions and can be used to power real-time dashboards. Performance can be optimised by using push-down filters and only selecting the required columns for reporting. 

Replication with Remote Tables 

SAP data sources in SAP Datasphere support real-time replication via remote tables, this allows the users to potentially improve performance of reporting and reduce the impact on the source systems.  For most scenarios the speed of replication will be close enough to real-time to allow for actionable insights as soon as the transactions have occurred in the source system 

Cost of data handling 

Data like any other material a company has should be stored and handled as efficiently and effectively as possible, moving data through different layers can end up increasing the running cost of an analytics platform.   

Each time data is moved from one layer to another this can add costs for storage, ingress, networking and most importantly the cost of having a team of data engineers to support the movement of data through each layer.   

It has been estimated that organisations can produce a 138% saving in the TCO using Datasphere vs DIY stack.⁽¹⁾

Conclusion 

With real-time replication supported by default and the ability for an analyst to easily convert a remote table from federated to replicated SAP Datasphere and SAP BDC are the market leaders in providing both real-time SAP analytics and a lower TCO. 

Ref:

1. https://gigaom.com/report/data-fabric-field-study

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