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Business analytics & AI at the heart of the new SAP strategy:

SAP Business Data Cloud

A new era has begun: SAP is putting data and AI at the heart of its strategy. The SAP Business Data Cloud seamlessly connects business and data, opening up completely new possibilities for your corporate management.

What is the SAP Business Data Cloud?

The SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) is a fully managed SaaS platform that retains SAP's native business logic and thus avoids intensive reconciliation between systems.

By integrating with Cloud ERP, SAP BW and non-SAP systems, the BDC forms a single source of truth. The seamless integration with Databricks enables the training of ML models based on SAP live data and thus the establishment of Joule and Agentic AI in the company.

The core services of the BDC are the SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BW/4HANA and Databricks, which are united under one roof and thus resolve the challenges of data silos. The central components are:

  • Insight Apps: Insight Apps are predefined, powerful dashboards for department-specific or cross-departmental visualizations that provide business-related raw data automatically in the BDC.
  • Data products: This is predefined raw data that is fully managed by SAP. Within the data products, the business-related data is semantically organized in such a way that the context is maintained.
  • Delta sharing: Data sharing via the zero-copy functionality of Databricks (using the object store) ensures bidirectional harmonization of the data. This can be merged and enriched to develop AI applications and gain AI-supported insights.
  • BW modernization: There are various options to leverage existing SAP BW investments in the BDC and enrich them with powerful AI/ML functions. For BW 7.5 PCE, the end of maintenance will also be postponed to 2030, BW/4 PCE will remain unchanged at 2040.
  • AI/ML models: The SAP Business Data Cloud supports advanced AI and ML applications in business processes - with native integration of Python and R models and without any data replication.

Components of the SAP Business Data Cloud:

The BDC integrates existing SAP solutions and new elements into a new overall platform.

SAP Datasphere:

SAP Datasphere (DSP) is the semantic component of the BDC for mapping business logic as virtual models or with persistence of data in the object store. It supports companies in centrally managing, integrating and providing data from various sources - in real time and in the cloud. It is the logical successor to SAP BW and can also fully replace it. It also offers specialist departments the opportunity to create their own models and analyses in a centrally managed environment.

SAP Analytics Cloud:

SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is the central solution for visualization, reporting and planning, including predictions based on AI models. It enables data models to be consumed on a technological platform and data to be incorporated into integrated planning solutions on this basis. With SAC Seamless Planning, it is now possible to access SAP Datasphere data directly and write the processed planning data directly back to DSP without having to store data in SAC models.

BW Modernization:

The focus here is clearly on the analytics-first approach, with the aim of lifting the BW system into the cloud before the ERP system is transformed. To accelerate this approach, BW systems up from version 7.5 can be operated in the BDC as a Private Cloud Edition (PCE). This means that BW can be continuously replaced by SAP Datasphere and/or BDC's own, self-managed artifacts can be made available via the data product generator.

More about SAP Datasphere
More about SAP Analytics cloud
More about SAP BW

SAP Databricks

SAP Databricks is a Databricks variant adapted to the BDC. It has many advantages, especially for companies that want to make data-driven decisions and merge SAP data with non-SAP data.

Integration of SAP and non-SAP data

  • Connection of SAP data (e.g. from S/4HANA, BW/4HANA, HANA) with third-party sources such as IoT, CRM, weblogs, cloud databases, etc.
  • 360-degree view of customers, processes, supply chains and markets.
  • Support for hybrid data landscapes and reduction of data silos

Lakehouse architecture

  • Connection of data lake and data warehouse in one platform.
  • Support for structured and unstructured data as well as batch and streaming workloads
  • Central database for BI, analytics and AI - with consistent governance

Scalability & performance

  • Cloud-native and elastically scalable - ideal for large data volumes
  • Efficient processing of real-time and historical data
  • High speed thanks to optimized Spark engine and Delta Lake

Advanced analytics & AI/ML

  • Native support for machine learning, AI and deep learning
  • Data scientists work with Python, R, SQL, Scala directly on SAP data
  • Areas of application: Forecasting, anomaly detection, process optimization, personalization, etc.

Self-service analytics & BI

  • Integration with BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Looker
  • Self-service access for analysts and specialist departments
  • Faster insights without IT or SAP dependency

Security, governance & compliance

  • Unity Catalog for data cataloging, access control, lineage and auditing
  • Support for compliance requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc.
  • Integration with SAP Data Custodian possible for additional security requirements

Open platform & interoperability

  • Support for open standards: Apache Spark, Delta Lake, Parquet, MLflow and many more.
  • Compatible with modern toolchains (e.g. dbt, Airflow, Git, REST APIs)

Efficiency & innovation benefits

  • Reduces data movement and complex ETL processes
  • Faster time-to-insight and development of data-driven solutions
  • Promotes agile working methods and interdisciplinary collaboration

More about Databricks

SAP Databricks creates a powerful data platform for companies that use SAP - with an open, scalable and AI-enabled architecture. It is the bridge between classic ERP and the modern world of data & AI - centralized, secure and future-proof.

SAP Joule, the AI co-pilot from SAP

SAP Joule, the AI Copilot in the Business Data Cloud, has many advantages, especially when it comes to making complex data usable for all employees - and not just for data scientists!

Self-service for everyone - without IT dependency

  • Users from the specialist area (e.g. sales, controlling, purchasing) can work with data in natural language (e.g. "What was the Q1 turnover in southern Germany?")
  • No SQL knowledge or technical understanding of tools required
  • Reduces waiting times for reports or dashboards

Faster, data-based decisions

  • Business users receive immediate answers, visualizations or recommendations for action
  • Decisions can be made faster and more informed - e.g. based on real-time data
  • High benefit in day-to-day business & in ad hoc situations

More independence in the specialist area

  • Departments can carry out their own analyses, monitor KPIs and test hypotheses - without any technical dependency
  • IT and data teams are relieved
  • Promotes agility, personal responsibility and the ability to innovate

Support from AI - work more productively

  • Copilot helps you create SQL queries, visualizations, dashboards and much more.
  • Automates repetitive tasks - more time for analysis, strategy & implementation
  • Also supports data analysts and data scientists with more complex issues

Bridge between the specialist area and data teams

  • The copilot can automatically generate SQL, code or visualizations that can be reused together
  • Better communication between the specialist department and technology
  • Greater transparency through explainable answers, data sources and logic

Secure, traceable and scalable

  • Outputs not only answers, but also the derivation (e.g. SQL queries) - important for governance & trust
  • Supports guidelines for access, data lineage and compliance
  • Scalable from small teams to global departments

Onboarding, efficiency & innovation boost

  • New employees can quickly become productive - without long training sessions
  • Spontaneous ideas or analyses can be implemented directly
  • Enables data-driven innovation in the department - without major hurdles

The AI Copilot in the BDC is a real game changer - especially for the specialist area. It makes data immediately usable, promotes independence and speed and brings IT, data and business onto a common, intelligent platform.

Document Grounding:

SAP Joule also enables in-house AI applications through the Document Grounding feature:

What is document grounding?

  • Extension of the SAP Joule Q&A function by using your own unstructured or semi-structured documents.
  • Connection to existing repositories such as SharePoint is possible.
  • Users receive answers quickly and reliably from their own company documents - without manual searching.

Practical example (Use Case: SAP SuccessFactors):

  • For example, employees can ask directly: "How long is the entitlement to parental leave?"
  • Joule automatically searches stored HR guidelines and provides precise answers.
  • Significant improvement in the area of Employee Self Service.

Business Impact:

  • Intuitive user experience & high efficiency in self-service.
  • Reduction in operating costs (TCO) thanks to 24/7 support.
  • 70% time saving for employees when searching for information (e.g. HR policies).
  • 81 % time saving when processing HR tickets.
  • Transferable to other areas: e.g. Sales (product information) or Finance (financial guidelines).

Technology behind document grounding in the SAP AI Hub:

  • Uses RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) for context enrichment for LLMs.
  • Indexing Pipeline: processes data sources, breaks down documents, creates vector embeddings (SAP HANA Vector DB).
  • Vector Database: enables fast searches through vector comparison.
  • Retrieval: an embedding-based search is performed for each query to find relevant text passages.

Do you have any questions or would you like to talk to us?

We look forward to hearing from you!