What is SAP Data Warehouse Cloud to SAP BW Customers?

SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (SDWC), an end-user driven tool with on-the-fly data mining, has been launched. One must already be thinking how their analytics or data warehousing financial investment may be impacted by this.

Especially, for those with BW/4HANA or BW on HANA (BWoH) already established, how and where does SAP Data Storage facility Cloud SDWC match the landscape? One thing is certain, SDWC is not here to change SAP BW/4HANA or BWoH. SDWC has its area and function to fill out your landscape.

How to leverage my existing BW?

On-premise BW/4HANA, which connects to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud SDWC with the ABAP Port, can combine resources of pre-transformed data with analytics-ready data from BW with various other sources in a single system (e.g. data lakes, non-SAP systems, etc.), which is a major advantage.

A BW query or BW InfoProvider can be easily consumed into SAP Data Warehouse Cloud SDWC, where it’s possible to build views/model in both visual and SQL kind. Models in SDWC offers the flexibility of transformation through calculated columns, algorithms and data filters.

Inbuilt SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) features within SDWC provides an ideal platform for improved analytics and decision making.

Examples/Use Cases

A typical example could be for a manufacturer who would want to incorporate and analyse’Sales’ data and customer linked Point of Sale (PoS) data via the supply chain, from retailers to consumers.

In this situation, cloud data from the retailer’s ERP and the consumer connected POS are fed into BW environments. Though SAP BW/4HANA or BWoH and their proven record to give everything needed to build and preserve data for reporting demands, the question develops: does it make sense to then load and store all the third-party data in BW?

SDWC, as part of the system landscape with its online accessibility feature, can connect and integrate third-party cloud data (POS or other data coming from the retailer) with BW data. SDWC enables business users to incorporate several data resources and build their models, stories and/ or dashboards to generate analytics and insights. On the other side of the fence, BW systems remain to have the versatility to keep relevant or hot (data that’s accessed extremely often) third party information leading to less ETL effort and lower overall-sizing cost.

One more instance is when consumers have a huge global presence, and not all entities use SAP ERP applications (SAP S/4 or ECC) as a source. A typical solution adapted by many clients is to load, store and report non-SAP data in and via SAP BW. Instead, for any type of fast analysis, business customers can leverage SDWC to incorporate and/or merge the required quick in a single platform on-the-fly, which once more decreases ETL initiative into SAP BW.

For the above use cases, the data landscape could follow the below diagram.

Value Add

Besides the typical attributes like security, connections, simplified UI and others, there are some others that this tool offers:

1. Space Management: A dedicated workspace managed for user groups or individuals. ‘Spaces’ within space management provide a place to manage data, models, connections and user access specific to that space. An instance of ‘space’ can be a business like financing or logistics.

2.   Data builder: This feature assists manage data from different data sources such as tables or views. Models are developed here with some added flexibility to join, union and filter source tables. The option to create calculated columns is also available.

3.  Story builder: A visualization or a dashboard board builder with effective SAC-embedded functions.

4.  Virtual access to data sources: SDWC can connect to SAP and non-SAP data sources. Data brought into SDWC has an option to persist data or read it virtually from the source.

Pricing

A crucial selling point, SAP has offered SAP Data Warehouse Cloud SDWC through a ‘pay-per-use’ model, similar to other cloud offerings. Click here for further pricing details. SAP is also offering a 30-day trial version to check out the tool.

Conclusion

Generally, SDWC, with its smart attributes, adds more adaptability to incorporate dynamic business requirements. Wise usage of the combined remedies of SAP BW and also SDWC is vital to achieving a quick, effective and also effective outcome of insights which can be created by and for business users.

So, if you are an SAP BW/4HANA or BWoH consumer, it would certainly be a critical decision to additional purchase SDWC. SAP BW/4HANA (on-premise) and SDWC (cloud) applications can co-exist, making the best use of their application functions, integrated with a single landscape.

That’s all for today. If you’re interested to read more blogs on this topic, feel free to visit our website.

At ZaranTech, we also offer self-paced, online certification program on SAP HANA,  mentored by some of the sought after and experienced subject matter experts. Browse through our course pages for further information.

Happy learning!