SAP Business Data Cloud Unifies Enterprise Data

SAP has announced SAP Business Data Cloud, a new solution that aims to unify SAP and third-party data across an organization. The company sees the offering as an evolution of data, analytics, and planning strategy that addresses the challenges SAP is seeing in the data market today. Some of those hurdles include data silos, the high cost of data and analytics, and a struggle to implement an effective data strategy to support business transformation due to data quality issues and disconnects between IT systems and business applications.

SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) is a fully managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering with a single URL and a single contract. It brings together SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Business Warehouse (BW), and SAP Databricks, a fully embedded component of Databricks that will ensure native integration through zero-copy delta sharing, allowing for seamless data exchange.

The solution is designed so that there will be no disruption for existing SAP Datasphere, SAP ECC, or SAP BW customers. It includes data activation and extensions, third-party consumption tools, and an open data ecosystem. Existing users of SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere will be able to transition to SAP BDC without any disruptions. SAP BW customers will be able to lift and shift their existing environments into SAP BDC using SAP BW/4HANA Private Cloud Edition while continuing to use their current systems.

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Solving Data Challenges

Nearly every organization creates huge volumes of data every day. Some of this is structured data, such as data stored in ERP or financial systems. However, there is also unstructured data, like copies of documents, text files, or images collected from IoT devices. Combining this data in a meaningful way is difficult and can result in a loss of productivity. Moreover, most organizations have data silos that exist because data resides in solutions from multiple vendors. SAP BDC is designed to solve these data challenges by connecting both structured and unstructured data from SAP and non-SAP systems.

With AI becoming increasingly important and relevant for organizations to deploy, it is vital to have a common semantic data layer for business data. SAP BDC will provide a harmonized model on which customers can use business AI and AI agents to boost productivity and revolutionize the way data is managed across the enterprise.

Combining Data, Analytics, and Warehousing

While the upcoming end of maintenance of SAP BW has been just as rapidly approaching as that of core SAP Business Suite applications, there has not been a true path to the cloud for these customers until now. While SAP Datasphere offered some capabilities, it was not a replacement for SAP BW. With the ability to lift and shift into SAP BW/4HANA Cloud within SAP BDC, there is now an initial step into the cloud for SAP BW customers that was not previously available. It will also be possible for customers to continue to run their existing SAP BW deployments while leveraging BW modernization in SAP BDC.

In addition to SAP BW, SAP BDC also brings together SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud, although both remain available as standalone offerings. Existing SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere customers can continue using their solutions and transition to SAP BDC without disruption. SAP Analytics Cloud will remain the primary reporting tool within SAP BDC and will be closely integrated with SAP Datasphere.

Licensing and Usage

As a native SaaS solution, SAP BDC will have a subscription-based pricing model that is based on two components. The first is capacity units, which will be used as the primary pricing metric. Customers purchase capacity units based on their expected data processing, storage, and computational needs. These capacity units can then be allocated flexibly across different SAP BDC components. This includes SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Business Warehouse Cloud, and SAP Databricks. The flexibility in the model is that customers can choose how the capacity units are applied, allowing them to only pay for the services they use.

The other usage model relates to Insight Apps. These business-specific analytics applications can be added to SAP BDC and contain all the data products, semantic models, dashboards, and reports needed to analyze a particular topic. Customers can install Insight Apps on the home screen of SAP BDC, which will allow them to extract greater business value from their data. Pricing Insight Apps is based on metrics such as full-user equivalents (FUEs) for SAP S/4HANA, transaction volume, or data products and semantic models for analytics and AI-driven insights.

Complicating things further is that SAP BDC includes AI-powered analytics and automation, which will require AI units for access. AI units are another type of consumptive currency, similar to how SAP Business AI licensing works. AI-related features in SAP BDC, such as Joule AI agents, will require AI units to enable AI-driven automation.

SAP BDC will offer different pricing tiers based on customer size and data volume. This is intended to allow small, medium, and large enterprises to scale efficiently. Customers will be able to choose either a subscription-based model with fixed pricing or a consumption-based model that provides variable pricing based on usage.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

SAP Business Data Cloud is one of SAP’s most significant solution launches. With new features and offerings, the ability to resolve many of the data challenges that customers face today, and the integration of existing solutions with the new SAP Databricks offering, there is much for SAP insiders to digest and understand.

• SAP BDC offers the potential of a next-generation data and AI ecosystem. To date, one of SAP’s challenges has been that offerings like SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud have addressed some customer needs in a relatively piecemeal fashion. By bringing together SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BW, and SAP Databricks into a single, unified offering that combines them with targeted data activations and extensions and an open data ecosystem, SAP now has an offering with enormous potential. Whether SAPinsiders are still running SAP ECC and SAP BW on-premise or have already embraced RISE with SAP, every organization should take the time to evaluate and understand what SAP BDC offers and whether it can complement and enhance their data strategy and plans.
• The licensing and usage model adds complexity. Managing the licensing of SAP solutions has been difficult enough that multiple SAP partners provide specific license management tools or services. It does not seem that SAP BDC will do anything to alleviate that complexity. Organizations adopting SAP’s cloud ERP strategy will have RISE with SAP licenses, BTPEA credits for their SAP Business Technology Platform usage, and now consumption credits, AI units, and different pricing for Insight Apps within the one solution. This makes it vital for organizations to fully understand their usage and users so that these can be managed in the most effective manner. This is also necessary to ensure the correct license items are purchased in any contract.
• AI agents will only add to the benefits of SAP BDC. Beyond the central components of SAP BDC, SAP also announced AI agents and Joule Studio, which will allow organizations to work across SAP and non-SAP applications and support the new SAP Business Suite, SAO S.4HANA Cloud, and SAP AI Core. These agents can become efficient virtual co-workers that help navigate complex business processes. Although Joule agents will be a major part of SAP BDC, they will also be available across all SAP solutions that support Joule. Agent Builder in Joule Studio will also allow customers to build and deploy their own custom Joule agents tailored to specific business needs.