Journey and options to build EDW while implementing S/4 HANA

There are multiple thoughts and questions to build an EDW system ever since S/4 HANA was introduced. I am sharing my 2 cents in this blog. Let me quickly specify few key traits for operational and analytical reporting.

Operational reporting:

– Granular data and transactional data

– Real time data

– Support day to day operation

Analytical reporting:

– Typically at summary level

– Near real time or batch processing

– Support organizational decision making

Now , I would like to lay out a journey and landscape options to build an EDW system, while implementing S/4 HANA.

Phase 1: Implement HANA Live for operational reporting along with S/4 HANA. The operational reporting was also done in EDW before the era of business suite on HANA or S/4 HANA. S/4 HANA with HANA Live can suffice all the operational reporting requirements. So it’s not required to move operational reporting to an EDW system.

Phase 2: The typical traits of an EDW system are consolidation of data from multiple source systems, harmonization of data, maintaining historical data…etc. S/4 HANA system alone can’t serve as an EDW system by considering the above traits of an EDW system. One of the following options can be used to implement an EDW system where you can fulfill all analytical reporting requirements. The complexity of an EDW increases when the number of source systems and number of business models becoming higher. I have listed the options in sequential order based on the complexity. (Low – Option 1, Medium – Option 2, High – Option 3). Refer my blog below for the deciding factors for BW on HANA and/or Native HANA.

Deciding factors for BW on HANA, Enterprise HANA and HANA Live

Option 1: Leverage Embedded BW – The SAP BW system that exists inside a SAP business suite is called as ‘Embedded BW’. It supports certain business processes in the SAP business suite (e.g.: Integrated business planning, BPC…etc.) and analytics in the SAP business suite. The external data in the embedded BW should not be more than 20% of the overall DB volume per SAP recommendation.

Option 2: Implement S/4 HANA and EDW as separate tenants in the same system by leveraging the Multitenant Database Container (MDC) which was introduced in HANA SPS 09. It runs multiple tenant databases on one SAP HANA system. The “white listed scenarios” by SAP is still applicable with in a tenant for applications.

Option 3: Implement S/4 HANA and EDW as separate systems.