The end of SAP Business Warehouse in the context of SAP S/4HANA is not in sight!
Hi all,
SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics is one of the main topics in SAP S/4HANA and we see a lot of interest in the market these days. Over the course of the past 18 months I have been providing overview presentations, demos, customer and partner enablement and other workshops dealing with all aspects of this new area and it has been a very interesting time so far!
Recently I have noticed more and more documents where the future of SAP’s Business Warehouse is strengthened, despite the way some SAP sales colleagues communicate how all Analytics should be done in SAP S/4HANA.
A good example is the recent article of Computerwoche “Does S/4HANA mean the end of Business Warehouse?” (http://www.computerwoche.de/a/bedeutet-s-4hana-das-ende-des-business-warehouse,3226022) which features a study of the AG Analytics of the German SAP User Group (DSAG) in one of their publications: https://www.dsag.de/sites/default/files/leitfaden_s-hana-businesswarehouse.pdf or http://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends/blog/2015/11/19/7-reasons-why-s4hana-does-not-replace-sap-bw. These articles (Unfortunately some documents are in german only) may be interpreted as if SAP’s official standpoint is to position SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics as the only way to do Analytics (in the context of SAP S/4HANA) over SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW). However this is not the case.
Just to be clear: Both, Computerwoche and DSAG are completely in line with SAP’s overall positioning of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Warehouse powered by SAP HANA (BW on HANA). Besides the fact that I have supported the creation of the DSAG study and helped creating the core message, a common positioning of both SAP S/4HANA AND SAP BW on HANA has always been SAP’s official and external statement.
In all the latest TechEd and SAPPHIRE presentations in 2015 (and all those related to SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA and SAP HANA Live in the years before) and in all customer and partner enablements and workshops I have held besides other activities, we clearly positioned this topic accordingly, so I am sure an alternate positioning as indicated can only come from a misinterpretation of the topic itself. Maybe it is a good idea to elaborate on this positioning again:
SAP’s official positioning on SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics and SAP BW on HANA
One of the cornerstones of our SAP S/4HANA solution is (and this already started with SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA) that SAP for the first time had an in-memory appliance and database to serve as a reporting engine for all transactional data directly. This said, a lot of the reporting capabilities recently done in an additional system like SAP Business Warehouse could be done by the transactional system itself, making use of the powerful analytical capabilities inside SAP HANA.
But let’s reflect about the capabilities and use cases that an SAP customer requires from a reporting point of view:
On the one hand, operational reporting shall give insight into the very latest data coming out of the business transactions of an ERP system for example. You want to make immediate decisions based on this very recent data and need reports which reflect this. In this case the HANA-based OLAP models provide this information in real-time, in SAP S/4HANA even enabled to work embedded in the transactions itself.
With SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics we make use of SAP ABAP-based Core Data Services to provide these features, providing content and tools, providing the same basic model for any operational reporting including data for Search/Fact Sheets or Smart Business and operational reporting clients in SAP Fiori or using e.g. Cloud for Analytics or the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite.
Examples are “standard reports” in real-time like a cost center analysis, dashboards and KPI’s in top of these values e.g. for sales operations or combined scenarios for embedded scenarios like rich and customized supplier information within a material order screen. Also in case you need to see the very latest receivables positions about a customer to decide on discounts in real-time.
On the other hand, system landscapes in reality can look diverse and inhomogeneous. They contain multiple systems, SAP and non-SAP, have heterogeneous structures and master-/metadata, but there is a huge interest in a harmonized view of all of this data. This harmonization requires access to all data to be able to create consistent meta data and allow proper transformations. The result is a separate storage in an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), while SAP’s standard solution to support these processes is SAP BW on HANA, extended by native SAP HANA Data Warehousing capabilities.
Examples could be a harmonized sales reports or multi-organizational financial overviews based on data coming from different systems or even Excel sheets, with originally overlapping or contradictory master data.
In addition to the mentioned scenarios, a combination of both, real-time operational data and harmonized EDW data is surely required as well and my colleague Matthias Kretschmer has created a blog (http://scn.sap.com/community/s4hana/blog/2015/11/23/unified-solution-sap-s4hana-embedded-analytics-sap-business-warehouse-powered-by-sap-hana) and How-To-Guide (https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-68337) how to set it up, as well this scenario is part of SAP’s Best Practices documents in SAP Activate (http://service.sap.com/analyticswiths4h).
Summary and conclusion
I am happy that both, User Groups and external press, pick up the topic as this gives SAP the chance to be clear in our messaging: SAP’s standard solution for real-time operational reporting processes including embedded use-cases is SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics. In those cases a customer has been using SAP BW for these kind of use-cases only, a replacement of SAP BW can be possible but the potential decision has to reflect all possible aspects including the available and required functionality for example.
In those cases where a customer needs Enterprise Data Warehouse processes, SAP’s standard solution is SAP BW on HANA, extended by native SAP HANA Data Warehousing capabilities.
A combination of both is possible and featured as well.
For more information please also see the FAQ for SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics (http://a248.g.akamai.net/n/248/420835/c56a5b43b4f7b3942360af99933f52678d0528154abb3614d5d28a3f35b75c24/sapasset.download.akamai.com/420835/sapcom/docs/2015/11/7e25a80f-507c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.pdf) or an article in SAP Insider on this topic (http://go.sap.com/docs/download/2015/12/92865b4d-537c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.pdf) or visit the SAP S/4HANA Landing Page (http://go.sap.com/product/enterprise-management/s4hana-erp.html).
With best regards,
Jürgen Butsmann
Head Analytical Solutions, Global Business Development SAP S/4HANA
SAP SE
Hey Jurgen
This is great to read. There is plenty of confusion and breaking it out in to the potential scenarios is the best way to explain this to customers.
it is worth prompting the right tool for the right scenario to ensure the final solution is complete.
On the S/4HANA project I am working on - we are looking at Embedded reports WHERE APPLICABLE) and using other tools were appropriate.
Looking forward to more content being released within S/4HANA Embedded Reporting - and some good documentation covering scope and use cases.
Mark,
great to hear you are working on this.
Actually I was hoping to get more clarity on that there is no such thing as a black and white but clear strategies and pragmatism in how we approach it...
Indeed there is more to expect and more to be documented as well. But I know the priorities are on content first and then on documentation but I am chasing our colleagues as well. Just as always a matter of bandwidth. So stay tuned here.
Best,
Juergen
Hi Juergen.,
The article gives more clarity. However, I feel SAP S/4 Hana has its own advantage as against BW. Hope to hear more on such matter.
Business Warehouse will die as soon as organizations will have 100% of their information generated from and collected into the Business Suite (S/4HANA).
Let's be realistic, this is never going to happen ...
Good point!
And it is not about BW as a solution to die or not but about whether the process of an Enterprise Data Warehouse will be needed or not which I believe is not in question...
With SAP BW/4HANA we are also strengthen this message of the need for a viable EDW so I am very cool about it... 🙂
there are business scenarios where is almost impossible not use a DW, until now HANA Live was an alternative in ERP Suite on HANA. But now that SAP stopped the development of HANA Live and the support will end in Dec. 2017, we will need the BW and use the BI Content or we need to build everything from scratch.
Well, with SAP S/4HANA we have the API's and Data Models, KPI's and other virtual data models available and this is a growing thing. For our Business Suite powered by HANA indeed we are still using the SAP HANA Live content. I am not able to guarantee but I do not see any reason why this is not supported over 2017, we are prolonging the support already and will most likely span the support according to the lifeline of Suite on HANA which is 2025. So no worries.
Hi Juergen,
May I kindly ask you to elaborate on Embedded Analytics in a ECC6 on HANA environment? (not focusing too much on HANA Live but trying to apply ABAP CDS and Fiori Elements where possible)
Keeping in mind the changes that may have happened over the last 2 years, I would be interested in how much of the latest concepts of Embedded Analytics - as described in your S/4HANA book on this - could be applied even in a ECC6 on HANA system. What are the limiting factors - maybe the capabilities of ABAP CDS in the 7.50 release?
Thanks in advance,
Florian