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Mark63
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
In recent SAP user group events, various attendees approached me asking about the role of SAP Master Data Governance in the context of SAP S/4HANA. To put it more precisely, people asked me, for instance, whether they’d go or stay with an SAP MDG on a non-HANA database, run SAP MDG on SAP HANA, or aim at SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA.

I made the following statements from a product management perspective:

  • The role of SAP Master Data Governance as a master data hub for the enterprise does not change when you add an S/4HANA system to the landscape: The MDG hub replicating master data across the system landscape can be either based on SAP ERP or on SAP S/4HANA. And of course, an SAP ERP-based MDG can replicate data to SAP S/4HANA systems in the landscape. While we generally recommend to have the highest release version in place for an ERP-based MDG hub, this is not a mandatory requirement for replicating data to an S/4HANA system.




  • There is continued support for SAP MDG on SAP ERP and on non-HANA databases, which means that users are not forced to change the database on which MDG is running.

  • However, running SAP MDG on SAP HANA has benefits compared to any other database. These benefits include, for instance, the use/consumption of:

    • Advanced search and duplicate-detection provided by SAP HANA fuzzy search

    • SAP HANA information management services for standardization and matching for high-speed master-data consolidation

    • SAP HANA-based analytics providing real-time “insight to action” through reliable MDG process analysis (SLA compliance in change request processing)





  • According to SAP’s overall strategy of delivering the digital core with SAP S/4HANA, it is a no brainer that SAP MDG is on board. Consistent master data is a prerequisite to fully benefit from S/4HANA’s efficient business processes and powerful analytics. Equivalent to the deployment options in an SAP ERP context, SAP MDG can be co-deployed with an SAP S/4HANA system, or can be a hub just technically running on S/4HANA as its basis.

  • Following SAP’s overall strategy, the primary focus of upcoming MDG innovations is on SAP S/4HANA. As of now, the functional scope of the SAP ERP-based MDG 9.0 release is comparable with SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 1610. The only difference is that SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA additionally provides a product-data quality remediation capability which the SAP ERP-based SAP MDG doesn’t. The functional gap is still small, but we expect it to get wider in the future.


For a quick answer; I’d use the following symbol from sports competitions:

 



In a nutshell, I'd say that in order to be on the competitive edge in the digital age, SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA is clearly the way to go for new installations, while for existing implementations there is no rush for conversion.

Best,
Markus
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