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