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Author's profile photo Thierry AUDAS
Thierry AUDAS
November 16, 2017 4 minute read

Wrap-Up of Q4 2017 #askSAP Community Call on SAP BW/4HANA

On October 26, the SAP Analytics team held its last #askSAP Innovations Community Call of 2017, SAP BW/4HANA: the Big Data Warehouse for the Digital Enterprise.  This new iteration of the live and interactive #askSAP call series focused on SAP BW/4HANA, the new next-generation Big Data warehouse product from SAP that, like SAP S/4HANA, is optimized for the SAP HANA platform, including inheriting the high performance, simplicity, and agility of SAP HANA.

If you weren’t able to attend the live call, you can always watch the replay on-demand, and download the presentation and the Q&A on our new #askSAP web page .

Expert Insights and Overviews

The call featured several experts who shared insights and details on how SAP is innovating the Big Data warehouse space with a solution that can meet your current and future business analytics needs in a rapidly changing data landscape.

J.J. Keller’s Eric Leicht served as moderator, setting the table for our panelists with his observations. Eric has been the chairman of ASUG’s Enterprise Data Warehousing Influence Council for the last 10 years, has worked as an EDW Architect with SAP Business Warehouse for 15 years, and has most recently successfully implemented SAP Business Warehouse 7.5 on SAP HANA at J.J. Keller. Joining Eric on the call to share their insights and experience were Andy Bitterer, Glen Leslie, Vamsi Paladugu, and Marc Hartz.

Andy Bitterer, Chief Evangelist for BI and analytics at SAP and former research VP at leading industry analyst Gartner:

  • Provided a comprehensive perspective on the current challenges and key strategic trends driving innovations for enterprise data warehousing in the market.
  • Confirmed SAP’s continued commitment to develop its core data warehousing products

Glen Leslie, Architect in the SAP Americas’ Center of Excellence for Analytics:

  • Delivered insights from his in-depth SAP BW/4HANA expertise with a focus on key topics such as the integration of transactional data from traditional systems with social and other customer behavioral data and how SAP BW/4HANA fits into the complete landscape of modern solutions from SAP, including SAP S/4HANA, SAP Leonardo and SAP Analytics.
  • Discussed the recommended paths for adopting or transitioning to SAP BW/4 for the maximum business value with the least amount of disruption.

Vamsi Paladugu, Director for Data and Analytics at Katerra:

  • Shared why his company selected SAP BW/4HANA and what business benefits are achieved at Katerra while running SAP BW/4HANA in addition to Sap S/4HANA reporting.
  • Vamsi, who has lead the implementation of SAP BW data warehousing and analytics solutions in the past, also discussed his experience with SAP BW/4HANA and shared best practices for customers looking to use it.

Marc Hartz, Lead Product Manager at SAP for the Big Data portfolio:

  • Put SAP BW/4HANA in the context of the new SAP Data Hub solution that was launched earlier in September 2017.
  • Presented how SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Data Hub are a perfect match for building a Big Data warehouse with SAP Data Hub managing data flows between the different layers of a Big Data warehouse based on SAP BW/4HANA.

What Did We Learn from the Audience?

During the call, we had a series of poll questions that provided us with insight on different topics:

  • Is your organization envisioning a Big Data warehouse as software-as-a-service in the public cloud? Here we found that cloud continues to gain more traction and acceptance with the market. Over 45% of the voters indicated that they are planning to run a Big Data warehouse as software-as-a-service in the public cloud in the next five years.

  • What primary business driver(s) do you see for your organization to adopt SAP BW/4HANA? The poll results confirmed a perception of clear business drivers for adopting SAP BW/4HANA that is well-established in the market. Reduced costs with simplified modeling and administration, more insight for the business with the integration of Big Data with transactional data, and more business adoption thanks to modern real-time analytics ranked roughly at the same level between 10% and 15%, while more than half of the voters considered the combination of the three as the business driver for their organization to adopt SAP BW/4HANA. So, a clear business driver for close to 90% of the voters!

 

  • What’s your timeline for adopting SAP BW/4HANA? The poll results highlighted the momentum that SAP BW/4HANA enjoys in the market with over 50% of the voters already in progress to adoption (10%) or planning to adopt in the next three years (44%).

What’s Your Question?

Multiple segments of the webcast were followed by an active Q&A session, as attendees were interested to learn more and posed questions to our speakers. You can find the answers to these and other questions asked during the call in the full Q&A on the #askSAP website.

Here is a sample of questions from the audience that were addressed and that are now documented:

  • What’s the difference between SAP Business Warehouse on SAP HANA and SAP BW/4HANA?
  • Is there a benefit to move to SAP BW4/HANA before going to SAP S/4HANA?
  • Do I need to upgrade from SAP Business Warehouse 7.4 to 7.5 before moving to SAP BW/4HANA?

Learn More

Missed the call? No worries!  You can always watch the replay on-demand, download the presentation and the Q&A, and take part in the ongoing discussion on Twitter at #askSAP or #BW4HANA.  Here are some links to key resources that will help you move forward with the adoption or transition to SAP BW4/HANA:

Mark Your Calendar . . .

We’re busily working to identify next year’s #askSAP topics.  Watch www.sap.com/askssap for future announcements.  And if you have suggestions for #askSAP topics, drop us a note at sapanalytics@sap.com.

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