Creating Secure, Governed, and Trusted Data in the...
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This blog post is adapted from a conversation between Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principal Analyst at Lopez Research and Ivo Bauermann, Global VP, Head of Strategy of HANA and Analytics at SAP. You can view the whole conversation in the video below.
Companies have gotten really good at storing data. This is almost by necessity, as the amount of data generated continues to grow rapidly. Another area where companies thrive is accessing the data. However, where many organizations fall short is in generating value from the data. This is the final and most important step of the data journey. It’s also the most challenging.
Why are companies falling short here? There are a few different reasons.
There’s no denying that data is invaluable for an organization. People at all levels realize this and need access to relevant data.
However, there’s a disconnect between what people need and what they get. How do we empower employees – and not just technical IT people – to access data while at the same time ensuring the data’s quality? What can we do to ensure that the data is accurate and timely? How do we ensure IT governance while at the same time providing flexibility to business users? That’s the data disconnect.
This disconnect isn’t the fault of IT or business. Part of the problem lies with all the solutions on the market. There are so many different tools out there that do one thing, but not the other. With so many tools, the data disconnect continues. It’s easy to see why customers are getting sick of this.
These customers want to be able to see the end-to-end data landscape. That means all their data sources, cloud, on-premise, first-party, third-party and everything else, are connected and in one centralized place. It means business users can actually access the data on their own. Now, how can this become a reality?
Solving the Problem With SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
Data Warehousing is not a new concept. A data warehouse brings together data into a central place, so that reports and analytics can be more easily used. SAP has been in this business for decades. We know our customers, we know the business, and we’ve done data warehousing and analytics before.
Data warehouses generate a lot of value, but they’re often not solving disconnect problem. These data warehouses might bring data together, yet it’s still a challenge for business users to get access. That’s why SAP Data Warehouse Cloud was built with the business user in mind.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud offers ease of use and simplicity. It gives customers a truly end-to-end solution. Users won’t be stuck using 10 different tools. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is one tool that users can use to consolidate all their data (not through replication, but connection). The ease of use was especially important when designing this product, as data doesn't generate value if stakeholders can't access it.
Some of the ways that SAP Data Warehouse Cloud breaks down the data disconnect:
The business layer makes it possible for all users to understand this data
Out of the box analytics maybes it possible to visualize all this information.
It’s an open solution, so using other analytics tools is possible
Offers security, governance, and compliance of the data
Getting Started
Just add data and then anyone can use this SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. It’s for both large enterprises and smaller companies.
One of the more common use cases we hear about is that a customer already has an on-premise storage solution. Now, they want to extend this data to their business users. Doing this with an on-premise product is difficult. That’s because the on-premise product is as complex as it is powerful. It’s built for IT users, so business users need to work with IT every single time they want data. This slows down both IT and business.
Now, with SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, these customers can simply extend their workflows to the business users. Business gets access to the data they want. At the same time, all the data is protected and governed.
How does this look in real life? Here’s what one of our customers, Andreas Förger, Manager of Analytics and Reporting at Randstad, had to say: “We now have a tool at hand that goes far beyond the modeling capabilities of a BI tool. We can give our business users flexibility and also make sure that we govern and protect the data.”
This was the goal of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud — to stop the data disconnect for all stakeholders.
