Skip to Content
Product Information
Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas

What Makes SAP Data Warehouse Cloud the Only Enterprise-Grade Solution? AIN206 #SAPTechEd Recap

Source: SAP

What does this mean?

Long history in data warehousing

Successful products for 20 years on-premise

Legal disclaimer applies:

The information in this presentation is confidential and proprietary to SAP and may not be disclosed without the permission of SAP.
Except for your obligation to protect confidential information, this presentation is not subject to your license agreement or any other service
or subscription agreement with SAP. SAP has no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this presentation or any related document, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein.

This presentation, or any related document and SAP’s strategy and possible future developments, products and or platforms directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice. The information in this presentation is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality.  This presentation is provided without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. This presentation is for informational purposes and may not be incorporated into a contract. SAP assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in this presentation, except if such damages were caused by SAP’s intentional or gross negligence.

All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates,
and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

Source: SAP

Source: SAP

Why now is SAP bringing has yet another Data Warehouse Solution to market?

-SAP BW/4 HANA and is On-Premise Solution, serving enterprise scenarios; centrally managed governed data warehousing product, complex scenarios; perceived as rigid; not a solution for line of business user

-SQL Datawarehouse solution – flexibility, on-premise, need to be expert; handles complex scenarios

-SAP DWC is SAP’s offering for the Cloud

-Idea for DWC – unify strengths; centrally govern warehouse and flexible and open, easy so Line of Business user can use

-SAP DWC complements and extends SAP Data Warehousing Solutions

-SAP DWC is an enabler to go for Cloud or Hybrid :

No need to decommission the legacy + on-premise investment

DWC allows companies to move gradually to the cloud at their pace (Source: SAP)

Source: SAP

DWC is a Cloud native Data Warehouse Solution, in-memory, fully managed by SAP

Extend on premise user cases

Not replace on premise solution

Start with extension scenarios

For cloud native use cases

Software as a Service living in the cloud

On top of SAP cloud

– we want to keep our installed base

– perfect extension to existing systems

– for new scenarios to be implemented directly in the cloud

– customer feels free which scenarios he moves in the cloud in his own pace

– hybrid strategy (no need to migrate 100% in the cloud)

-> resonates well with our customers

DWC designed for IT and Business users (source: SAP)

Source: SAP

 

Enterprise Grade Cloud Data Warehouse

Overview is shown

4 gear wheels cover key components that have to be part of enterprise grade data warehousing solution

Database as a service – manage large of data, elasticity, scale up, scale out, performance – HANA is the database

SAP Analytics Cloud – seamless integration, to get insight out of data

Data warehouse services – services around data lifecycle management, collaboration, modeling

Business integration – not want to manage data that you don‘t understand

What qualifies as Enterprise Grade DW?

-SAP DWC is an end-to-end offering solution starting from database, warehouse up to analysis, hereby embracing business

-The 4 key gear wheels plays all hand-in-hand together

Major differentiators and key value:

  1. Database as a Service: With space elasticity and data tiering DWC addresses the growing Data Volume challenge and the need of efficient Cost Management
  2. Data Warehouse as as Service: Advanced Modeling and Data Lifecycle Management services to consolidate and govern all your data in one central place
  3. Analytics as a Service: SAC is a seamless integral part of the solution to arrive an end-to-end experience
  4. Business Integration: DWC addresses the Business Domain by delivering Business Content and Semantic and empowering Business Users on their job (source: SAP)

Database as a Service

Source: SAP

Leveraging HANA cloud, regarding performance combined with cloud value – elasticity, scalability

Extend for large amount of data

Provide relational data lake

Virtualization capability – you do not need to move data to data warehouse; access virtually

Source: SAP

Leveraging HANA cloud, regarding performance combined with cloud value – elasticity, scalability

Extend for large amount of data

Provide relational data lake

Virtualization capability – you do not need to move data to data warehouse; access virtually

Source: SAP

Elasticity; expected capability

Scale on demand to save costs

 

Data Warehouse Services

Source: SAP

Data management – the LoB user asks for self service data management

On-premise, corporate group does due to complexity

See that LoB user wants this in the cloud

Collaboration – governed space, central group can provide consolidated model and expose to everyone

LoB user can have their own space, bring data from wherever they want

Space concept – fulfill requirement, combine models from different spaces

Source: SAP

How far expose complexity to line of business user

Self service data analytics – move to end user on the right – able to schedule and model

Source: SAP

Data lineage – where data comes from; capability of EDW solution

Out of the box with DWC

Will offer predefined user roles, similar to BW

Version management to compare artifacts

Next version will have workflow capability; financial KPI should be centrally governed, needs to be controlled; supervisor approves

Source: SAP

Services with data, data load, ingestion, schedule, transform data, monitor

Source: SAP

Virtualization – remote tables or local tables

Out of box operators to use immediately

Business catalog, with semantic and more business related information for data

Analytics as a Service

Source: SAP

Gain insight to data with SAC

Source: SAP

SAC is integrated into DWC

Part of the solution

Smart assist/insight not part of GA but will come later

Source: SAP

SAC relies on HANA; analytics engine is part of HANA

DWC/SAC shares same engine

-SAC is the first class citizen to consume and directly understand DWC Business semantics and models

-SAC utilizes DWC advanced modeling capabilities

SAC is a integral part of DWC solution to drive the ONE tool vision having a unified User Experience

Business Integration

Source: SAP

Business user has domain terminology, reusable entity

Why and what is Business Semantics?”

Key Message:

-Business Semantics encapsulate domain knowledge into models

-Adding Business Semantics to the data enables Business Users to access information more efficiently

Business Semantics enable to answer complex business questions, e.g. by utilizing for machine learning and prediction (source: SAP)

 

Source: SAP

Similar to SAC, provide LoB and industry content

Based on SAP products – S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, Ariba and partner content

 

Source: SAP

Intelligent enterprise – key vision, strategy from SAP

SAC will be part of every SAP cloud application

DWC – integrated information models across solutions

DWC transforms raw data into business insights and knowledge to drive better business strategies and decisions

DWC offers a comprehensive end-to-end solution starting from

-extracting and consolidating data from various sources

enriching data with business semantics and relations

-composing LoB specific data marts containing KPIs and Business Models

visualizing and analyzing the business results in SAC (source: SAP)

Source: SAP

Summary of session

Q&A:

Q: How do the data lineage functionality differ from SAP Information Steward?
A
: SAP Information Steward is a separate tool that allows user to manually import metadata from different system to track and trace the connected artefacts. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is proving an integrated Repository where all created artifacts (virtual and persisted) are registered to support data lineage and impact analysis capabilities.(source: SAP)

Assigned Tags

      4 Comments
      You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
      Author's profile photo Paul Hardy
      Paul Hardy

      Dear Tammy,

      Thanks for sharing this. The following is just a general observation about the rapid issue to market of seemingly competing SAP products. It is not aimed at you but possibly SAP marketing in general and any questions in the rest of the comment are 100% rhetorical.

      Whatever the justification I imagine that if an organisation has just spent ten squllion dollars putting BW4HANA and then ten minutes later is told in the exact words above that this is not an "enterprise grade solution" and is "far too rigid" for business users , so spen another ten squllion dollars on doing the exact same thing you just finished on another product,then they will be foaming at the mouth with rage,

      It is like when organisations were told that Web Dynpro for Java was the way to go so wrote a load of HR applications on the Enterprise Portal using that, and then were told that Web Dynpro for ABAP was the way to go so re-wrote all those applications and then were told that SAP UI5 was the way to go at which point they started committing suicide en masse.

      Put another way, although obviously technology changes at a breakneck pace, the SAP data Warehouse Cloud seemed to follow so quickly after BW4HANA was introduced, that someone could well ask the question - if I go for this how do I know that half way through my project you will not come out with YET ANOTHER new product that is the only real enterprise grade solution and everything previous is rubbish?

      Cheersy Cheers

      Paul

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Paul - I understand; thank you for reading and commenting

      Listening to the session, it sounds like there is a lot of competition for data warehousing in the cloud, so (my take only), SAP saw they needed to offer something.

      Author's profile photo Vinieth Kuruppath
      Vinieth Kuruppath

      Hi Tammy

      Is SAP DWC going to be supported on other Hyperscalers ? The roadmap does not seem to indicate this and the architecture seems to suggest that DWC is built on top of SAP Cloud Service requiring SAP Cloud Service to be available.

      Since the Embrace program has been launched is there a plan to have this on Azure/AWC etc ?

      Regards

      Vinieth

      Author's profile photo Tammy Powlas
      Tammy Powlas
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vinieth - I don't have an answer (I don't work for SAP).  I recommend asking this question at answers.sap.com or I know ASUG is planning some upcoming DWC webcasts where this question can be asked.

      Thank you for reading the blog