Creating a Unified Semantic Layer for the SAP Solution Landscape

SAP BusinessObjects administrators and analysts are familiar with its UNV and UNX semantic layers – the Universes through which they view their business intelligence data. Establishing similar data connectivity, data modelling, and data governance functionality for your SAP Analytics Cloud deployment and other solutions across the SAP solution landscape may present a challenge in terms of technical capabilities, resources, and time to value.

If you are using the same data sources in SAP Analytics Cloud as in your SAP BusinessObjects deployment, then the SAP Analytics Cloud Live Universe Connector is a valid consideration to provide the data connectivity and data modelling you need. However, chances are that, at the same time you are expanding your data discovery and visualization horizons with SAP Analytics Cloud, you are also expanding the range of data sources you use to inform your stories and empower your user self-service. If you are moving those data sources to SAP HANA, problem solved.

If, for whatever reason, moving those data sources to SAP HANA is not in your plans, then you need to consider other means to achieve your data connectivity and data modelling goals.

The APOS Live Data Gateway solution expands, simplifies and unifies your data connectivity and data consumption options for SAP Analytics Cloud and across the SAP solution landscape. This middleware platform provides virtualized data connectivity which enables live data connectivity and a vast range of data source options, using OData, JDBC and ODBC methods to serve data to analytics consumers or stream data from an extensive range of live data sources into SAP solutions.

APOS Live Data Gateway connects SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud to your non-SAP data sources, creating a unified and governed semantic layer that simplifies the data connection process, enabling easier report, dashboard and story creation by a broader range of users through governed connections.

In a recent webinar, we explained the benefits of the live data connectivity provided by APOS Live Data Gateway:

In the same webinar, we introduced the APOS Live Data Gateway Premium edition. The Premium edition includes all of the features of the regular edition, but adds a live mode with caching that enables SAP Analytics Cloud to connect to data from strategic SAP applications such as SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, SAP Fieldglass, SAP SuccessFactors, and other Cloud applications:

The Live Data Gateway creates a universal semantic layer, which democratizes ad-hoc, self-serve BI & analytics by removing the need for analytics users to deal with the complexities of data structures and data linking. The Live Data Gateway replaces these complexities with a common business layer which provides a simplified, secured and governed connection point for consumption by SAP Analytics Cloud and throughout the SAP solution landscape.