SAP recently introduced BPC Embedded Access Rights. In this blog, let us understand the details of this SAP Business Planning and Consolidation Embedded Access Rights.
Why BPC Embedded Access Rights
The strategic solution that SAP has for XP&A is SAP Analytics Cloud which is offered on public cloud and combines planning, predictive and business intelligence functionality into one product. SAP also has SAP Business Planning and Consolidation to address financial planning requirements for customers who require an on-premise solution. As stated earlier in SAP BPC Strategy, though our cloud-based planning solution, SAP Analytics Cloud, represents our strategic and most innovative business intelligence and planning solution, the SAP BPC product will receive continuous innovations, bug fixes, and investments in infrastructure topics with SAP Analytic Cloud. For the customers to take advantage of the latest innovations that can address the challenges to the planners, the enterprises should be running on SAP Analytics Cloud platform. However, we have thousands of customers that use SAP Business Planning and Consolidation in its various versions. This poses a formidable task of moving these customers quickly and smoothly to SAC. The customers should be allowed to move at their own pace, without disruption of their planning processes and in phased manner if they prefer so. In order to facilitate this process, some customers chose to complement their planning process with SAC and some others chose to add new planning process in SAC.
In addition to moving the business process from BPC to SAC, the BPC customers also used to encounter another obstacle in licensing. A planning user typically required a license for BPC as well as SAC even if he/she wanted to use BPC Live to plan in both the systems. The BPC Embedded Access Rights are intended to obviate this dual licensing for BPC Live scenario and facilitate smooth transition to SAP Analytics Cloud. Hence, to summarize, the reason why SAP introduced BPC Embedded Access Rights is to avoid double licensing for customers using BPC Live to plan in SAC and BPC.
What are BPC Embedded Access Rights
At this time, BPC Embedded Access Rights are applicable only to BPC Live connections. The BPC live-connection is available for the integration of BPC Embedded models with SAP Analytics Cloud (It is not available to BPC Standard models). It can be used in SAC stories, SAC Analytic Designer applications and Analysis for Office, edition for SAC , workbooks. With BPC Embedded Access Rights, users who only input via SAC Planning into BPC (Embedded) with BPC Live connection will no longer require a BPC Standard or Professional license. This change is:
- Applicable to SAC live planning to BPC Embedded model deployment mode only (Note, BPC Standard model deployment mode does not support live planning access)
- Available for BPC on-premise, PCE or PTO
- Pertinent for BPC for BW Netweaver or BPC for BW/4HANA
- Applies to SAC Planning Standard or Professional users (an SAC BI user can not publish data into BPC)
- Includes ability to plan via Analysis for Office (included in the SAC Planning license)
For users requiring SAC BI only access to BPC data, this can be achieved via the BW Live connect (for which no BPC licenses are required)
How a customer can get BPC Embedded Access Rights
The customer must license at least a minimum quantity of BPC in order for administrators to create and maintain a BPC environment and the BPC Live Connection that is used by SAC to connect to BPC or BW-IP. Beyond that, leveraging the SAP Cloud Extension Policy (CEP) a customer is able shift maintenance cost to a SAP Analytics Cloud subscription.
In which customer situations BPC Embedded Access Rights are not applicable
As sated above, BPC Embedded Access Rights are currently available only for BPC Live connections. This also means that there can be some customer situations regarding BPC Licenses which are not covered by BPC Embedded Access Rights. Here are some of such scenarios:
- BPC Embedded Access Rights are not available for BPC Standard models since BPC Live connection is not available for BPC Standard models
- BPC Embedded Access Rights are applicable only for BPC Standard license and not for BPC Professional If a customer wants to add more BPC Professional users then the license policy for BPC Professional users will apply.
- Customers using BPC Workflows are not covered by BPC Embedded Access Rights
- BPC Embedded Access Rights are intended for planning scenarios using BPC Live connection and hence customers using BPC only for Consolidation will not be covered under BPC Embedded Access Rights
What about customers using BW-IP
BW-IP is an older Netweaver technology customers could use to build highly complex and bespoke planning applications. BW-IP is not available in BW/4HANA and hence BW-IP customers find themselves stuck on the older Netweaver 7.x platform. Often BW-IP customers use tools like BEx for user access. As BEx is end-of-life and not available in BW/4HANA again this becomes a barrier for customers.
While BW-IP is not available in BW/4HANA without BPC license, it is possible to upgrade and access the BW-IP models if the customer adopts BPC; creates a BPC model against the old BW-IP logic to be used in SAC with BPC Live connection. Therefore, with BPC Embedded Access Rights, BW-IP customers now have a way more simplified opportunity to move to BPC for BW/4HANA and preserve their BW-IP models, and then allow user access to these models via SAC Planning.
Where to get more details
More details about topics around BPC Embedded Access Rights are available at the following locations:
