SAP Datasphere – A future-proof data landscape in the cloud

April 4, 2023

6 minutes

We live in a digital world, where everything moves at lightning speed. Companies are challenged in changing their business models because of shifts in the market. Speed and agility are essential to the survival of our organizations. Same goes for data management and the access to mission-critical information. With the cloud BTP solution of SAP Datasphere, you build the foundation to a future-proof data landscape within your organization.

As your organization is growing, moving to the cloud becomes no longer a possibility but rather an obvious step during the process. Whether you’re considering a move towards the cloud on foundation-(infrastructure) or application level (SaaS solution), it’s all about creating more agility and flexibility within your business. But when you do, consider the impact on your data flows and management. Shifting all your traditional applications, data flows and databases towards the cloud are not isolated events and may bring a couple of challenges to consider…

Typical challenges in Traditional Data warehousing.

Breaking down data silos

Frequently corporate information needs to enriched with additional data, such as forecast data in form of spreadsheets. A common challenge for business users is that they don’t have the capability to combine these two datasets and what often happens is that these users copy / paste the corporate data into spreadsheets on their local, isolated, drive as well and then start combining the data - the so-called data silos. Even more, if these individual files are being manipulated in a personal manner, a potential security risk and outdated or incorrect data is being uploaded in the system.

Business wants faster results

Traditional systems and procedures are not always fully up to speed and aligned with the urgency of modern business. Corporate data is being stored and managed in outdated warehouse systems which tend to process a bit longer and per batch. In modern datawarehouses the use of in-memory technology, like HANA, provides results en relevant insights in real-time.

Connectivity and openness

As mores users and solutions are moving to the cloud, another challenge occurs for traditional data warehouses to connect to these new systems. Customers are faced with a lot more unstructured data coming from different data lakes. With all solutions being fully or partially on premise, different integrations and connections are to be set up to keep your business from staying connected and open.

SAP Datasphere

SAP Datasphere is SAP’s new intelligent data service offering on the SAP Business Technology Platform.
This SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution is based on SAP HANA Cloud. It combines data, and analytics in a cloud solution that offers the functionalities of data integration, database, data warehouse, and analytics services. This enables customers to realize the full potential of a data-driven business.

A Datawarehouse for IT and Business

With SAP Datasphere you bring in the flexibility to quickly create or make changes to existing data models and deliver the requirements in shorter iterations. IT can separate your transactional data (facts) and master data (dimensions) and “click in” the master data in the transactional data. Doing so, business can easily build a semantic layer for the business, providing them all logic and user-friendliness to work with. You can also give the business user the ability to create their own data models. In SAP Datasphere you can leverage spaces for different entities or departments (see visual).

These are separate virtual work areas where you can add users and teams, storage space and connections to local and remote DataSources (e.g. S/4HANA, SAP ECC, SAP BW, non-SAP Systems, etc.). In these spaces, IT provides the corporate data in the business user’s space and also provide business the flexibility to bring in additional information to enrich the corporate data. A game-changer to resolve most of the “shadow BI” within your company.

Faster Results

SAP Datasphere runs on a HANA Database, resulting in better run-times for analyzing data in reports and dashboards. This is an extra bonus for customers that are still running SAP BW on a traditional database. Also, standard content for reporting is already available within Datasphere, giving you a headstart!

The advantages of cloud technology

SAP Datasphere is a cloud solution on the SAP Business Technology Platform. Start small and extend when needed. So no big upfront investments in hardware, but gradually extend the capacity of SAP Datasphere, both in storage and CPU power.

Nippon Shokubai Europe reaps the benefits of data in the cloud: Read the story.

Low-code, Graphical modeling

Data modeling in SAP Datasphere does not require special programming skills. The Graphical Editor allows you to drag and joins between different datasets. For the developers, no worries: Datasphere also allows to build SQL-based models … 😊

SAP Datasphere Graphical modelling mockup Flexso 3

Visualizing the data

Visualization of the data can be made in SAP Analytics Cloud, that has a native connection with SAP Datasphere. SAC contains standard content based on Datasphere content, so again, this accelerates the process of developments. Also non-SAP Reporting tools or external API based consumption can be connected to SAP Datasphere.

With the Excel plug-in (office 365) in Datasphere you can even visualize all data in the familiar worksheet layout.

Get started and reach new heights

With Datasphere, SAP has a modern, mature and reliable DW Solution in the cloud. The unified data and analytics provide a complete end-to-end solution with one clear semantic view designed for both business and IT. Enjoy the agility, speed and efficiency of cloud while empowering all stakeholders, breaking down data silos and accelerating on reporting.