Tout­ed as the next gen­er­a­tion of SAP Data Ware­house Cloud, as well as a shift in the SAP approach to data man­age­ment, SAP Data­s­phere made a sig­nif­i­cant splash when it debuted ear­li­er this spring.

Built on SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, this ​“com­pre­hen­sive data ser­vice,” unveiled in March, is intend­ed as both the foun­da­tion of a ​“busi­ness data fab­ric” and a major step toward sim­pli­fy­ing the ever-grow­ing, ever more com­plex data land­scapes that SAP cus­tomers face today. Ensur­ing orga­ni­za­tions can deliv­er mean­ing­ful data to data con­sumers across cloud, hybrid, and on-premis­es SAP and non-SAP sys­tems and envi­ron­ments, with that data’s busi­ness con­text and log­ic intact, Data­s­phere was devel­oped with self-ser­vice access, inte­gra­tion, and data gov­er­nance in mind. 

The solu­tion also appears poised to answer ASUG mem­ber chal­lenges that sur­faced in 2023 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research; near­ly half (45%) of research par­tic­i­pants cit­ed inte­gra­tion between SAP and non-SAP sys­tems as a top focus area for the year, while 32% of orga­ni­za­tions report­ed mas­ter data main­te­nance and gov­er­nance, and inte­gra­tion in gen­er­al, as two top challenges. 

“Data­s­phere is very much the begin­ning of that uni­fied data­base and ana­lyt­ic ser­vice that our cus­tomers have been ask­ing for, for quite some time,” said Tom Cheled­nik, GVP – Head of Solu­tion Man­age­ment for Data Man­age­ment, Plan­ning & Analy­sis at SAP.

In order to dis­cuss and detail the solu­tion for our mem­bers, Cheled­nik sat for an ASUG inter­view about Data­s­phere; how it fits with­in the SAP prod­uct, part­ner, and cus­tomer ecosys­tems; and the ​“uni­ver­sal need” it was devel­oped to address. 

Ques­tion: SAP offi­cial­ly launched Data­s­phere over a month ago. What con­ver­sa­tions have you been engaged in with cus­tomers around Data­s­phere since that point?

Answer: When we launched SAP Data­s­phere on March 8 as the evo­lu­tion of Data Ware­house Cloud, we men­tioned it as the foun­da­tion for a busi­ness data fab­ric. That opened many cus­tomers’ eyes, in the sense that we rec­og­nized the het­ero­ge­neous data envi­ron­ments that are out there, both hybrid and in the cloud, and we rec­og­nized that we can actu­al­ly sim­pli­fy — and help our cus­tomers sim­pli­fy — these open data land­scapes with a busi­ness data fab­ric sit­ting on top. This allows for busi­ness users, data con­sumers, and even folks who do enter­prise plan­ning across lines of busi­ness­es to receive val­ue, because they’re able to under­stand data in sim­plest terms: in the nor­mal lan­guage that they’re used to, in the sense of cus­tomer or region, accounts, prod­ucts, et cetera, rather than nascent tables and terms. 

What’s been eye-open­ing to cus­tomers is that [Data­s­phere] doesn’t have to involve a rip-and-replace. How­ev­er, it can work bet­ter togeth­er with cur­rent­ly built SAP and non-SAP land­scapes, to pro­vide val­ue on top. It inte­grates very nice­ly with cur­rent SAP busi­ness appli­ca­tions, includ­ing SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form. But I think what was unknown, and now is quite dif­fer­ent, is that we can also inte­grate with com­pet­i­tive solu­tions and/​or hyper-scalers out there, to still pro­vide that busi­ness data fabric. 

Q: Can you dis­cuss the con­cept of a ​“busi­ness data fab­ric” and its impor­tance to this product?

A: It’s the abil­i­ty to mod­el, using busi­ness terms, a spe­cif­ic line-of-busi­ness use case across finance, HR, mar­ket­ing, oper­a­tions, and sales. It’s the rela­tion­ships and the busi­ness terms, the log­ic that you’re going to be able to use, from both SAP and non-SAP, with­in SAP Data­s­phere. But, for data con­sumers, the busi­ness data fab­ric is most­ly meant in the mod­el­ing sense. In the past, you required an IT tick­et and had to wait for some­one from IT to cre­ate a net-new mod­el based off a busi­ness case, which was the oppo­site of the self-ser­vice cus­tomers demand, espe­cial­ly giv­en the volatil­i­ty of our econ­o­my and the sup­ply chain. With the seman­tic mod­el­ing capa­bil­i­ties and new ana­lyt­ic mod­el that we pro­vide, SAP Data­s­phere allows data con­sumers to be less depen­dent upon IT to answer a ques­tion, mod­el a busi­ness sce­nario, and make quick and agile deci­sions. Mean­while, for IT, a busi­ness data fab­ric also pro­vides numer­ous gov­er­nance and pri­va­cy fea­tures, such as a com­mon secu­ri­ty mod­el that can be imple­ment­ed across systems.

Q: Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to curate and access enter­prise data is a major pri­or­i­ty to cus­tomers pur­su­ing busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion, and to do safe­ly and accu­rate­ly, while main­tain­ing the busi­ness con­text of their data, is of course important. 

A: With SAP Data­s­phere, it can be ​“con­nect, not col­lect.” It can be a ​“fed­er­ate first rather than ingest,” depend­ing on the use case and what you’re try­ing to accom­plish. We have the abil­i­ty to con­nect vir­tu­al­ly to data sources, both SAP and non-SAP, and also see the lin­eage of where those data sources are actu­al­ly com­ing from. That’s a super­pow­er and some­thing our cus­tomer base real­ly loves the fact that you can do that rather than always mov­ing data. As you know, when you move data, right from the get-go, you can lose trust poten­tial­ly in where that data came from. Is it the most up-to-date data, is it author­i­ta­tive, and is it based off your SAP or non-SAP busi­ness appli­ca­tions? That doesn’t mean we don’t have cus­tomers actu­al­ly ingest­ing data, but we have a more of a ​“fed­er­ate first” and ​“con­nect, not col­lect” men­tal­i­ty using SAP Data­s­phere. Of course, where opti­miza­tion is required, SAP Data­s­phere offers a pow­er­ful repli­ca­tion facil­i­ty, to ensure per­for­mance doesn’t suffer.

Q: How does Data­s­phere fit into the larg­er SAP strat­e­gy of build­ing out its part­ner ecosystem? 

A: In a major moment for SAP and our cus­tomers, we announced part­ner­ships with pow­er­ful, open data ecosys­tem part­ners, such as Col­li­bra, as it per­tains to gov­er­nance; Con­flu­ent, with the abil­i­ty to stream real-time data; Data­bricks, with their Data Lake­house plat­form; and DataRo­bot, for the machine learn­ing capa­bil­i­ties they pro­vide. Our cus­tomers have been wait­ing for this for some time. 

We’re not igno­rant to the fact many of our cus­tomers are using some of these dif­fer­ent sys­tems with their SAP and non-SAP busi­ness appli­ca­tions, across mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent hybrid or cloud envi­ron­ments. For us to pro­vide the abil­i­ty to con­nect and uti­lize some of these part­ners and con­tin­ue to devel­op APIs, to allow SAP Data­s­phere to work cohe­sive­ly with dif­fer­ent solu­tions, has been some­thing our cus­tomers have already applaud­ed us for. And it’s just the begin­ning. We have oth­ers we plan to intro­duce in the upcom­ing months, if not quar­ters. We’re all excit­ed about this oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand our hori­zons with these lead­ing partners.

Q: Sev­er­al cur­rent SAP cus­tomers are in tri­als with SAP Data­s­phere. Fea­tured in press dis­cus­sions at the time of the launch was David John­ston, CIO at Mess­er Amer­i­c­as, an indus­tri­al gasses sup­pli­er that’s already under­way with SAP Data­s­phere. What can you say about the cur­rent progress with those trials?

A: What I can say is that the tri­als have been going quite well. The influx of tri­al requests, and guid­ed expe­ri­ence, allows a prospect or even an SAP cus­tomer to get a feel for what SAP Data­s­phere is, how it could sim­pli­fy their over­all data land­scape and what some of the fea­tures and func­tions are that would allow for that self-ser­vice across all lines of busi­ness­es. Inter­est in SAP Data­s­phere has been incred­i­ble since the SAP Data Unleashed moment on March 8. 

We’re excit­ed to be able to intro­duce a prod­uct that’s going to bring val­ue. At the end, that’s what it comes down to. The feed­back has been very pos­i­tive. We have an ear­ly adopter pro­gram here at SAP, for which we pro­vide white-glove treat­ment to cus­tomers, to make sure they under­stand how cer­tain things work and how it can work with their cur­rent environments. 

Espe­cial­ly for our on premise SAP Busi­ness Ware­house (BW) cus­tomers, of which we still have thou­sands, we’re show­ing them how they poten­tial­ly could use our BW Bridge ser­vice with­in SAP Data­s­phere, to move to the cloud with a phased approach, elim­i­nat­ing some of the need to knock on the door of IT when a new mod­el or change to a mod­el for any par­tic­u­lar line-of-busi­ness use case needs to change. Instead, we’re pro­vid­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the busi­ness users to take own­er­ship and con­trol of what they need to do from a busi­ness per­spec­tive. Over­all, the ear­ly adopter pro­gram, and folks using the tri­al tenets and our guid­ed expe­ri­ence, has been awesome.

Q: Reduc­ing tech­ni­cal com­plex­i­ty, rather than adding anoth­er lay­er of it, feels like a guid­ing strat­e­gy for Data­s­phere, giv­en the impor­tance of sim­pli­fy­ing data land­scapes to cus­tomers today. 

A: That’s right. In the past, we’ve also seen cus­tomers go down the path of a com­pet­i­tive solu­tion and spend count­less hours and mil­lions of con­sult­ing dol­lars to rebuild some of that busi­ness con­text, the rela­tion­ships and the log­ic that we inher­ent­ly already have access to through SAP Data­s­phere, in a hyper­scaler or cloud solu­tion. They don’t get the results they want­ed. With SAP Data­s­phere, hav­ing the abil­i­ty to main­tain that busi­ness con­text, just that in of itself pro­vides count­less hours and mil­lions of dol­lars back to the busi­ness. But most­ly, it pro­vides the agili­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty that busi­ness users of all LOBs and indus­tries require today.

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing sim­pli­fi­ca­tion through SAP Data­s­phere, we’re also pro­vid­ing that cen­tral­ized gov­er­nance that IT requires as well. We do that through lin­eage, cat­a­loging, and the abil­i­ty to sep­a­rate data with­in spaces across dif­fer­ent lines of busi­ness­es. We’re serv­ing both the uni­ver­sal needs of the gov­er­nance side and IT as well as the agili­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty on the busi­ness side.

Q: What else would you share with the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty about the poten­tial rel­e­vance of Data­s­phere to their dig­i­tal transformations? 

A: With Data­s­phere, our evo­lu­tion of Data Ware­house Cloud, we not only intro­duced new seman­tic mod­el­ing capa­bil­i­ties with­in its ana­lyt­ic mod­el, but we also brought togeth­er what in the past were dis­crete cloud ser­vices as part of SAP Data Intel­li­gence, includ­ing repli­ca­tion flow and cat­a­loging, into SAP Data­s­phere. We’re tak­ing some of the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents that make up our data­base and ana­lyt­ic cloud ser­vices, and we’re bring­ing these clos­er together.

In the long term, inte­gra­tion is a top­ic I’ve heard about for­ev­er since I’ve been at SAP: the require­ment to have bet­ter inte­gra­tion, between the intel­li­gent enter­prise and our line-of-busi­ness appli­ca­tions, or between SAP solu­tions and solu­tions out­side of SAP. It’s now all com­ing togeth­er with the intro­duc­tion of SAP Data­s­phere. In time, every­thing you can do today with­in SAP Data Intel­li­gence Cloud, as it per­tains to inte­gra­tion between SAP and non-SAP data sources, will be avail­able with­in SAP Data­s­phere, cre­at­ing even a more uni­fied ser­vice for data inte­gra­tion, cat­a­loging, seman­tic mod­el­ing, data ware­hous­ing, and vir­tu­al­iza­tion. On top of that, the ana­lyt­ic mod­el brings SAP Data­s­phere and SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud clos­er togeth­er, because it’s imme­di­ate­ly con­sum­able to a busi­ness user — across finance, HR, sales, or what­ev­er line of busi­ness that may be — to solve a busi­ness use case. 

You see as a trend with our cus­tomers mov­ing for­ward that they require more tight­ly cou­pled ser­vices that they can turn on and turn off as need­ed, to solve their busi­ness use cas­es with agili­ty and flexibility.

Q: I had con­sid­ered ask­ing about the ide­al cus­tomer for SAP Data­s­phere, in terms of size or indus­try or scope or cur­rent progress in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. But, from what you’re say­ing, it sounds like Data­s­phere is instead intend­ed to address a fair­ly uni­ver­sal need for SAP customers.

A: It does. This isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mid­mar­ket or large enter­prise. You don’t even have to be an on-prem BW cus­tomer. Due to the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my, sup­ply chain, and glob­al dis­rup­tion, the uni­ver­sal need is being able to react, con­sume data quick­ly, and take action. Busi­ness lead­ers don’t have time to wait days, weeks, or months for answers. They need sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. And so, for me, for cus­tomers, for the ana­lysts — and for ser­vice part­ners like Ernest & Young, Deloitte, PwC, Accen­ture, Capgem­i­ni, IBM, McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny, and so on — we val­i­dat­ed this uni­ver­sal need of a busi­ness data fab­ric to sim­pli­fy. This is intend­ed for cus­tomers of all types, indus­tries, and land­scapes, to pro­vide that flex­i­bil­i­ty and agili­ty need­ed for today’s business. 

Q: Look­ing to the future, how will Data­s­phere play a role in prepar­ing SAP cus­tomers for emerg­ing busi­ness chal­lenges and glob­al indus­try trends?

A: Beyond the BI use cas­es that we dis­cussed, it’s also going to serve as that data har­mo­niza­tion lay­er to allow com­pa­nies to bet­ter align their oper­a­tional and finan­cial plans across sup­ply chain, finance, HR, mar­ket­ing, and so on.

When I speak to the offices of CFOs or VPs of finance, it’s clear to them that it’s one thing to ana­lyze data and have that data at your fin­ger­tips but, with plan­ning, you must take action. SAP Data­s­phere is going to act as a foun­da­tion for extend­ed plan­ning analy­sis, giv­ing com­pa­nies the abil­i­ty to align their oper­a­tional finan­cial plans using the most impor­tant, har­mo­nized, trust­ed, and author­i­ta­tive data from both SAP and non-SAP data systems. 

Plan­ning starts and ends with data. If those who are plan­ning, be that finance and or any oth­er line of busi­ness, don’t trust the data, they’re not going to be able to take action on it, do their vari­ance analy­sis, and steer the busi­ness in the right direc­tion to dri­ve prof­itabil­i­ty and growth. SAP Data­s­phere is going to play a major role for those com­pa­nies look­ing to do enter­prise-wide extend­ed plan­ning analysis.