The fusion of agentic enterprise AI, rich business context, and seamless data orchestration is reshaping how enterprises think, decide, and operate – pushing the boundaries of digital transformation in pursuit of competitive advantage.
At On Device Solutions, we are proud to be a trusted SAP Partner helping organisations harness the power of SAP’s latest innovations. SAP and Databricks have joined forces to deliver a groundbreaking integration between SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) and the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform – bringing together the most trusted business data with industry-leading AI and data engineering capabilities. The implications for SAP customers are profound.
The Rise of Agentic Enterprise AI
AI is undergoing a fundamental shift. With the rise of large language models and their newly acquired reasoning capabilities, we are entering what SAP calls the Age of the Agent. These intelligent agents can now dynamically reason and make decisions – moving beyond traditional rule-based automation. SAP’s vision for 2025 and beyond is to operationalise these agents across the business, enabling smarter, more autonomous enterprise operations.
SAP is embedding these capabilities directly into its applications via Joule, the next-generation AI copilot. Joule enables users to interact with SAP applications using natural language, but critically, it also empowers agentic AI to take intelligent action, making processes more efficient and less reliant on rigid rules or manual intervention.
AI Powered by Business Data Cloud
At the heart of this transformation is the SAP Business Data Cloud – a unified data platform built to support the scale and complexity of enterprise data. Unlike traditional systems that require data to be copied, moved, and duplicated for analysis, BDC supports bi-directional, zero-copy data sharing between SAP and non-SAP sources.
This is a major evolution of SAP’s Business Data Fabric strategy, which began with SAP Datasphere. Now, with the integration of Databricks as an OEM component within BDC, customers can leverage industry-leading AI, machine learning, and data engineering capabilities directly on their SAP data – without replication.
Key features of SAP BDC include:
- Large-scale, cost-effective storage via the Large Storage Option (LSO)
- Unified semantic layer for harmonised data models
- SAP Datasphere for modelling, governance, and data integration
- SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) for visualisation and business insights
- Embedded Databricks for advanced ML and AI workloads
This unified platform means businesses can now deploy agentic AI applications using accurate, real-time, and semantically rich data, enabling smarter decision-making at scale.
Intelligent Applications and Data Products
SAP is delivering a suite of Intelligent Applications, beginning with financial insights such as Working Capital Analytics, and expanding into sales, supply chain, and beyond. These applications are powered by pre-built SAP-managed data products – curated pipelines that extract, transform, and contextualise data from SAP systems and load it into BDC.
What makes this approach transformational is the standardisation and automation of complex data engineering tasks. Instead of customers manually building ETL pipelines and semantic models, SAP now delivers complete, metadata-rich data products ready for use in both analytics and AI.
Through the SAP BDC catalogue, these data products can also be shared into SAP Databricks using Delta Sharing, an open protocol that enables secure, zero-copy data access. This means that data scientists can analyse SAP data in Databricks’ familiar notebook environment without duplicating or exporting sensitive data.
A Modern AI Stack for SAP Customers
With Databricks fully embedded in SAP BDC, SAP customers now have access to:
- Delta Lake for real-time, structured and unstructured data processing
- Unity Catalogue for governance of models, data, and lineage
- Mosaic AI and MLflow for full ML lifecycle management
- Open ecosystem integration for bringing in non-SAP data (e.g. weather, finance, consumer sentiment)
Together, this enables SAP users to:
- Run predictive analytics (e.g. invoice payment predictions)
- Build RAG-based chatbots with SAP context
- Execute AI workloads across SAP and external data
- Surface insights back into SAP tools like Datasphere and Analytics Cloud
Real Use Cases: From Insight to Action
A demo shared during the webcast illustrated how a financial controller could use SAP BDC to monitor delayed payments. Upon noticing anomalies in working capital metrics, data scientists were able to:
- Locate and share relevant SAP data products (e.g. journal entries) to SAP Databricks
- Execute predictive ML models within Databricks notebooks
- Share the resulting insights back into SAP BDC
- Visualise those insights in SAP Analytics Cloud as enriched dashboards
This streamlined workflow removes traditional bottlenecks in data extraction, modelling, and sharing – delivering true insight-to-action capabilities with minimal manual effort.
Modernising SAP BW with Lift, Shift, and Innovate
SAP BDC also supports BW modernisation through a “Lift, Shift, Innovate” approach:
- Lift: Move your SAP BW systems into SAP BDC’s managed private cloud
- Shift: Transition critical BW artefacts into modern data products
- Innovate: Build new use cases using SAP Datasphere and Databricks
This path offers BW customers a pragmatic route to the cloud while unlocking advanced analytics and AI without starting from scratch.
What This Means for On Device Solutions Customers
As a trusted SAP Partner, On Device Solutions helps organisations implement, integrate, and optimise SAP solutions across mobile, cloud, and data platforms. The introduction of SAP Business Data Cloud in partnership with Databricks opens new doors for our clients:
- Faster time-to-insight with pre-built data products
- AI-ready architecture without the need for large data science teams
- Lower TCO through zero-copy integration and unified governance
- Future-ready applications built on agentic AI and business context
If you’re looking to modernise your data estate, harness the power of AI, or simplify your analytics landscape, On Device Solutions can help you realise the full potential of SAP Business Data Cloud and Databricks.
Ready to take the next step in your AI journey? Contact us today to discuss how we can help you unlock the value of your SAP and non-SAP data with SAP Business Data Cloud.
