SAP Business Data Cloud: Evolving Beyond SAP BW
Many organisations rely on SAP BW for reporting and data warehousing. However, with evolving needs, customers are looking for faster processing, open integration, and flexible data solutions. SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) provides a modern, scalable, and governed data foundation to support this shift.
Why Modernisation Matters
Traditional SAP BW is limited by batch extraction, slow refresh cycles, and complex landscapes. Customers face high maintenance and hardware costs, spending more time on troubleshooting than on insights. SAP BDC removes these barriers with real-time connections, SAP HANA Cloud, and open architecture for SAP and non-SAP data – resulting in a cleaner, lower-cost landscape.
Key SAP Business Data Cloud Benefits:
- Faster data processing (in-memory computing)
- High availability managed by SAP
- Live connectivity to SAP S/4HANA, SAP cloud apps, and third-party sources
- Consistent business data models
- Unified, role-based security
- Lower total cost (no hardware refreshes or Basis maintenance)
- Support for open formats and SQL connections
Leveraging SAP BW in the Private Cloud
Customers can use SAP BW data products in SAP Databricks for ML/AI and in SAP Datasphere for analytics, enabling native BW use cases with zero-copy architecture. HANA Data Lake Files reduce storage costs, and Spark Engine replaces ABAP for scalable, isolated compute.
Transition Steps:
- Lift SAP BW NetWeaver or BW/4HANA to the private cloud; co-exist with SAP Datasphere.
- Provision chosen InfoProviders as SAP BW data products; onboard custom use cases.
- Replace BW use cases with data products and intelligent applications; leverage SAP Datasphere capabilities.
Path Options:
- Lift to SAP BW, private cloud edition for NetWeaver.
- Leverage SAP BDC innovations and move to SAP Datasphere.
- Focus on data products using SAP Business Data Cloud features.
- Maintenance support until 2030; optional conversion to BW/4HANA, private cloud edition for extended support.
- Optional: Conversion and lift to SAP BW/4HANA, private cloud edition.
- Leverage the benefits introduced with SAP BW/4HANA, e.g., simplicity of modelling objects and enhanced DTO.
- Continue with SAP BW/4HANA conversion projects already underway.
- Execute SAP BW/4HANA conversion as part of cloud migration in a single step or at any point.
- Benefit from maintenance support beyond 2030.
Modernisation Journey
A typical program includes:
- Assess current BW (active objects, integrations, data volumes)
- Design target architecture (business entities, semantic layers)
- Prepare connectivity (extractors, authentication, throughput)
- Migrate data and logic (transformations, validation, testing)
- Validate and deploy (connect BI tools, train teams, switch traffic, archive data)
Customer Gains
With SAP Business Data Cloud, customers achieve faster reporting, reduced overhead, improved data quality, and scalable growth. The unified semantic layer supports future AI and planning integrations.
Future Opportunities
SAP BW data remains a key asset. Customers can process BW data in SAP Datasphere or Databricks, enabling ML/AI use cases and maintaining semantic independence.
Cost Benefits
Customers can expect significant reductions in migration effort, analytics support, software maintenance, infrastructure, and IT process costs with SAP Business Data Cloud and BW, private cloud edition.
How On Device Solutions Can Support Your Enterprise
Below, you’ll learn more about our expertise in SAP BW and migration:
- Design and Development: Creating design documents, technical specifications, and custom data sources to meet business needs.
- Migration: Managing the migration of data and objects between systems or environments, ensuring smooth transitions and minimal business disruption.
- Data Integration and Transformation: Activating and enhancing SAP business content, developing ABAP routines, and building process chains for efficient data extraction and loading.
- Monitoring and Support: Overseeing data loads from multiple systems, resolving failures quickly, and ensuring data integrity for reporting.
- Reporting: Building reports using Business Explorer (BEx) and SAP Analysis for Office (AfO).
- Incident and Change Management: Handling high-priority incidents, documenting failures, processing change requests, and supporting disaster recovery plans.
- Collaboration: Coordinating with various technical teams and providing demos or support to business users.
Whether you’re beginning your cloud journey or modernising legacy systems, SAP Business Data Cloud is a strategic foundation for scalable, future-ready data platforms.
Get in touch with On Device Solutions to explore how we can accelerate your transition and unlock the full potential of your SAP data landscape.
