The SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC): The SAP Data & BI product of the future

With the SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), we aim to address some of the most frequent questions from our customers. These include easy access to SAP business data, modernization of their SAP BW landscape, and the creation of a solid data foundation for AI scenarios. The BDC now makes this possible.

As a fully SAP-managed cloud solution (SaaS), the BDC addresses this issue directly. It offers powerful data management and enables seamless analysis by integrating SAP and non-SAP data. This allows companies to make informed decisions without having to extract data from their source systems. The original context and semantics of the SAP business data are retained, while ensuring that the analyses are up-to-date and consistent.

To make this possible, the BDC combines powerful functions from SAP Datasphere, the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and the SAP Business Warehouse (BW). This is supplemented by SAP-managed insight apps & data products for SAP business data, as well as an integrated data science platform with Databricks. As a result, the BDC significantly reduces the effort required for data integration and lowers the costs for a separate data warehouse or manual data processing.

The BDC offers versatile application possibilities. For example, it supports companies that are already using SAP BW and are aiming for a transformation into the cloud. It enables the integration of existing BW data into the cloud, so that companies can protect their previous investments and at the same time benefit from the latest data and AI functions. This also includes bidirectional data access and support for data engineering, as well as AI workloads such as data science and machine learning in Databricks.

The Insight Apps and the associated, preconfigured data products for SAP business data, which are based on SAP's industry and business expertise, offer particular added value. This approach significantly increases the flexibility and performance of data analysis. Overall, the comprehensive functions of the BDC enable efficient and cost-effective management of the company's data landscape.

The BDC offers numerous advantages for your customers. By integrating SAP BW, SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) into a central platform, it significantly reduces the complexity of the data infrastructure and at the same time lowers the total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition, the bundling of licenses simplifies the commercial framework and creates further advantages for your customers.

Beyond the Total Cost of Ownership, the integration of applications, data, and AI in a central location is a crucial success factor. This is enabled by a scalable platform that provides quality-assured SAP data while offering openness to third-party solutions, especially through Zero Copy Delta Sharing. Instead of introducing a completely new platform, the BDC relies on the evolution of existing solutions such as SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP BW. As a result, companies benefit from long-term investment security, innovative technologies, and the opportunity to protect and further develop existing BW investments.