SAP Software and Solutions

The usual use cases for SAP Analytics Cloud that I work with are to make it simple, either reporting, or planning, or predictive scenarios.

The capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud that I consider the most valuable are that all three functionalities are in one tool, and because they are, you don't have to buy another tool to make planning, you don't have to buy another tool to implement prediction. To get some predictive scenarios for your business plan is possible without additional purchases.

I think the areas of SAP Analytics Cloud that could be improved or enhanced are mentioned by users or companies, and they would definitely mention the price in terms of planning licensing. From a consulting point of view, I don't see any major weaknesses. It is reasonably well-developed, and the perfect strength is that innovations are coming on a quarterly basis. It is slightly behind other tools in terms of the number of graphical outputs. Some tools have it faster, but every increment of innovations contains new features. On the other hand, it is perfectly fitting to the SAP environment, with seamless integration to all SAP modules, not only ERP but also SuccessFactors and other tools from the SAP family, for example, integrated business planning for the production planning. This is really a highlight compared to other tools.

I have been working with SAP Analytics Cloud for eight years.

The stability and reliability of this solution are based on the contract with SAP, the cloud tenant contract. The productive environment is stable, with four times a year, there is an upload of the quarterly upgrades, and it is always announced in advance. You have a chance to test it on your test tenant in small increments, so it should not break your productive reports and productive environment.

In terms of the scalability of SAP Analytics Cloud regarding the number of users, you buy the licenses or subscriptions based on some packages, which is differentiated based on the type of license, whether it is just reporting or whether it should cover also planning. A minimum number of planning users is ten, while a minimum number of reporting users is twenty-five, and in some special cases, it can be also only five for demo systems. This varies and needs to be revised with the official SAP pages. Since it is a public cloud service, the consumption of capacity unit goes per the tenant. SAP Analytics Cloud can be used by a small company, and it can be used by a large corporate.

The technical support is a very well-organized service, with a lot of tools for me as a consultant and for the end user on how to contact SAP support and get issues solved. I don't have any concerns about that.

Positive

I do not have experience with Cognos, which is why I was interested in the review, but I am a consultant and I'm implementing SAP Analytics Cloud.

I work for an SAP partner and I am a consultant.

The predictive analytics features of SAP Analytics Cloud include four different tools: regression, time series, and I don't remember the third one now, and the latest edition is Monte Carlo simulation, which works with uncertainties very well. This is also an advantage, and you can implement the result of the prediction to your reporting or to your planning scenarios, doing what-if scenarios.

The interactive data visualization is rather intuitive, and it can work for end users who just run the report and maybe click one filter. You can also create very sophisticated and highly developed dashboards with a lot of scripting and logic behind the screen. It has the tools for every type of user for the analysis.

The process is usually straightforward for me, but the biggest challenge always with the reporting tools is to fit it in the customer's environment. This is always the case with all tools because you need to fit it in their infrastructure and ensure connectivity. All types of connectivity are well described in the connectivity guide of SAP Analytics Cloud. If we struggle with something, it is always on the customer side with their environment, not with the tool itself.

SAP provides enough documentation and enough material for me to find a workaround.

I am not a BI consultant at SAP CZ anymore; I am a consultant in NTT DATA Business Solutions.

I have been working in my current field overall for the past twenty years.

I rate SAP Analytics Cloud as nine and a half on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the best solution and one being the worst.

My main use case for SAP Business Data Cloud is reporting and data lake. A specific example of how I use SAP Business Data Cloud for reporting is pushing SAP S/4HANA data into the data lake.

The best features SAP Business Data Cloud offers are Delta and Zero copy.

The Delta feature and Zero copy benefit my work because Delta helps me move data to the data lake without using more company resources.

SAP Business Data Cloud has positively impacted my organization by federating SAP data, which is now available for all to use.

One specific outcome that shows how making SAP data available for everyone has helped my organization is that we have saved 80% of our time because we are not creating custom reports in SAP anymore.

SAP Business Data Cloud can be improved by being associated with more and more data processing tools.

I have been using SAP Business Data Cloud for six months.

I rate SAP Business Data Cloud overall as nine on a scale of one to ten.

I gave it a nine because it is what the industry needed to expose SAP data into non-SAP tools.

My advice to others looking into using SAP Business Data Cloud is to look at it as a new BW.

I found this interview pretty good, and there is nothing I think should change for the future.

SAP Business Data Cloud solution's main use cases center on AI-infused analytics. Previously, SAP Data Sphere and SAP Analytics Cloud provided data analytics based on available data. However, when we want to incorporate non-SAP related data such as inflation prices, shipment delays, or currency exchange rates, we can now infuse these data points with our SAP data to identify lead times, shipment delays, vendor performance, or actual revenue based on currency conversion. These challenges are being resolved because we brought external, real-world data into our Databricks environment, processed it with algorithms, and then displayed the results on the SAP Analytics Cloud dashboard.

The improvements to our organization are significant. We can now integrate external data sources with our internal SAP systems to gain deeper insights into vendor performance, supply chain delays, and financial metrics affected by currency fluctuations. This capability enables us to make more informed business decisions based on comprehensive data analysis.

SAP Business Data Cloud has two most valuable features. First, the platform now includes a designed workflow that enables data to move from one place to another in a more manageable way, whereas previously the environment lacked this flow. Second, the data products represent a significant advancement. Previously, SAP provided business content that required installation and manual data pulling, though it came pre-configured. Now, the data products offer more manageable, refined, and usable work. This approach encourages adopting the standard version rather than pursuing customization, as SAP provides support for standard versions.

Third, the increased customization capabilities allow us to implement algorithms and develop solutions with greater freedom. We have the flexibility to program anything, bring in any data, or conduct analysis with more autonomy than ever before.

We have only scratched the surface of benefits from using SAP Business Data Cloud because it is new for us as well. SAP Business Data Cloud market does not have many available resources, so we brought in resources to train our team. For training purposes, we brought in international currency exchange data and shipment delays data related to ongoing geopolitical situations. We are currently processing this data with our open purchase orders and shipment information to identify what analyses we can perform. Although we have these capabilities available, we have not yet enthusiastically begun using them, but this will be included in our next quarter plan.

In my opinion, SAP Business Data Cloud could be improved in the availability of Joule, which is more focused towards data products. However, if Joule becomes more feasible with custom products, I believe that would significantly improve SAP Business Data Cloud and the AI roadmap that SAP is planning.

I have been working in the SAP analytics field for around seven years.

Regarding stability and availability of SAP Business Data Cloud, the system tenant availability is very good. We do face issues during quarterly releases when systems occasionally go down, but this occurs very rarely. Other than during these quarterly release periods, the availability is excellent.

The scalability of SAP Business Data Cloud solution is excellent because I have reviewed the roadmap extending to 2040 that SAP announced. Since SAP has consolidated everything on one platform, there is ample room to expand as much as needed. Previously, the components were scattered around, but now there is a comprehensive roadmap available.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate SAP's customer service and support as six.

My experience with deployment of SAP Business Data Cloud is that there were not many requirements. It is essentially a tenant setup requiring licensing only. We already had licensing for SAP Data Sphere and SAP Analytics Cloud, so we simply switched off from one side and switched on to the other side, and then SAP Business Data Cloud became available. There were not many requirements for the deployment itself. However, I must note that the process is quite lengthy. When it comes to purchasing or licensing, the account manager available in Saudi Arabia takes much longer to process. When we have requirements, we want to close them as soon as possible, but the process took a few weeks or even months. This represents a drawback.

I started utilizing SAP Business Data Cloud this year because we changed our licensing category from an individual category to SAP Business Data Cloud. The name itself was announced this year. Previously, it was not a complete package; it operated as silos with SAP Data Sphere as one component, SAP Analytics Cloud as a separate component, and SAP Joule as another separate component. From 2026, and in late 2025, SAP announced the launch of SAP Business Data Cloud as a complete package. The installation approach is different now. Previously, we purchased licenses through SAP BTP, but now there is another platform where we can buy licenses. SAP now provides a complete package as SAP Business Data Cloud.

I would assess the AI features of SAP Business Data Cloud as follows: previously, there were already two or three AI features available. We are currently using Joule as an SAP AI feature, which has natural language processing capability. Joule processes data based on the NLP model and provides analysis based on our requirements and scripts.

Regarding SAP Business Data Cloud's ability to eliminate silos between agents, the answer depends on who we call agents. Agents could be people from outside the organization or from inside the company, and this question contains some ambiguity.

I find that analytical agility in SAP Business Data Cloud is fundamentally about data products. In the agile framework, we have continuous delivery and cannot wait on a waterfall framework for one-by-one delivery. The agility is excellent and has improved significantly compared to the business content approach, which came with certain flaws. For example, some objects that were previously available were not synchronized between systems, with some available in S/4HANA and others not. We had to address these issues. The agility has genuinely improved in this version.

Our company absolutely uses Universal Business Context capability. We have been developing a product that could be utilized as a data product and as a third-party product available globally. If someone needs to use it, they can acquire or import our content and utilize it for their business scenarios or context.

This feature helps in maintaining data meaning and relationships across systems. It is not based solely on data but on architecture, where we develop an architecture that pulls data from our system. When we move toward third-party exportation, the data remains with us, and only the architecture or the flow becomes available to the other parties.

I have not used SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for data integration with partner systems.

We have used the data modernization features in our SAP Business Data Cloud system.

We do not have SAP BW objects because ours was a greenfield implementation. We directly started our journey from SAP Business Data Cloud. If we had BW, we would have used the BW bridge object.

SAP Business Data Cloud support for AI and ML has enabled new use cases in my company by providing amazing freedom to develop algorithms that were previously not available with SAP. Even in SAP Data Sphere, we could bring non-SAP data, but we could not build AI-infused algorithms. However, in Databricks within SAP Business Data Cloud, we can write ML algorithms, train our models, have test cases available, bring in data sets, and have access to these capabilities. It provides so much freedom.

We are currently working with Microsoft, but we have not started with Snowflake because we already have SAP Data Sphere, so we did not pursue Snowflake.

SAP Business Data Cloud is integrated with Microsoft. It is connected with Microsoft SQL Server to bring in non-SAP data.

This integration has affected my data processes in that it did not negatively impact data processing. However, the integration was quite difficult because SAP manages its own security, and we faced issues at the firewall level for whitelisting external IPs, as SAP handles this when a public cloud is available. We faced some difficulties at the firewall level, but the information provided in their guidance and help guides was clear. Overall, we integrated seamlessly.

For SAP HANA Cloud, we are using integration through CPI. We are using it, but not directly through SAP Business Data Cloud.

We have researched the Data Product Studio in SAP Business Data Cloud, but we have not begun using data products as a live feature. However, we are planning to use data products in a new quarter.

My advice to someone researching SAP Business Data Cloud is to consider whether you already have a source system or an SAP ERP in place. If so, I would strongly recommend SAP Business Data Cloud because the ecosystem it builds creates seamless integration between your source system and destination. You will not face connection and integration challenges, which is crucial in analytics as we need real-time analysis available for our data. SAP Business Data Cloud provides a very seamless experience. Additionally, the features SAP provides exceed what the market typically offers. The market usually provides either analysis or a planning tool. Within SAP Business Data Cloud, we have three things: AI-infused capabilities, analytical features, and planning tools all available. Within one package, we gain three benefits within the ecosystem. This is why I would strongly recommend SAP Business Data Cloud. I rate this solution eight point five overall.

My main use case for SAP Business Data Cloud involves installation of data products and creation of data products, and sometimes ingestion of data to non-SAP data cloud such as AWS S3 as well as ADLS Gen2 and sometimes GCP as well.

The process of creating and installing data products in SAP Business Data Cloud is very simple; I just have to find out the use case for which I am trying to find the data product. If I find any data product that is related or matching to my requirement, I just have to search in the catalog and then click a button to find the data package. Then I install it and automatically, the data gets stored in the underlying object store and if I want, I can proceed further in the data sphere and process whatever is required.

Apart from that, sometimes I use the data products from the BWPC, such as generating the data products on the BW objects using the data product generator, which is also one of my use cases. For one of my clients, I am implementing that use case.

The best features SAP Business Data Cloud offers include the data intelligent application and the data product because if I find the standard intelligent application that is suitable to my requirement, I don't have to do anything else; I just find the corresponding intelligent application and install it. That's it. I get an end-to-end application and can start using the SAC dashboard without further actions. Apart from that, even if some requirements are not matching, I can customize that intelligent application or customize that standard data product and can create derived data using the standard data products before proceeding as per my requirement to build data models on top of it and then create a SAC dashboard or story based on those analytical models.

The main standout feature is BDC Connect, as it is very useful for sharing data without replicating to third-party tools such as Enterprise Databricks, Snowflake or even in the near future, Google BigQuery as well as Microsoft Fabric. We don't have to replicate; we can share it from BDC and start using it in those tools, where data scientists or data engineers can build the corresponding pipelines or the AI/ML use cases and share back to SAP Business Data Cloud.

SAP Business Data Cloud has positively impacted my organization as it is getting more business compared to earlier due to unique use cases such as intelligent applications and BDC Connect. Because of that, our team and organization are seeing improvements in net revenue and other financial metrics compared to earlier.

Revenue has increased because of SAP Business Data Cloud, as we are gaining more traction and business. We have built some accelerators that help customers utilizing our services, leading to a significant increase in revenue of at least twenty to twenty-five percent because of these data products.

SAP Business Data Cloud can be improved as some of the features from BWPC are still not available in the Data Product Generator. Including features such as multi-provider or legacy BW object access could be helpful. Also, if connections to third-party tools such as Power BI and Tableau can improve, it would enhance customer interaction. Additionally, if SAP can come up with innovative options to reduce licensing costs, many customers would incline toward SAP Business Data Cloud since some are currently moving towards non-SAP tools such as Fabric, Databricks, or BigQuery due to cost constraints.

The performance when utilizing the zero-copy data share via BDC Connect could be improved, as it would be very useful for most customers who start using it. Right now, some customers face issues because of BDC Connect.

I have already mentioned all of the issues I faced, so I don't have additional improvements to add.

I have been using SAP Business Data Cloud for around three years, starting with SAP Data Sphere and now it's into SAP BDC, such as SAP BDC Cockpit and SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Databricks, SAP Snowflake.

SAP Business Data Cloud is somewhat stable, but it still needs some improvement, which I mentioned earlier.

SAP Business Data Cloud's scalability is great, but it also needs some improvement.

Customer support is generally good, though we sometimes face issues with responsiveness.

I would rate customer support a seven out of ten because sometimes they do not respond properly, so if they can improve on that, my rating could improve.

We were using SAP Data Sphere during our BW migration, but now with SAP Business Data Cloud, we can simply convert existing objects to BDC, eliminating the need for replication flow to get data into Data Sphere, as most features now are just a click of a button thanks to intelligent applications and data products.

We did not purchase SAP Business Data Cloud through the AWS Marketplace; we purchased it directly from SAP but deployed it on-site.

I have seen a return on investment; especially in terms of the number of employees needed to run projects, many features are just a click of a button. We have saved a lot on the number of employees, and implementation time for the projects has reduced significantly since we started using the standard features of SAP Business Data Cloud.

Frankly, pricing, setup cost, and licensing seem a bit high compared to other hyperscalers, but if SAP works on that and provides some innovative options, it could improve and help them gain market share by reducing licensing costs slightly.

Before choosing SAP Business Data Cloud, I evaluated options such as Databricks, Fabric, and GCP. Based on the complexity of integrating SAP data with those options, we decided to advance with SAP Business Data Cloud for SAP data, while utilizing Databricks for non-SAP data processing combined with BDC Connect.

We are currently not using the universal business context capability in SAP Business Data Cloud.

We have utilized SAP BDC Connect for data integration with partner systems, specifically connecting to enterprise SAP Databricks, which helps us improve data and decision-making by combining AI/ML features from enterprise Databricks.

We have utilized the BWPC feature for modernizing the BW. By using the data product generator, we have converted BW objects into SAP Business Data Cloud corresponding objects. I think it needs more improvement because there are limitations on utilizing legacy objects as part of the data product generator, and this feature has helped us migrate BW to BWPC, allowing us to innovate according to the latest features of SAP Business Data Cloud.

We have not utilized the BDC Connect service with new partners such as Snowflake, Google, or Microsoft. We plan to test that feature for Snowflake and when Fabric becomes available, we will certainly test that with BDC Connect.

We have not done the integration between SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud. We are planning to do that to fetch data from underlying HANA Cloud, such as calculation views for use within SAP Business Data Cloud context.

We are not yet utilizing the Data Product Studio in SAP Business Data Cloud.

We have partially utilized the analytical agility feature in SAP Business Data Cloud; while we have not used it to the fullest, whatever we have used has helped our organization.

SAP Business Data Cloud's ability to eliminate silos between agents with a shared understanding of the business stands out; we can combine data from both SAP and non-SAP sources in one place, even unstructured data into SAP Business Data Cloud through BDC Connect for reporting, which is a great feature. Improving the performance slightly would make it even better.

I assess SAP Business Data Cloud's AI features as improving, and I appreciate the Joule integration with Data Sphere and SAC, as well as BDC Cockpit. I think if they can allow users to choose the LLM based on their specific needs or requirements, that could enhance the product.

My advice for others looking into using SAP Business Data Cloud is to switch to SAP Business Data Cloud because it's a great product, and they can save a lot in the long term, especially for migrating BW and utilizing the standard features of SAP Business Data Cloud such as intelligent applications and data products. They can also integrate non-SAP data into SAP Business Data Cloud efficiently. I would give this product an overall rating of eight out of ten.

My main use case for SAP Business Data Cloud is to connect multiple systems and derive data products using customized as well as standard solutions. This includes a data transition to use BW/4HANA and other legacy systems to transfer data to SAP Business Data Cloud PC, private cloud edition, and generate data products based on this.

SAP Business Data Cloud can be used fundamentally in the same way as Databricks where we can send the data to zero-copy sharing data with Databricks and perform machine learning, and then write back data into SAP Business Data Cloud and utilize it in SAP Analytics Cloud. The challenge is based on machine learning that we cannot implement in another tool, so we can use SAP Business Data Cloud for this purpose.

The best features SAP Business Data Cloud offers is basically one solution for all analytics and planning applications. The integration of all the third-party as well as SAP data sources in one platform allows us to deliver machine learning, analytics, and planning. Using this, the decision-making process is very easy with one platform.

SAP Business Data Cloud positively impacts my organization because SAP provides built-in data products that we can easily install and share the results with clients. The implementation of our organization's requirements is more straightforward than with other platforms, and decision-making is easier because SAP provides the built-in data products app that follows SAP best practices. Based on this, any business can cover their scenario easily, and decision-making increases profit.

SAP Business Data Cloud can improve by reducing the licensing cost because each level requires clients or partners to pay different licenses based on its functionalities. For instance, if we purchase SAP Business Data Cloud only for SAC, we pay the SAC licensing, and if we also purchase Data Sphere, we then pay for Data Sphere licensing, Databricks licensing, and BW bridge licensing. At each step, partners or organizations requiring SAP Business Data Cloud pay licensing for every tool. If we can reduce the licensing cost, it may help small or medium organizations to implement SAP Business Data Cloud, making it more popular globally.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing of SAP Business Data Cloud is that it is very high compared to implementation costs. If we could reduce this cost based on capacity units, then small and medium organizations could also avail themselves of this opportunity.

I have been using SAP Business Data Cloud for eight months.

SAP Business Data Cloud is stable.

The scalability of SAP Business Data Cloud can increase based on users' requirements.

The customer support for SAP Business Data Cloud is very good.

Before using SAP Business Data Cloud, we used BW/4HANA and SAP Business Object. The reason we switched is that BW and SAP Business Object did not perform well for planning and lacked built-in functionality, leading us to shift to SAP Business Data Cloud, where any third-party data sources or SAP data sources are integrated in one place. We decided to switch to SAP Business Data Cloud because it provides AI, machine learning capabilities, and predictive analytics.

I have done integration of SAP as well as non-SAP sources including third-party sources. There is a SAP Business Data Cloud cockpit where we can create a formation in which all the systems including third-party systems as well as SAP systems are connected into one place. This integration is also performed using SAP BTP for integration, and after the integration or formation creation, we can simply set up and create a connection on tools such as SAC or Data Sphere or any other tool connected to it.

We can use workforce-related apps where we can identify how many workers are required to increase specific production or how many sales increase based on this workforce. For example, if we can increase sales, we can determine how much workforce is required. If we reduce the workforce, we then assess the impact on other sales or production. Based on this, we can easily generate profit or implement it in multiple organizations.

There is a return on investment with SAP Business Data Cloud, as it saves money because it performs results quickly and easily, facilitating integrations and speeding up operations compared to other analytics tools, thereby saving time and money.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing SAP Business Data Cloud; I only chose it because I heard good things from different clients and colleagues, making my choice straightforward.

My advice to others looking into using SAP Business Data Cloud is that it is a cementing platform that aligns multiple tools, both SAP and non-SAP, into one relationship and generates reports and dashboards very easily. Even non-technical users can work on standard SAP data products and generate results based on their business requirements, making SAP Business Data Cloud very helpful for any organization.

SAP Business Data Cloud is deployed in public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid scenarios because one organization might have a public cloud such as S/4HANA, another might have on-premises data sources, and a third could have both public cloud and on-premises sources. In this case, we can implement a hybrid scenario where we connect legacy data sources to SAP Business Data Cloud and generate results based on this.

The self-service analytics features of SAP Business Data Cloud provide fast results compared to manual input and enable multiple business decisions to be generated based on the speed of this service.

SAP Business Data Cloud support for AI and machine learning has enabled new use cases in our organization. For instance, we can use workforce-related apps, sales prediction, production prediction, and overall business scenario prediction. Using AI and machine learning, we can easily generate results and share them with clients.

When I connect SAP Business Data Cloud with third-party data sources, the reliability of data sharing is very easy and occurs quickly when connecting different data sources such as SAP data sources or any external data sources.

When keeping the same meaning or relationships when data moves between different systems, SAP Business Data Cloud can use data from multiple systems. Based on these multiple systems, we first define the relationships of the data, and when we share results with different systems, the meaning remains unchanged because we define the relationships before sharing results.

I find SAP Business Data Cloud to be a very good product, and I recommend every business organization use it. Based on these results, you can make decisions easily, and I gave this review a rating of seven out of ten.

SAP Business Data Cloud serves multiple solutions. The primary use case is dashboarding and analytics. Second, customers can use it to create an enterprise lake or lakehouse solution on SAP. Additionally, there is an agentic AI solution, which means on top of the dashboarding or enterprise warehouse, I can run machine learning and AI, generative AI directly on those analytics as well. These are the use cases for which a customer would choose SAP Business Data Cloud.

As a partner, I believe the biggest advantage in the product is that SAP context is maintained. If I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and I bring SAP data outside to a hyperscaler data lake, I lose the SAP context. Here, SAP context is maintained, and that is the biggest advantage. Additionally, SAP has standard APIs for integrating SAP Business Data Cloud with all SAP products, so I get out-of-the-box dashboards, which means out-of-the-box content, and the APIs are pre-delivered by SAP.

The product helps to eliminate silos between agents with a shared understanding of the business. SAP Business Data Cloud has a unique feature called Delta Share. For customers who have partial data inside SAP and some data outside SAP, they don't need to replicate the same data twice. I can share whatever is already there in SAP Business Data Cloud with hyperscalers and vice versa. If I have some data in Amazon and some data in SAP Business Data Cloud, I can share both of the data with each other bi-directionally, which prevents silos.

The concept of Universal Business Context capability in the product helps to maintain data meaning and relationships across systems. Context is maintained through Data Sphere, which is part of SAP Business Data Cloud, where I can maintain new entity relationships. There is also a feature called knowledge graph, where I can add my own semantics on top of it.

SAP Business Data Cloud has SAP BDC Connect for data integration, which enables the sharing and Delta Sharing of data that I mentioned. The product has support for AI and ML, which helps with integrations to Snowflake or Databricks. Inside SAP Business Data Cloud, I don't have the AI or the machine learning part, but it uses that as a joint offering via Snowflake's machine learning capabilities or Databricks capabilities, or I can reuse hyperscaler capabilities like Amazon, Azure, and Google. I share the data using Connect, and then I run machine learning and pass back the results.

SAP Business Data Cloud includes SAP Analytics Cloud, which is very similar to Tableau and Power BI. The analytical agility feature in the product does impact my ability to work efficiently. Data Product Studio helps to build and manage data products. SAP has been releasing data products from their side, and I can install and activate these data products using the studio. It is created as a plug and play. I can go and select the data product and activate it, which activates end-to-end the entire pipeline, making it fast.

I use SAP BDC Connect with all new partners like Snowflake, Google, and Microsoft. Every version comes out, and today, it is only available for Databricks. By June, I will get Azure and Snowflake, and by October, I will get Google, with every quarter a new partnership being announced.

I use integration between SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud, but that is the standard integration available between all SAP products, not just HANA Cloud. I can get integration with even the LOB solutions of SAP like Ariba.

If we speak about potential improvements or areas for improvement, the primary concern is cost. The main missing element right now is content in all areas. The content is highly limited right now for most of the data products, with only three or four available at this point. Data products are not available for everything, and all are being developed. If I start a project, I have to create it myself or wait for SAP to release it sometime in the future. The most important missing feature is that not all the data products are ready as of today. If the cost could be slightly reduced to make it much more competitive compared to what is available, it would also help.

Cost is quite high when I look at the market and competitors. If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.

I have been working with SAP Business Data Cloud for approximately one and a half years as a partner with the vendor.

In terms of stability and reliability, there is some downtime, but I find it pretty reliable. The downtime I have experienced occurred only once, and it was down for maybe a few minutes. SAP Business Data Cloud is pretty reliable, and I don't see a major issue there.

SAP Business Data Cloud is scalable. There are no limitations in terms of scale, so it fits both SMB customers and enterprise customers.

Regarding customer support and the technical team, that is a broader topic that doesn't only apply to SAP Business Data Cloud. Since it is fairly new, there is a good amount of support available right now. In SAP's policy, for the first couple of years, the product team is also part of the support team. Currently, I have decent support and no complaints regarding poor service. Judging on my experience, I would rate support from zero to ten points as about eight.

Regarding installation, I would say it is quite straightforward as compared to the competitors. From a complexity point of view, I don't think it is too complex; it is good.

I have observed some ROI with SAP Business Data Cloud. There are advantages, but it is early days because it is just one year out in the market. Once the entire solution is ready, meaning by the end of this year, I will start seeing ROI. While the product is ready and good, I still have to develop all the content. Once the content is available, then it is a faster go-live with lesser cost in implementation, and that would give an ROI.

Setup cost doesn't affect much because I still have to manage the pipelines, but that is about it. Cost is quite high when I look at the market and competitors. If I compare the cost with SAP competitors, I find that when creating an enterprise data lake, if I don't use SAP Business Data Cloud and make it directly in the hyperscalers, it is pretty much cheaper than doing the same in SAP Business Data Cloud.

I am building my own solution similar to SAP Business Data Cloud, so I use both, depending on the customer choice. If customers want to use SAP Business Data Cloud, I sell that. If they don't want to go for it, then I use my own solution on Amazon Data.

A solid rating for SAP Business Data Cloud would be eight points, which reflects my overall assessment of the product.

I use SAP Business Data Cloud on the cloud where I am leveraging various use cases in business data. In my workflow, CDS views to SAP Business Data Cloud provide reports for SAC Analytics Cloud, allowing templates and direct report access for users without disrupting the source from S/4HANA. My use case focuses on planning, fast access, templates, and agents, as multiple cloud versions including PCE and private editions exist, with newly added features also being a consideration.

The biggest impact for me and my client comes from the integration and reporting aspects, as normally in BW/4HANA, high costs are incurred when purchasing separate features, but in SAP Business Data Cloud, all features can be accessed under one purchase.

The positive impact of SAP Business Data Cloud on my organization is evident, especially since my client is planning to migrate from ECC to S/4 and SAP Business Data Cloud, significantly reducing the time and resources required to create data objects and manage budgets.

My analysis indicates that team size can be reduced by around 30 to 50 percent, and cost-wise, almost 50 percent will be reduced as well.

The best feature of SAP Business Data Cloud is that it serves as an umbrella connecting all components, enabling connections with data sphere, SAC, BW/4HANA, and data analytics, effectively consolidating everything under one umbrella. SAP Business Data Cloud ensures data maintains its meaning and relationships across various systems by supporting all types of ODA sources, involving both SAP and non-SAP data sources from Oracle, Java, and unstructured data from platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Currently, I find the DevOps features to be lacking in SAP Business Data Cloud, and I hope that upcoming versions will enhance DevOps capabilities and provide better structured and unstructured data support.

I have identified some issues with the DataBricks in SAP Business Data Cloud, and I believe that new versions should focus on providing more features, especially on the DevOps side and regarding templates.

I have been working in the SAP domain for the past 15 years, working with all versions including SAP BW, BW/4HANA, BW on HANA, S/4HANA, and Native HANA, sometimes even in functional roles involving SD and MM.

SAP Business Data Cloud is stable currently.

The scalability of SAP Business Data Cloud is attractive, providing easy access and fast accuracy with low-code and no-code solutions.

Customer support for SAP Business Data Cloud is generally good, although there have been some minor issues regarding access and security.

I have not previously used any other solution before adopting SAP Business Data Cloud.

I do not have the metrics for return on investment yet, as I need to start working on the integration before I can share relevant data on employee reduction, costs, or time saved.

The pricing for SAP Business Data Cloud is higher compared to alternatives, but it is justified by the comprehensive features offered under one umbrella, which effectively meets my client's needs.

Before opting for SAP Business Data Cloud, I evaluated options including data sphere and SAC, considering individual costs, but I found SAP Business Data Cloud more efficient and encompassing.

My advice for others considering SAP Business Data Cloud is to leverage its all-in-one capability to reduce manpower, increase accuracy, and utilize business templates efficiently for faster report generation. I provide this review with a rating of 8.

I have been using SAP Business Data Cloud solution, and typically this involved Data Sphere and SAC. Earlier, when SAP announced SAP Business Data Cloud, it brought Data Sphere, SAC, and Databricks to a single platform. We had already started implementing SAP Business Data Cloud as part of our move from BW 7.5. Then we decided to move out from BW and go to SAP Data Sphere, and that migration was more of a greenfield implementation. We are almost done with the implementation and are almost live all queries on SAC, with the back-end modeling and the entire architecture setup on SAP Data Sphere. SAP Data Sphere and SAC will be moving into SAP Business Data Cloud formation going forward, with Databricks being external, so we are not going in for SAP Databricks, but for an external Databricks.

The integration aspects between SAP and SAP Business Data Cloud are pretty good and seamless. SAP has done a lot of hard work in setting up the right integration and orchestration framework. There are multiple ways to take the data, whether it is remote tables or SLT or database triggers or ABAP connections. All of them work seamlessly, and if I want to take the data out of SAP Business Data Cloud, there are multiple options where we have taken data out to Azure Data Lake using premium outbound as a service and replication flows in Data Sphere. These orchestration aspects are really seamless.

The integration and orchestration have been so good that I do not see any performance degradation or challenges in taking data out from SAP. It has worked well for us, with only a couple of challenges that we have figured out.

SAP Business Data Cloud offers new ways of working compared to the on-premise SAP BW platform. It's a complete shift for both developers and end users, which I feel is a significant improvement.

I see a positive effect from SAP Business Data Cloud on our organization as we consolidate our entire analytics offering, whether it is through traditional reports and dashboards or building a complete data foundation with a single version of truth on SAP Business Data Cloud.

Self-service from an end-user perspective has not been utilized right now. We are in the migration phase, and there is a lot of change management because the business users have to move from BW to SAC. It's a platform change, and currently, we have not enabled the self-service mode for the users; we are allowing them to adjust first. Going forward, the plan is to create models across different business verticals.

There is a long way to go with SAP Business Data Cloud. There are areas where more insight applications could be developed beyond what's currently available for people intelligence. We would like to see applications around supply chain, manufacturing, and maintenance that could provide automated insights directly from the system.

In my current role, I have been in the data and analytics field for almost 16 - 17 years.

Stability and uptime are not problems at all, with proactive notifications for planned downtimes and performance degradations.

The scalability of the platform is good as it is cloud native; I do not see any problems in scaling.

We regularly work with SAP support for any issues and interact with many SAP architects and product management team members regarding new features. The interaction has been good, and the support has been adequate without any challenges. I would rate SAP support an eight because the support is proactive, with timely updates and good resolution to problems.

Moving from SAP BW, the earlier analytics and data warehousing platform. We switched because SAP moved to the cloud with SAP Business Data Cloud, aligning with our goal to adopt a cloud-native strategy for analytics and ERP.

BW has a lot of objects, including cubes, DSOs, ADSOs, composite providers, and multi-providers, and there is a lot of flexibility in the system. One needs to  really think through what logic gets incorporated at what piece in Data Sphere, and you need to plan well in terms of translating a particular flow from BW to Data Sphere. It also involves limited access to CDS views that were not supported while we moved from ECC to S/4HANA. The entire logic was rewritten or re-implemented with SAP tables, and we needed to see what stage we were in when it comes to SAP as an ERP core versus what my strategy is to avoid any future rework.

I am proceeding with my implementation team.

We did not want to move out of the SAP platform, especially as most of our data resides in SAP BW.

What is coming out in SAP Business Data Cloud is that it is a completely managed platform. There is a lot of standard content available, such as People Intelligence based on SuccessFactors data. Our HR team will want insights from all the data available in SuccessFactors. Pre-built content in the People Intelligent Insight application allows us to install the data products and the application, making it easier to obtain insights from the data flowing from SuccessFactors.

My current plan involves using SAP Joule for some AI use cases, but on SAP Business Data Cloud, AI-related use cases have not been implemented yet since we are in the migration journey. The data foundation layer is being made to support all AI use cases going forward.

The purpose of using SAP Business Data Cloud is to maintain a single version of truth. If we take any SAP data into external platforms for AI or ML use cases, we expose the data out from SAP Business Data Cloud to ensure that the same data is delivered, avoiding scenarios of picking data from SAP into Azure directly.

We have not yet used Data Product Studio. We have started installing some insight applications and data products related to SuccessFactors but have yet to fully explore Data Product Studio.

There is a long way to go with SAP Business Data Cloud. There are areas where more insight applications could be developed beyond what's currently available for people intelligence. We would like to see applications around supply chain, manufacturing, and maintenance that could provide automated insights directly from the system. Overall, I would rate this solution a 7-8 out of ten.

I have performed two POCs over SAP Business Data Cloud. My core expertise is in DataSphere and it was a core part of this initiative. We integrated data from S/4, ECC, and Alteryx. We transformed the data models into a traditional analytical model and created Insight apps for reporting.

The best features I appreciate in SAP Business Data Cloud are that SAP is now offering a single platform subscription. Previously, if you wanted data engineering, you had to pursue DataSphere or BW, or if you wanted to extend for reporting, you had to buy another subscription for SAC. Instead, you can take a single subscription of SAP Business Data Cloud and implement whatever you need.

Another advantage is the subscription-based model with pay-as-you-go pricing. This is beneficial instead of having to buy a fixed amount of memory that you have to pay for even if you are not using it. The flexibility is quite good.

The large scale of integration is significant. Through the open cloud connector, we can integrate many systems. Previously, it was a closed SAP environment. Now we can integrate with different platforms across the board and transform data across the platforms, with SAP Business Data Cloud at the center. This makes it easy to convince clients and business stakeholders that they should purchase the subscription.

SAP Business Data Cloud ensures that data keeps the same meaning and relationship when moving between systems in quite insightful ways. Because we are integrating with cross-platforms, many clients now want to move from their on-premise systems to the cloud and gain some footing in AI. When considering the size of data for big companies or organizations in the energy sector or manufacturing sector, which have multiple landscapes across their business, everyone wants to integrate everything. In that scenario, SAP Business Data Cloud is quite helpful for live data reporting, replication, and data transformation.

From my POC experience, I can say we can assume definitely around 30 to 40 percent time saving.

With SAP's AI capabilities in SAP Business Data Cloud, there are some parts integrated, but I am not convinced or impressed as much as I am with traditional data warehousing. For example, there was one component called data generator available in SAP Business Data Cloud. It was transforming a previously built data model in BW to the DataSphere model. However, we have seen some disturbances where the data model built on custom functional modules needs human dependency. It was not transforming exactly as much as our requirement. That is one point.

The second point is about the Insight app; I am not that happy about this. It can be improved. For the Insight apps, they need to be shared through other reporting platforms because of client requirements. One of my clients was from the manufacturing sector and wanted to try the Insight app. They wanted some reports in SAC and some reports in Power BI. However, the Insight app is not available; we cannot share this Insight app to Power BI. That was the issue we faced. This is a limitation.

In SAP Business Data Cloud, to help different AI assistants stay in sync and share the same business rules so they do not give conflicting information, I feel SAP still builds all these AI capabilities into a closed system. If you compare other data engineering stacks, they are openly integrating and partnering with other platforms. They are much more advanced and much more ahead of their time in comparison to SAP Business Data Cloud.

SAP Business Data Cloud does support AI or ML enabled with new use cases in our organization. There are some apps we want to develop, and it is not only limited to SAP Business Data Cloud. We are trying to integrate Joule capabilities into SAP Business Data Cloud. For example, if we are doing a greenfield implementation, on top of these tables, we have to create the CDS view for optimized extraction. In that case, we are trying to do this CDS extraction and CDS code writing using Joule AI automation. That is something SAP could directly integrate into SAP Business Data Cloud. It will save us time.

Second, they have given the product generator, so remodeling is a bit easy. The third point is about reporting. The Insight app is not something I am happy with overall. The Insight app concept was not giving end-to-end functionality, and there is a limited scope of customization into that pre-built Insight app. SAP can work on improving this.

I have been using SAP Business Data Cloud for almost one year. Since it was launched, I started reviewing and exploring the possibilities of what we can implement over it.

I would rate the stability at seven out of ten, with ten being the best.

You can take scalability as a nine, definitely nine.

I rate the technical support at eight point five out of ten, with ten being the best.

On the pricing point, I would say it is quite high compared to other solutions that are available in the market. Unless the client's priority is performance and costing is the secondary priority for them, the client is not willing to buy SAP subscriptions.

Comparing SAP Business Data Cloud with other solutions or other vendors, with the open connectors and cloud connector, it is quite easy. There are also OData services and JDBC drivers. There are many ways to integrate, but we mainly use the standard approach. If it is an SAP-based system, then we use a cloud connector. If it is non-SAP systems, like Azure, then we use the open connectors. For example, Qlik Sense or Alteryx.

I have used the self-service analytics in SAP Business Data Cloud, and they help change our data models quickly. It is quite good. They still need some human intervention while we are doing this, but the capability is present. Essentially, we can shorten the development team in this process, definitely. It also reduces our development time. We did not need to develop a requirement again and again. We can reuse those models or Insight apps.

Moving our old data to SAP Business Data Cloud has made our daily operations faster or easier. I have mentioned that many clients have old on-premise systems. Some of them still have 7.5, some moved to BW for HANA. They can now take the private cloud edition. If they move to the private cloud edition, it is very easy. We did not need to do a greenfield implementation. Instead, we can do the brownfield approach. Over there, as I mentioned earlier, there are some disturbances we have seen for custom function modules, but that is quite manageable. Instead of getting a big team of developers, with the help of experts on a particular platform, we can shorten this duration.

Connecting SAP with platforms like Snowflake, Google, or Microsoft has changed the way my team manages and moves data. Many customers are using different landscapes like Databricks, and Databricks is kind of leading organizational data into their AI capabilities. We can now directly work on something, develop some AI capability, or work on AI capabilities or some AI solution that the client requires. With zero delta sharing, it is a bit easy. Instead of storing the data in the traditional way where we used to push the data into another system, we can directly share and do this on our AI agents or generative AI components for direct development in Databricks. That is quite helpful. The zero delta share copy is quite helpful and is also saving a lot of money and is cost-effective.

I am using the integration for SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud.

This integration affects my management processes as I am working with one manufacturing client who wants a single platform where they want to decommission all their previous different landscapes over the region and want a single global region landscape. In that case, we proposed SAP Business Data Cloud because whatever data we are getting across the platform, we store in a single landscape. We can consolidate and transform into a single landscape. Furthermore, this live replication gives us an edge over traditional data warehousing solutions like BW. This affects things such as time-divided regional divisions due to time zone constraints. Previously, traditional on-premise systems were hosted on on-premise servers. Now, SAP is hosting in the cloud, so it was quite easy to integrate all landscapes into a single platform. This reduces the complexity of the organization.

With SAP, I am using Data Product Studio with SAP Business Data Cloud.

The benefits I have seen in using these two products together are that it is saving time of rebuilding. Suppose someone had already built something according to my requirement. Then, going through the data marketplace, instead of developing everything, I can directly get that data product from the data marketplace. It was saving my implementation and development cost for the project and also time. It is quite helpful.

SAP Business Data Cloud is mostly deployed in the cloud. Now clients want to move to the cloud itself. Most of them want to upgrade to a cloud solution itself. I did not work on a hybrid model solution, but I have heard from my excellence team that they are also trying to implement the hybrid solution as well.

I have worked on the integration with the S3 bucket and Alteryx system. Apart from that, I did not work on other integrations. Most of the clients want to buy the S3 bucket itself because its costing is comparatively very low in the market. Most clients want to store their historical data into the S3 bucket itself.

Most of my clients are from either the energy sector or the manufacturing sector. They are huge clients. I have told you, unless they do not have the priority of performance, then most clients, for the ERP system, are buying an S4 system, but for the integration and for the data engineering, they used to buy or choose other platforms. For this, one section over SAP can work on pricing for the smaller scalar organization.

SAP Business Data Cloud does require some maintenance in that the admin team or Basis team used to take care of these things. Mostly now it is moved to a cloud solution, so it is easy. Prior to the on-premise system, it is quite a bit easier to install the updates right now. The main point is that SAP has really worked on reducing the complexity of installing the updates and on these things, so that was the great part.

I would rate the overall solution as an eight because there are some platform limitations that need to be worked on. Sometimes, the SAP support team itself will give a direct statement that it is standard functionality. That is why I have cut two points. Otherwise, it is quite good.

If the data volume is huge and the priority is performance, then I would recommend SAP Business Data Cloud. I am in consulting myself. I used to recommend to clients that if they want to take performance as their number one priority and they want to get into new technology like AI as well as they want to get into the cloud, then I assure them that they should get into SAP Business Data Cloud. But if cost is their first priority, then they can still take the private cloud edition and transform their old legacy systems in a phase-wise manner over time. However, costing is something that is impacting. From my overall experience, costing is something where other platforms get an edge over SAP.

I would rate this review as an eight out of ten overall.