Fast and efficient data warehousing is key to inter-connected business intelligence. But for many years it has been a complex and expensive technology. With an abundance of data warehousing products on the market and SAP’s BW product offering a vast array of options, choices and features, selecting the right data warehousing approach has left many customers wondering which direction to take.
Understanding how to leverage the right technology and optimise the building blocks of your data warehousing solution will help shape better predictions and outcomes. SAP BW/4HANA is SAP’s latest in-memory data warehouse packaged solution optimised for SAP S/4HANA that gives you data warehousing for all your operational reporting to strategic analysis as well as meeting future requirements for IoT, data lakes and smart data integration.
Here we give you an overview of its benefits and how it could fit into your data warehousing strategy.
Introducing SAP BW/4HANA
This is the next generation data warehousing solution from SAP. It runs on SAP HANA and has the same levels of performance and agility as SAP S/4HANA, working for both cloud and on-premise deployments. Plus, as SAP BW/4HANA supports SAP Analytics using any SQL tool you’ll be able to visualise your data in SAP Analytics Cloud, and add-ons for MS Office and other third party providers.
SAP BW/4HANA fits into SAP’s data warehousing strategy to offer customers a model or application-driven approach with high levels of integration for data management and modelling. A key advantage for SAP customers is that it sits seamlessly with SAP S/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud and can be used as a reporting platform for your non-SAP sources. This makes SAP BW4/HANA the ultimate Enterprise Data Warehouse, the source with information of your entire company.
4 key advantages of SAP BW/4HANA
Flexibility – built-in templates provide you with building blocks to leverage your specific data warehousing needs. You can access all your data and models through standard SQL or with SAP HANA in BW mode.
User experience – a modern interface lets the user create visualisations and data modelling, increasing productivity and speed. It works with the digital boardroom for immersive experiences and is accessed through the latest technologies.
Speed and agility – the solution is high performing like SAP S/4HANA so you get optimal levels of data uploads and analysis.
Simplicity – as many unused or seldom used options and features have been removed from standard SAP BW, you are left with a streamlined, simplistic and more relevant proposition for your BW transformation journey.
Are you an existing BW customer looking to upgrade to SAP BW/4HANA?
SAP BW/4HANA is designed to harness the power of the SAP HANA platform and greatly simplify your data flow, sources and structures into a single logical view. While similar in structure to SAP BW, it reduces effort and complexity by processing only SAP HANA-optimised objects. It offers lots of deployment options for cloud and on premise and also allows you to connect with SAP and non-SAP data sources.
SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BW/4HANA
Get all the agility of self-service business intelligence in one application, reducing errors and speeding up processes. With a live connection you can use machine learning insight, make calculations and blend data from different sources to generate reporting and analytics to make better informed decisions.
SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW/4HANA extension
SAP S/4HANA is the next generation intelligent ERP that delivers modern simplified architecture, the latest user experience with SAP Fiori, automation and fully integrated intelligent technologies to re-shape and re-imagine business processes. On top of this, as an extension to SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW/4HANA gives you fact-driven process handling and transaction-embedded decision support.
Choosing SAP BW/4HANA as your EDW for SAP S/4HANA allows the best integration capabilities based on common architecture and terminology, including analytical engine, modeling, currency handling, user maintenance, ABAP, transports, governance, scheduling, and more.