Offering an environment where business units can create their own data models by combining their data sources within a single solution in order to reduce their IT dependency, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud provides speed, convenience and cost advantage in all stages of data authorization, management and visualization with its advanced analytical capabilities.
Data is among today’s most crucial values. Today, approximately 7.5 billion people live in the world and constantly produce data. On the one hand, approximately 22 billion devices are expected to communicate with one another this year. This shows that the amount of data, which is already at huge levels, will increase rapidly over time.
On the other hand, 20% of companies continue implementing big data projects, and according to research, companies are expected to invest USD 3.8 billion in business analytics in 2020. Senior-level executives note that 80 percent of new job opportunities arise from analytical projects, and add that 75 percent of their futures success depends on projects associated with reporting.
All these developments once again show the ever-increasing importance of data. Companies realize that their success depends on data, and importantly, generating meaningful results from data. However, the ever-increasing number of data sources and amount of data make it difficult to convert data to a real value. This challenge necessitates a solution that can manage data flexibly, rapidly and easily.
One of the key technologies used to achieve this is data warehouses. Data warehouses offer analytical capabilities to connect data sources in a meaningful way. Grouping data in a meaningful way by using a data warehouse enables creation of more organized reports, and powerful reports enable users to get more efficient insights which in turn bring success. Expectations from data warehouses are incredibly high. Newly developing technologies (e.g. machine learning), diversification of needs (e.g. analytics enabling making forecasts) and new technologies (such as cloud) require more advanced solutions in this field. In order to meet such needs, central data warehouses managed by IT teams become even larger and more integrated day by day. You cannot immediately change or increase data, add new cells to it or apply a “test” on these systems, everything should be planned in advance, the possible impact of any change in the entire system should be assessed and the implementation should be carried out by an expert.
So, when this is the case, users working with the central data warehouse have to face numerous problems including limited data access, lack of details within the data, absence of an environment to test ideas, challenge of combining the existing data in the system with the new data coming from a different source. For example, when a user needs to add a new data or a new data source to a previously created report and carry out an analysis afterwards, that user is supposed to request a change from the IT department each and every time; and this leads to time-consuming processes. Combining all data sources that are not yet accessible by central reporting without IT support and working with these data rapidly, flexibly and securely are among the crucial needs for many companies.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud offers an end-to-end solution to meet this need by combining data management with advanced analytics capabilities.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC), empowers its users with many features. With SAP DWC, users can access data sets, work in spaces defined according to their business lines and create their own data warehouses in these spaces. They can combine and analyze data coming from multiple sources. And they have the convenience of doing all these things in a single solution. SAP DWC allows different users working in the same department to work together in the same space and the ability of SAP DWC to carry out flexible modeling enables working in accordance with changing needs.
Cloud-based, flexible and scalable
Cloud technology has numerous advantages. Research shows that 80 percent of performance management will be carried out in the cloud by 2020. On the other hand, according to studies on this topic, SaaS (software as a service) systems provide a cost advantage of 77 percent compared to on-premises systems.
Thanks to its cloud-based structure, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud provides numerous advantages. It offers a remarkable ease of use since it is ready to run right away and you do not need any extra effort for installation. New features are embedded in the product without the need for updates supporting innovation. Since its system works with the HANA Cloud infrastructure, the performance requirements are adjusted according the needs of users. This is directly reflected in the costs improving the bottom line.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud Architecture
SAP DWC offers its users an environment and access to the data they want within the specified authorizations. In their defined environment, users can access their own data sets and perform their own analysis. The solution’s outstanding features include its rapid, in-memory and cloud-based operation, its structure that allows data to be combined rapidly, its simple interface and its flexibility to allow co-working and responding to changing needs simultaneously. In this way, end users can easily perform all data management and reporting transactions via SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, and IT units can easily manage the necessary processes.
SAP DWC is a product built on the SAP HANA Cloud infrastructure. In DWC, there also exists an “embedded” version of SAP Analytics Cloud where data can be reported.
DWC architecture and working principles can be summarized in four basic layers:
Layer 1 – Connections: In the “Connections” layer where the source system and AP DWC talk to each other, there are three basic connection types, namely SAP ABAP, SAP HANA and OData. In here, you can provide connections via SDI (Smart Data Integration) and SDI agents and receive data. A connection can be established through this layer.
Layer 2 – Data storage: Following the receiving of the data that took place in the first layer, data are stored in this layer. DWC can access the data on-the-fly at the time of running the report as well as store the data physically.
Layer 3 – Services: Basic functions provided by the system such as Space/User Management, Data/Business Modeling, File Management and Data Security are in the Services layer. This layer is the part of SAP DWC that is directly associated with the end-user. In this layer, you can create a space for both yourself individually and users in a specific department independently. The fact that these spaces can be used in complete isolation from each other provides a crucial upside in terms of security and control. Here, one can easily view how many connections each space uses, how many data models it contains and their types of usage. This, in turn streamlines the management of the system by the IT department. Spaces become ready for use following the simple process of giving each one a name. Another key feature in here is compatibility with third party tools; if there exists an in-house BI tool in use, this enables them to access and use the data in DWC.
With the Data Modeling feature, users can create relationships between tables, manipulate data and limit data by using filters. The product offers the user a semantic layer. In this way, even a non-technical user can easily carry out certain tasks such as creating a table or editing the information within the table without the need for IT support. This feature, which enables data modeling without the need for technical know-how, allows both the person who uses the model and those who will use the model afterwards to view the relevant information really easily in addition to the convenience it offers while modeling. Business Modeling feature in this layer shows where the data starts from, how far it goes and how it is reported, all at a glance.
Layer 4 – Reports: Users can utilize the data quite efficiently through this layer where reports are created. In this way, one can realize that this solution is not merely a tool used for data modeling and it also converts the data into a meaningful and visual entity. The stories of SAP Analytics Cloud product are “embedded” into the product. Here, there is an area where numerous dashboards can be prepared ranging from trend analyses to comparison charts. With the story builder feature in this layer, users can create any report without ever leaving the DWC system.