SAP and t h e C or p or at e Infor m at i on Fac t or y

by

William H. Inmon

March 2001
 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

The first introduction of SAP to most corporations is as an ERP vendor. SAP's ERP products
address the challenge of legacy applications and present a solution to the year 2000 problem.
ERP technology allows organizations to get a handle on the integration and modernization of
daily transactions that run the operations of the business. Very basic transactional data is
captured as a by-product of doing business.

But once the implementation of transaction processing is completed, there arises a demand for
information from the basic data that has been captured as transactions have been executed.
There are several reasons why basic transaction data is not enough to run the business:
• Not all data is incorporated in the ERP installation.
• Basic transaction data by itself is not very enlightening. Basic transaction data needs to be
summarized, analyzed, aggregated, and so forth in order for management to be able to see
beyond the detail.
• In its raw form basic transaction data is hard to access, and so forth.

Multi-Dimensional Technology
After several implementations and after listening to its customer base, SAP's first response to
the need for information beyond that that is available at the transaction level was to supply the
customers with a form of multidimensional technology - InfoCubes. The purpose of the
InfoCubes was (is) to allow the customer to access data in a form much more amenable to
analysis than is possible at the basic transaction level. InfoCubes opened the door to the
usage of SAP data a level above the transaction processing level.

But InfoCubes by themselves were (are) not a complete solution. Long before SAP introduced
InfoCubes, the industry had discovered that multidimensional technology placed directly on top
of transaction processing technology had its limitations. When multi dimensional technology is
placed directly on top of transaction technology several things happen:
• There is no single place to turn to in order to resolve value discrepancies.
• There is no place to jump start new multi dimensional views of the world. Each new multi
dimensional view must return to the transaction data and reconstruct a new view,
• There is no historical foundation that is being built. Only a limited amount of historical data
can be stored at the transactional level.
• There is no single point of integration for all data, transactional and otherwise, and so forth.

SAP was hardly the first organization to discover these limitations of multi dimensional
technology being placed directly on top of transaction data. The industry had long ago gone
through the rigors of the data warehouse versus data mart debate. (See the web site
www.billinmon.com for a collection of articles and white papers relating to this public debate.)

The First Steps to a Data Warehouse

The next step SAP took after listening to its customers was to initiate a data warehouse in
support of the informational needs of its customer base. With a data warehouse in place, now
SAP was positioned to support the many informational needs of the organization.

The architectural evolution to a complete information-processing environment that has been

described has taken place and to some extent is still taking place in the SAP product line. The
evolution to an architected environment is measured by the different releases of SAP. In any

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

software product line, release information and qualification is important. In SAP's BW product,
release specification is very, very, very important because SAP has gone through significant
architectural evolution from one release of the product to the next, more so than any other
software vendor in memory.

SAP BW Releases
A brief history of the SAP BW release pattern looks like:
• BW 1.2b - introduction of InfoCubes and Business Content
• BW 2.0b - introduction of ODS
o mySAP.com interface
• BW 2.1c - analytical component
• BW 3.0 - further enhancement of ODS into a data warehouse, along with the creation of
analytical applications, partnerships, and so forth.

The architectural capabilities of SAP have progressed very rapidly in a short amount of time.
The architectural differences from one release to the next are very significant, especially the
differences between 1.2b and 2.0b. But each new release adds very significant capabilities.

Enter the ODS

One very important and positive architectural component found in the newer releases of the
SAP BW product is that of the ODS. When there were only InfoCubes, there was no ODS.
Then the ODS appeared. And in subsequent releases the ODS was modified and enhanced to
the point that the ODS fulfills the role of a data warehouse. Now SAP has a data warehouse
and a firm architectural footing for going into the future. With a data warehouse SAP BW has
solved the many problems that arose when there were only InfoCubes.

The Corporate Information Factory

The path towards an information architecture that SAP has followed can be expressed very
nicely in terms of the conformance of SAP architecture towards the corporate information
factory. The corporate information factory is a well-known framework for information systems.
The corporate information factory has grown in response to information needs around the
world and exists independently of SAP (or any other vendor for that matter.) The corporate
information factory is described in the book THE CORPORATE INFORMATION FACTORY:
SECOND EDITION, John Wiley and Sons, NY, NY. The corporate information factory is also
described in depth on the web site www.billinmon.com.

Because of the wealth of information that exists about the framework known as the corporate
information factory, only a brief description will be given here. If you want more in depth
information on the corporate information factory, please refer to one of the above sources.

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

The corporate information factory is depicted in Figure 1.

Corporate Information Factory Components

Figure 1 shows that the heart of the corporate information factory is the data warehouse. Data
is fed from the application and ERP systems into a staging area. From the staging area data is
fed into an ETL process where integration, conversion, and transformation occurs. Data is the
fed into a global ODS and/or a data warehouse (sometimes called an enterprise data
warehouse or "edw".) The enterprise data warehouse contains very granular, integrated
historical data. The enterprise data warehouse contains data that serves as a basis for many
other forms of processing.

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

The data in the enterprise data warehouse of necessity is granular. The granular data needs
to feed many other facilities and each facility needs to look at and use the data in its own
fashion. Therefore the granular data needs to be at a fine level of granularity so that it does
not favor any one usage of the data over any other usage of the data.

The enterprise data warehouse feeds the data mart environment. The data mart environment
is where multi dimensional analysis of data occurs. OLAP technology and processing is typical
for data marts. The organizations that use the data mart environment typically are sales,
marketing, finance, accounting, and other departments. Data undergoes a fundamental
transformation as it passes into the data mart environment. Usually each department has its
own unique way of looking at the data found in the enterprise data warehouse.

DSS applications are the applications built around the data found in the enterprise data
warehouse. As such the enterprise data warehouse feeds the DSS applications environment.
DSS applications differ from data marts in that they have a functional flavor. Whereas data
marts serve a department in many functional ways, a DSS application serves many
departments in one functional way. In many regards a data mart and a DSS application serve
similar purposes and similar audiences. But they have a different orientation as to how they
operate.

A well-known DSS application is CRM, customer relationship management. CRM consists of

both local activities and broad analytical activities. Sales force automation and call centers are
examples of local activities. Broad analytical activities consist of analysis of market
penetration.

The exploration warehouse is the place where exploration and data mining occur. The
exploration warehouse is a separate facility designed for large statistical processing. The
exploration facility is a way for the business to discover business patterns of interest that have
never been before analyzed without disrupting the remainder of the information processing
facility.

Near line storage or alternative storage is storage that is designed to be "over flow" storage for
the data warehouse. The data warehouse attracts huge amounts of data. Over time a very
large proportion of that storage turns dormant. Dormant storage is storage that is still needed
but has a very low probability of access. The cost of trying to store all data on disk storage
becomes burdensome once a data warehouse reaches a certain range, around a terabyte of
storage. At that point near line storage starts to become very attractive as an extension to disk
storage.

In order to make near line storage attractive and practical it is necessary to have a cross media
storage manager. A cross media storage manager is technology that is designed to manage
the traffic of data to and from near line storage.

The global ODS is an architectural component that is allowed to have integrated data moved
into the facility and to support OLTP processing speeds and functionality. The global ODS is a
facility that accepts integrated data from several sources, such as the ETL layer and the
enterprise data warehouse itself.

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

The granularity manager is the facility that accepts data from the web site environment(s) and
condenses and integrates that data with other corporate data. The granularity manager
primarily accepts click stream data and reduces and organizes it. The granularity manager is
the primary interface from the web environment into the corporate information factory.

The web environment(s) that interacts with the corporate information factory contains a
dialogue manager. The dialogue manager manages the interaction between the Internet user
and the web site. Another component is the facility for preformatted dialogues. These
dialogues can be made statically or dynamically and are tailored to suit the needs of the
Internet user.

The web site also contains a cookie cognition component. The cookie cognition component
allows the web site to recognize a cookie as a session is initiated.

Another component is the session analysis component. The session analysis component
produces click stream records. Click stream records are those records that are at the heart of
recording the interaction with the end user during the web session. Click stream records are at
an extreme level of detail.

Click stream data is data that is at the heart of the user interface. There is a huge amount of
click stream data that is created. As such click stream data is usually stored in a web log. The
web log then serves as input into the granularity manager.

An interesting component of the web environment is the web ODS. The web ODS is a
component that allows online processing to occur. The web ODS is similar to the global ODS
except that the web ODS contains and manages only data found in the web site whereas the
global ODS contains and manages data found throughout the corporate information factory.

The direct interface from the web environment(s) to the corporate information factory is the
web log to the granularity manager. The interface from the corporate information factory to the
web environment(s) is from the global ODS to the local ODS or other web componentry.

Note that the corporate information factory can serve multiple web environments.

Also note that not all architectural components are found in every site. Indeed in most sites
there are some components that are not found because they are not needed. They may be
needed in some future time, but they are currently not found in the site. For example, not
every site has a formal staging area. Only very large sites that process much application data
have need of a staging area. Or there may not be near line storage. Near line storage is
needed only when there is a lot of data in the data warehouse. So it is unusual to find any one
company with all of the componentry found in the corporate information factory.

SAP's Support of the Corporate Information Factory

The latest releases of SAP have direct support of many of the features found in the corporate
information factory. Figure 2 describes the support found directly in SAP R/3 and SAP BW in
the later releases of the software.

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

The combination of SAP R/3, mySAP, and SAP BW, along with the analytical capabilities
currently existing or soon to exist in the product make the SAP support of the corporate
information factory very robust.

Some notable highlights include:

• SAP support of ERP. This is the easiest and most natural component of the corporate
information factory to be supported by SAP. In fact SAP was the worlds pioneer in this
arena and there is no question of SAP's support here. The ERP foundation gives SAP a
basis for gathering and managing data. This advantage is the equivalent to the being the

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

head of the food chain. Once the data comes under the management of SAP, it is easy and
natural to integrate the data and migrate the data to other parts of the corporate information
factory,
• SAP support of data warehouse. SAP's first foray into data warehouse was under the guise
of an ODS. The first ODS that appeared in early releases of SAP was very much like a true
ODS. But each new release adds on to the ODS so that in later releases the ODS starts to
take on the characteristics of a data warehouse. The latter release of the ODS contains
granular data that can be accessed in many different fashions, a smattering of historical
and data integrated from the SAP R/3 environment and elsewhere. As such the latter
release ODS starts to look very much like a data warehouse. Certainly from a functionality
standpoint, it serves as a warehouse. In addition the ODS operates in a mode of openness,
where access to the warehouse is available in many forms, and where the ODS is operable
with software and technology from partnerships such as Ascential and Tealeaf,
• SAP's support of the web environment. SAP has done a very good job of supporting the
web through mySAP.com. mySAP.com has interfaces from the web to and from the
corporate infrastructure. Where SAP does not have support for specific web functionality,
they have partners who do support the needed functionality,
• SAP support for data marts. SAP has its InfoCubes. This technology plays the role of data
mart support. The support is robust,
• SAP support for oper marts. SAP has InfoCube support for oper marts,
• SAP support for DSS applications. While other areas of SAP are strong, this area is
perhaps the strongest and most sophisticated. SAP supports the concept of the "cockpit"
here. The cockpit approach is very appealing to management who has the need for up to
date information and a wide variety of information. SAP's offering of SEM - Strategic
Enterprises Management - provides SAP with superior support here. SAP has divided its
world of SEM into five components:
§ SEM-BIC - the component for business information collection,
§ SEM-BPS - the component for planning and simulation,
§ SEM-BCS - the component for business consolidation,
§ SEM-CPM - the component for corporate performance monitoring,
§ SEM-SRM - the component for stakeholder relationship management.
Individually the components form an impressive array of tools for management to make
decisions - both long term and operational. Collectively the components are a tour de
force. To say that SAP has support for this component of the corporate information
factory is a gross understatement. SAP has the most impressive solution in the
industry.

One of the interesting extensions to the ODS/data warehouse environment is that of analytical
applications. For a long time it has been recognized that as important as an ODS/data
warehouse is, that the real payoff for the end user comes in the analytical applications that
depend on the ODS/data warehouse as a foundation. But analytical applications require
development just like any other application. In this regard SAP has extended the capabilities of
the BW data warehouse environment by adding analytical applications to the suite of products
that come with BW. These important applications include CRM, SCM, web applications, HR
and the like.

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

Support for Metadata

Another aspect of SAP's support for the corporate information factory, which is not apparent
from the diagram shown in Figure 2, is the support for metadata, in particular distributed
metadata. In order for the corporate information factory to work seamlessly, in order for the
corporate information factory to become a cohesive whole, not a collection of independently
operating devices, there needs to be distributed metadata. Metadata needs to be available and
useful at each architectural component and metadata needs to be able to be transmitted
across each component to the next component. In doing so, metadata forms the glue that
holds the corporate information factory together.

SAP uses a combination of XML for the transport of metadata across components and industry
conventions to decipher the metadata once the metadata has arrived at its destination and is
freed from XML. In doing so SAP has tied the different architectural components together in a
constructive manner. This approach promises to have long-term implications for the users of
the corporate information factory which are very beneficial. It means that SAP has constructed
their version of the corporate information factory for the long term, and this can only be
satisfying to the long-term client of SAP.

SAP Partners
SAP has chosen partnerships for the filling in of the corporate information factory where SAP
either has no componentry or has componentry, which might best be supplemented. Two
areas of partnership, which SAP has strengthened their implementation of the corporate
information factory in, are shown in Figure 3.

The first important partnership is in the arena of ETL processing. SAP has chosen to partner
with Ascential, formerly Ardent Technology. Ardent is currently a subsidiary of Informix and has
announced plans to split from Informix in the future.

The partnership with Ascential allows SAP to reach back into the legacy environment into IMS,
CICS, VSAM, ADABAS, Siebel, I2, Manugistics, IDMS and other technologies in a native
mode without having to flatten those old legacy files. In doing so there is a very efficient access
of data and there is no loss of semantics as the data is accessed. This mainframe technology
opens the door for organizations that do not have SAP for all of their applications to have SAP
BW for all of their applications. In short the partnership with Ascential allows SAP to
considerably broaden its foundation for SAP BW. Given the analytical applications that SAP
has, the extension to Ascential allows non-ERP applications and data to be included. The
inclusion is by means of entry into SAP's BW where the data is then available to the analytical
application.

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

The second important partnership for SAP is for technology that manages the collection and
analysis of user interaction data with the web site. SAP partners with Tealeaf in this area. Not
only is the data collected and assimilated, the data is then merged with other corporate data,
so that the end user is able to see how web activity fits with other corporate activity. This

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

capability is something that is well beyond other organizations who struggle merely with getting
a handle on click stream data.

The larger picture, which is formed by SAP direct support and/or partner support, is shown in
Figure 4.

The picture shown in Figure 4 is remarkable from at least two aspects. It is remarkable in the
scope. No other vendor has the same reach across all the environments in a comprehensive
manner. Some vendors have software. Other vendors have hardware. But in terms of forming

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 SAP AND THE CORPORATE INFORMATION F ACTORY

a complete picture across the entire corporate information factory landscape no other vendor
can compete.

Which leads to the second remarkable aspect of SAP's implementation of the corporate
information factory, and that is that SAP is offering a solution, not a single or even multiple
pieces of technology. Instead SAP has made a very important first step - a first step for the
industry - in offering a complete corporate information factory solution.

The solution includes not only the traditional data warehouse technology but the supporting
technology such as preconfigured extraction modules, key performance indicators tracking and
reporting, InfoCubes, InfoSources, Queries and reports, Analytical applications such as CRM,
SCM, e- commerce, HR, and others. The extended technology coupled with the ODS data
warehouse environment positions SAP as a solution vendor, not a point vendor. And of course
in today's world of technology, customers much prefer integrated solutions rather than point
solutions that have to be cobbled together.

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