SAP Business Data Cloud – Overview and Guide to Resources

SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) launched on February 13, 2025, and will be commercially available on a
controlled basis, with general availability planned for April 2025 (subject to change). This document provides an
overview and a list of key resources to refer to, to get a deeper understanding of what BDC is and the key
components and building blocks of SAP BDC.

SAP Business Data Cloud is a fully managed SaaS solution that unifies and governs all SAP data and
seamlessly connects with third-party data—giving line-of-business leaders context to make even more impactful
decisions.

SAP is changing how data is shared across each of its Lines of Business by utilizing the efficiencies of zero-copy
and data mesh concepts. We want to provide a true Data Fabric architecture approach for analytics. Advances in
Artificial Intelligence have also underscored the importance of clean, semantically rich data.

SAP Business Data Cloud connects all data by leveraging business data fabric principles, making it easier to
discover, share, govern, and model data.

source: SAP
 source: SAP

As a first step please check out the SAP Business Data Cloud – FAQs in the SAP Community.
Ffew more FAQ questions as below:

What are the key components and building blocks of the SAP BDC?
• Foundation Services and Data Products
• Insight Apps
• BDC Cockpit
• SAP Datasphere
• SAP Analytics Cloud
• SAP BW, BW/4HANA PCE (Private Cloud Edition)
• SAP Databricks

What is driving SAP to combine SAP Datasphere, SAP SAC and SAP BW, BW4 into the new SAP
Business Data Cloud (BDC)?
• One software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and subscription model for all data & analytics needs.
• Unified Data Experience: By integrating these solutions, SAP aims to offer a seamless data experience that
allows customers to access, manage, and analyze data across different SAP applications and third-party
sources.
• Automating Data Integration: BDC provides SAP-managed data integration, including pre-built data products
and Insight Apps, eliminating the need for customers to manually integrate data, even from SAP sources.
 • Extending Analytics with AI/ML: It integrates SAP Databricks, expanding analytical capabilities and enabling
comprehensive ML/AI use cases.
• Offering cost-effective storage, compute and a fully enabled data lake house architecture
• Delivering SAP-managed content: Like Insight Apps, which simplifies deployment compared to traditional
Business Content.

How do Insight Apps in SAP Business Data Cloud differ from embedded analytics in SAP S/4HANA,
Ariba, SuccessFactors, etc., and how will these apps be structured?
Insight Apps serve distinct analytical and AI/ML-driven use cases, focusing on historical and cross-application data
for deeper analysis, unlike embedded operational reporting which emphasizes real-time, day-to-day operational
data. Embedded analytics often struggle with high data intensive analytical use cases or consolidating data across
multiple systems, a challenge Insight Apps address.

What's the difference between BDC Insight Apps and SAP prebuilt business content, especially since
prebuilt business content is typically free? Can customers just customize the prebuilt business
content instead of buying Insight Apps?
The fundamental difference between Insight Apps and business content is lifecycle management. Insight Apps are
fully managed by SAP (one click installation and ready to consume) that includes data integration, updates and
ongoing support. Insight Apps are typically not free and require a subscription or purchase. SAP Business content,
on the other hand, often with no additional cost, and shifts the responsibility of data integration, configuration,
updates and maintenance to the customer (Import, Deploy, Data Integration, Updates etc.).

Will there be any changes to existing SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics or embedded SAP Analytics
Cloud in Line-of-Business applications like Ariba?
No, there will be no changes.

How does BDC affect existing SAP Datasphere and SAC customers, and what's the transition like?
Existing Datasphere and SAC customers can seamlessly integrate with BDC and continue using their current
solutions. The transition involves rewiring existing tenants to BDC without disruption. There's no immediate need to
switch, and existing APIs remain unaffected. While BDC currently requires a separate Datasphere tenant,
automatic upgrades are being explored. Note: Rewire (seamless transition) of existing tenant (Datasphere, SAC)
into BDC is planned for Q3/2025 subject to change.

What is the future of SAP Datasphere with BDC, and will it continue to be developed
SAP Datasphere remains a strategic component of BDC and will continue to be enhanced. There will be no feature
gap between Datasphere within BDC and standalone Datasphere, and it will maintain its own roadmap.

What is the role of SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) within SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC)?
SAC is an integral part of BDC, providing a unified experience alongside SAP Datasphere and Business
Warehouse. This combined offering enables comprehensive insights across all lines of business. Existing SAC
customers can continue with their current contracts or transition to BDC with seamless integration. SAC Enterprise
will also continue as a standalone product.
What are the benefits of having SAP BW[BW/4] within BDC, and why should I migrate from SAP BW
7.5 to BW 7.5 PCE or BW/4HANA to BW/4HANA PCE in BDC?

Integrating into BDC offers significant advantages. Specifically, SAP BW customers can lift their systems to an
SAP-managed PCE environment without an immediate, complex migration, benefiting from extended support and
allows for a gradual transition of BW use cases to SAP BDC, e.g. replacing data flows with Datasphere's
capabilities, saving time and resources. (Note: BW 7.5 must be on HANA DB for BDC integration.)
Technical benefits:
• Code enhancements and modifications are permitted.
• Scalability and SAP-managed technical operations and upgrades upon customer request.
• Out of the box Data products generator for BW Info Providers (includes query), Multi providers, aDSO, Info
Objects and Combine BW legacy data with new data.
• All BW objects (Data products) are accessible through the BDC catalog feature.
• Attach BW data to Data fabric architecture to enable BI, AI/ML use cases.
• Delta Sharing (zero-copy) enables data sharing with SAP Databricks.
• Consume directly in SAP Datasphere analytical layer.

What is the future of the SAP Datasphere, BW bridge component?

SAP Datasphere BW bridge optional component is still relevant and supported for new projects until at least 2040.
It serves two main purposes or use-cases:
1. Access to BW Content & ECC extractors: It enables access to SAP BW Business Content and ECC
extractors, including SAPI and customer-generated extractors.
2. BW System Decommissioning: It facilitates the decommissioning of BW systems by allowing the reuse and
migration of BW assets to SAP Datasphere (with certain limitations). This allows it to function as a data
ingestion and staging layer, retaining most BW modeling capabilities, excluding BW queries.

Note: While no major new features are planned beyond addressing some missing functionalities (like importing BW models from
Datasphere), it provides a pathway for integration with Datasphere. It is not on SAP BDC innovation path. For existing BW
customers not using BW Bridge, SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) offers migration paths to BW 7.5 PCE or BW/4HANA PCE,
simplifying the transition and enabling quicker access to BDC services like Data Products, Insight Apps, and AI capabilities.

What is SAP Databricks, and how does it enhance SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC)?
SAP Databricks is a fully managed service within BDC, bringing the powerful Databricks unified analytics platform
directly into the SAP environment. Leveraging Apache Spark for large-scale processing, it seamlessly integrates
data engineering, machine learning, and business intelligence. This allows you to combine structured SAP data
with unstructured and semi-structured data from any source. SAP Databricks is a tailored, serverless offering
where SAP manages the data storage and Databricks manages the compute infrastructure.

To see where all this fit into the components of driving a successful SAP S/4HANA transformation look at
the SAP Big Picture Architecture with capabilities organized along three main layers.

• The top layer, labelled SAP Applications & Processes, comprises the core applications to drive and
understand business processes (finance, supply chain, customer experience, and procurement).
 • The middle layer, labelled SAP BTP & BDC, provides access to all critical technologies for modern
business transformation, such as for cloud application development, enterprise integration, process
automation, data management and data sharing, analytics and AI.
• The bottom layer, labelled Sources & Ecosystem, connects the SAP landscape with a broad range of
providers of technologies, applications, and data.
“Big Picture Poster”: how our technologies unlock SAP S/4HANA Transformation with SAP BTP+BDC

Much more information and guidance are available in these resources:

Video (2.39min) > SAP Business Data Cloud

Product tour > Click through demo of BDC
Webcast with Klaus-Peter Sauer - Product Management > SAP Business Data Cloud
Learning Journey > Introducing SAP Business Data Cloud (1 hr 10 mins)
After completing this learning journey, you will have acquired foundational knowledge of SAP Business Data
Cloud. You will discover key components of SAP Business Data Cloud and their main tasks. You will also
gain an insight into SAP Business Data Cloud use cases and explore innovative SAP Business Data Cloud
features.

• Solution Brief > BDC

• SAP Community topic page > BDC
• SAP Community Tagged Blogs > BDC
• SAP Help Portal > BDC
• SAP Road Map Explorer > BDC
• [Link] page > BDC
• [Link] page > Why modernize with SAP Business Data Cloud?
• [Link] page > Data and Analytics

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