Datasphere, should you consider moving?

As a customer, you've likely heard about SAP Datasphere, the latest cloud-based data platform from SAP. Datasphere is positioned as the cloud-based data warehousing tool for the future. Enabling you to manage and provide access to your mission-critical business data. You might be wondering how Datasphere fits into your reporting setup. Should you think about replacing your old BW data warehouse? Or is Datasphere something to consider when transitioning to S/4HANA? At McCoy, we've been involved in several green-field implementations of SAP Datasphere over the past years. In this blog, we'll share our experiences to provide you with the insights you need to kickstart your Datasphere journey.

Why choose Datasphere?

A quicker Time to Market

The first thing that stands out when using Datasphere is the ease of use. A cloud-based easy to understand user interface will enable developers to deliver quick results to your business.

Any user, ranging from the most experienced to first-time users, will easily understand the datasphere way of working. This will make it easier for you to build and maintain your solutions and to increase the impact on your business.

Datasphere Open for business!

Datasphere is set up to be a more open platform. The open set-up is a shift from previous SAP data platforms like BW and HANA, where connecting to non-SAP datasets was often a challenge. Combining SAP data with a wide variety of standard connections will enable you to better understand what impacts your business outside of what’s captured in SAP. The data solutions can be utilized by optimized integration with SAC for building dashboards. Many companies want to integrate SAP data with a data lake to start working on AI / Machine learning solutions. Datasphere has a standard integration option with 3rd party tools like Databricks and Google Cloud that will kickstart these initiatives.

Your Data Fabric

Datasphere is set-up as a data fabric. This will help you to provide a unified and integrated approach to managing, accessing, and analyzing data across your business. In practice this means that various user groups will be assigned to spaces. Typically, spaces are divided per functional area (Masterdata, O2C, Finance, M20 etc. etc.). This will enable respective teams to build the solutions that will support their specific needs without impacting other parts of your business. By simply sharing data models across multiple spaces others can start incorporating your data in their solutions, creating an even bigger impact.

Is the system mature enough?

There are some scenarios where functionality, that was previously available out-of-the- box in tools like BW or HANA cloud, is not available yet in Datasphere. Usually there are clever ways to work around this but that might take some additional effort. We have however noticed that SAP is moving full speed ahead with the development of the Datasphere system. The release calendar is stuffed with upcoming abilities and in the year, we often found that missing functionality was added to the system overnight. So, we are looking forward to what’s to come!

What about performance?

As is true with any data platform, there are still limitations to handling large datasets. This can still create a need to store intermediary results. These extra steps can impact the ability to report on your data near-real time.

Last but not least

In this blog we have only scratched the surface on our experience with Datasphere. But we can already tell that Datasphere already has the capabilities to become a great choice for any SAP client evaluating their reporting landscape. We are confident that this will become even more true when SAP keeps improving the platform at the current rate.

We will make sure to keep you updated on our journey!

If you want to know more about our approach to Datasphere or are interested in taking part in our hands-on training. Please contact Freek van Hoof.