The main function of a semantic business service is to represent data in business rather than technical terms, abstracting the meaning and utility of data from the physical mechanisms of storage.
Unlike traditional warehouses that focus on gathering all data and models into a single place, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud doesn’t only store data. It also virtualises data and models stored throughout the enterprise into a consistent layer for discovering, accessing, and managing data for analytics.
Enterprises are embracing the cloud to take advantage of operational simplicity, flexibility, and agility, and the faster time to benefit that the cloud enables. However, most organisations do not have the resources to lift and shift their on-premise data warehouse to the cloud. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud helps you extend your existing on-premise data warehouse deployments, including SAP HANA for SQL data warehousing, SAP BW/4HANA, and third-party environments. This hybrid scenario allows you to balance pace and risks in moving to the cloud.
Customers of SAP BW/4HANA can easily extend current on-premise environments to include cloud scenarios. You can choose to move data from SAP BW/4HANA to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, a managed-service offering. Alternatively, the data can stay where it is, and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud can consume data sets directly from SAP BW/4HANA – without replicating them – and combine data with third-party data sources from cloud or on-premise systems. You can also try a hybrid approach and leave some data on premise in SAP BW/4HANA and put some data in the cloud in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud.
Integration between your data warehouse and analytics solution is often a major, time-consuming challenge. That’s why SAP Data Warehouse Cloud comes with native integration for SAP Analytics Cloud. It also provides open APIs to support third-party business intelligence tools.