What is a knowledge core and why does it matter for AI?

A knowledge core is the central layer of a business data fabric that connects your data, processes, policies, simulations and semantics into a unified system. It goes beyond a traditional knowledge graph by enabling AI agents to understand how your business actually works, not just what the data says. Without it, AI agents can conflict with each other or optimise for the wrong outcomes.

How is a business data fabric different from a data lake or data warehouse?

A data lake or data warehouse shops and organises data but does not preserve the business context around it. A business data fabric goes further by connecting that context across your entire landscape, making data not just accessible but interpretable. This distinction becomes critical when AI systems need to make autonomous decisions that align with real business outcomes.

Business data fabric

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What is a business data fabric?

A business data fabric is an architecture that turns all your data and context in one governed foundation, serving as the trusted knowledge core for every enterprise application and AI agent.

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Connect all your data with full business context

Harmonise SAP and third-party data with a trusted knowledge core that preserves business context and delivers unmatched understanding of your business.

Ground every AI agent in trusted semantics

Ensure every agent, application and decision is grounded in universal business context, enriched by active metadata that continuously learns from new and existing data.

Adapt compute to every workload

Run data and AI workloads across Spark, SQL and multi-model engines with flexible compute that matches the right engine to what each workload needs.

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GETTING STARTED SERIES

Architecting your data foundation

Data and IT leaders are unifying fragmented systems to make faster, more confident decisions. Join live to see how it's done.

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Preserving business meaning across a global network

Ericsson unified semantics and business context across petabytes of data spanning 180+ countries, driven by governed, reusable data products

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Simplifying data governance across 350M+ customers

Vodafone reduced its BW footprint by 80% by consolidating multiple markets into a single semantic layer - delivering governed, trusted data that serves 350M+ customers

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Treating data and AI as a shared business capability

Google reduced manual reconciliation by aligning finance and IT on shared organisational knowledge - enabling faster customer P&L reporting across their business data fabric.

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Unifying 500 billion business signals in real-time for AI

Team Liquid unified real-time event, training and health data with full context for AI, saving 10,000+ hours of manual work.

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See what analysts are saying about SAP

SAP is a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms 2025 Vendor Assessment

Find out why SAP is recognised as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape Worldwide Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms 2025 Vendor Assessment.

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SAP is a Leader in Master Data Management

Find out why SAP is recognised as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Master Data Management Solutions Q2 2025 report.

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SAP is a Visionary in Analytics and Business Intelligence

Find out why SAP is recognised as a Visionary in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2026.

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Build the data foundation for agentic AI with a business data fabric

Join a webinar to learn how SAP Business Data Cloud enables scalable AI by connecting data and business context across a unified, governed data landscape.

Resources

Measuring Data Fabric TCO

Explore how SAP Business Data Cloud saves up to 67% in TCO with a data fabric compared to DIY.

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The fabric of data and AI

Learn how SAP Business Data Cloud brings together context, governance and orchestration to accelerate insights and intelligence.

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Getting started series: Experience SAP Business Data Cloud

Learn how to use SAP Business Data Cloud to turn raw data into real-time insights with prebuilt apps, data modelling tools and SAP Databricks.

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BDC Catalogue in SAP Discovery Centre

Explore SAP Business Data Cloud capacity services with missions, roadmaps and guidance that help you to connect, manage and analyse SAP and third-party data.

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FAQs

: A business data fabric is an architecture that connects data and context in one governed foundation, serving as the trusted knowledge core for every enterprise application and AI agent. Unlike traditional data management approaches, a business data fabric preserves the meaning behind your data by design, making it foundational for scalable, trustworthy AI. It brings together critical capabilities such as data integration, lakehouse, data products, data marketplace, semantics, knowledge graphs and modelling into a unified platform without compromising architectural flexibility.
: A knowledge core is the central layer of a business data fabric that connects your data, processes, policies, simulations and semantics into a unified system. It goes beyond a traditional knowledge graph by enabling AI agents to understand how your business actually works, not just what the data says. Without it, AI agents can conflict with each other or optimise for the wrong outcomes.
: A data lake or data warehouse shops and organises data but does not preserve the business context around it. A business data fabric goes further by connecting that context across your entire landscape, making data not just accessible but interpretable. This distinction becomes critical when AI systems need to make autonomous decisions that align with real business outcomes.