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“I now have SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics. Do I s...
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Blog What are you looking for today?
“I now have SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics. Do I still need a
data warehouse?”
FreekKeijzer
Explorer
a week ago
8 Kudos 1,310
SAP Managed Tags: BW (SAP Business Warehouse), SAP Datasphere,
SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics
Good question. As I am a consultant, my answer is – as always – “it depends” . No
booing, please. I will expand.
History always helps in explaining complex problems, so let us first address the
question: “why do data warehouses even exist?”. Once upon a time, operational
reports on data from a transactional system were created in the transactional system
itself. As the underlying database of such a system was not very good in writing to and
reading from database tables simultaneously, query processing for operational reports
could impose such a burden on the database, that transaction processing – the main
function of a transactional system – was hampered or even stopped. The well-known
phenomenon of “a runaway query pulling down a database”. The solution then was
the introduction of a separate system for query processing: a “data warehouse”. This
separated “OnLine Analytical Processing” (OLAP) from “OnLine Transactional
Processing” (OLTP). SAP introduced its own data warehouse system in 1998: SAP
Business Warehouse or BW. And recently, SAP introduced a public cloud data
warehouse named SAP Datasphere [https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-
by-members/sap-analytics-landscape-of-the-future/ba-p/... ].
But now you have the S/4HANA ERP software on top of HANA hardware, which to a
great deal solves the problem with writing to and reading from database tables
simultaneously. The “Embedded Analytics” functionality provides you with excellent
options to build operational reports in the S/4HANA transactional system itself. So, do
you still need that data warehouse? As I am a BW veteran with over 20 years of BW
experience, at first I hoped the answer would be “yes”. But these days, as I earn my
living more and more with S/4HANA Embedded Analytics, I couldn’t care less . And
to be honest, the answer often is “no”.What I currently do is visit clients that are
struggling with this question armed with the checklist below of remaining use cases
for a data warehouse:
1. historical data;
2. data snapshots;
3. cross-system data integration;
4. extremely high data volumes.
Use case #1: historical data. “Old” data can be archived (although these days this
rarely happens). It can also be left behind when moving to a new transactional
system. The latter will quite often be the case when clients move from SAP ECC to
S/4HANA. If this “historical data” is valuable for reporting, it needs to be stored
elsewhere. S/4HANA Embedded Analytics can only work with data actively available
in the S/4HANA database, so S/4HANA itself is not an option for reporting on historical
data. Solution is to store the historical data in BW, Datasphere or a non-SAP data
warehouse, combine it there with current data from S/4HANA, and report across
historical and current data with a frontend tool - e.g. SAP Analytics Cloud - connected
to this data warehouse. Datasphere provides the best options to combine “persistent”
historical data with “virtual” current data.
Use case #2: data snapshots. Reporting users are aware that it is quite difficult to run
a report one year later and obtain identical results as the year before, the reason lying
in the fact that the environment, e.g. master data, has changed over the year. I was
recently asked the question by one of my embedded analytics clients if it is possible
to see old versions of certain conversion factors after they are changed in the
database table. The answer is “no”. Real-time data is real-time data. If it is not stored
anywhere in the database, it is gone and cannot be used. (Yes, I know, there are
exceptions, time-dependent master data, change documents, but cut me some slack.)
In cases in which this “no” is not acceptable, “data snapshots” can be applied. Here a
dataset is stored including all “environmental parameters” in such way that a report on
the dataset can be identically reproduced at a later time.
Use case #3: cross-system data integration. Probably the most important of the four
remaining use cases for data warehousing. Question should not be if a company has
more than one source system, because that is nearly always the case. And each
system usually offers ways to report on the data within that system. Question
therefore should be: is there a need to report across two or more of these systems?
The best example in my career was a valuable report on SAP ERP data combined
with Microsoft CRM data with data from both systems being strongly intertwined. Here
SAP BW did an excellent job in fulfilling this requirement. The cloud landscape picture
of my previous blog shows graphically how Datasphere can integrate data from
S/4HANA, other SAP cloud systems and non-SAP systems.
Use case #4: extremely high data volumes. Here one should not think of millions of
records - a HANA database cuts through millions of records like butter – but more like
billions of records. In general, you will only encounter this use case in a retail
environment. Example: all lines of a shopping receipt entering a transaction system,
while one is not interested in the fact that Sat September 14th at 09:16 AM Freek
Keijzer bought 4 bags of Douwe Egbert Roodmerk coffee with “hamster discount”. In
this example it makes sense to start with aggregated data in a data warehouse.
And what tends to be the result of my visits to clients armed with the four-point
checklist? To be honest, I have not encountered data snapshots or extremely high
data volumes yet, but that can be due to our customer base. But the use cases
historical data and cross-system data-integration I do encounter. In most cases the
data warehouse can be noteworthy reduced and in some cases even phased out,
after an effective implementation of embedded analytics. If the embedded analytics
itself does not bring joy to the client, then the TCO reduction it causes will.
While we are on the topic of TCO reduction, what about in-memory reporting tools like
QlikView and EveryAngle? These tools are well adopted in the SAP world as they
were earlier with in-memory technology than SAP itself, but this advantage has
disappeared, so now it is time to replace them by embedded analytics. Did I already
mention that embedded analytics comes for free with the S/4HANA licenses? A no-
brainer, really.
Closing remarks, always difficult:
SAP S/4HANA comes with Embedded Analytics, which is cool and free of
(additional) costs.
If you have S/4HANA with embedded analytics and you also have a data
warehouse, your data warehouse can become smaller. In some cases even so
small it … disappears.
Remaining use cases for a data warehouse are: historical data, data snapshots,
cross-system data-integration and extremely large data volumes.
If you have in-memory reporting tools like QlikView and EveryAngle, you should
get rid of them.
Again, feedback is much appreciated.
Labels:
data integration data warehousing Landscape & Technology Topics
11 Comments
nachtaktiv
Participant
a week ago
1 Kudo
You cannot replace tools like Qlik,etc. with something based on HANA and Fiori UI.
This is only the „Embedded Analytics“-functionality and not the „SAP Analytics Cloud“
!
If you are new to SAP, you can do the first steps with EA,
but if you are thinking about data with additional logic, proper reporting functionality
and meaningful dashboards, you cannot do this with EA.
junwu
Active Contributor
a week ago
1 Kudo
@nachtaktivhow much you know about EA? EA≈BW
probably he means in s4 world, you can get rid of qlik...
MKreitlein
Active Contributor
a week ago
1 Kudo
Hello @FreekKeijzer
very interesting Blog... had fun while reading it.
So far, I also had one more item on your list:
5. Number of reporting users
Don't you think it matters (at least in bigger companies), if you have ~100 or more
users who are using reports in parallel at the beginning or end of the month, and
affect the system, CPU, processes? There is the well-known "Whitepaper" of SAP
regarding embedded BW, with max 20% of S4 data volume... but it affects CPU and
processes...
However, regarding eBW. As long there is no end of life of it, in e.g. S4 HANA 2030, it
might also one option to use this to include small amounts of external data.
I think you mainly focused on S4 tables only, but what do you think of the eBW
capabilities in terms of embedded analytics?
BR, Martin
XaviPolo
Active Contributor
a week ago
1 Kudo
Operational Analytics vs DW Analytics is an old debate.
To analyze something like "amount of unpaid bills", you only need data from the
operational system. So you don't need a DW.
To analyze things like "Why we have a higher amount of unpaid bills and how it's
related to geographic, economic, social indicators" (that you don't have in the
operational system), then yes, you need a DW.
Regards,
peter_teussink2
Explorer
a week ago
0 Kudos
Maybe it is also interesting do I need a DWH from the point of view of what kind of
reporting do I need?
Operational, Technical or Strategic?
Martin_Kuma
Active Participant
a week ago
1 Kudo
@FreekKeijzer very nice blog, thanks! fun reading on Friday afternoon :).
I came across #3 cross-system data integration a lot of times, where BW was used as
EAI as well as #2 data snapshots which kind of solves the #1 historical data issue.
But the embedded analytics being included into the S/4 license as well as no/low-
code development makes it a very interesting option vs classic BW.
#5 number of users as Martin Kreitlein pointed out is noteworthy. Some clients do
provide reporting possibility to external partners (food processing during yield-time
f.e.) where the number of users drastically rises what will lead to S/4 performance
degradation. @MKreitlein
FreekKeijzer
Explorer
a week ago
0 Kudos
@nachtaktiv: Let's agree to disagree. I was suprised at how much logic and complex
transformations I was able to do with embedded analytics after some practice. I now
tell my clients that any operational reporting that can be done in BW can also be done
with embedded analytics, as long as you stay within S/4 data. I do agree with you on
the topic of dashboarding. Here embedded analytics falls short.
FreekKeijzer
Explorer
a week ago
0 Kudos
@MKreitlein: I am curious if you have practical examples of this type of performance
issues. So far I was involved in 5 embedded analytics projects, 2 of which were for
rather large companies. To my positive suprise, I only encountered performance
issues twice. The first time was with financial reports on the large ACDOCA table. This
could be solved by improving the query design. The second time was with the SAP
standard stack of CDS-views for financial consolidation on top of the ACDOCU
table. Issue here is that the queries not only produce output, but the actual financial
consolidation is carried out during query runtime, so not a typical reporting
situation. But for the rest, no issues with large data volumes or large numbers of
concurrent users over a period of 5 years, so surprisingly little performance problems.
FreekKeijzer
Explorer
a week ago
0 Kudos
@Martin_Kuma: Yes, you are right. There are solutions for storing historical data or
non-SAP data in S/4 itself, bringing it within reach of embedded analytics. Options are
Z-tables or embedded BW. Both options are not very popular. Z-tables go against the
"keep the core clean" principle usually applied in S/4 implementations. Embedded BW
even has me worried about performance. S/4HANA is quite robust and insensitive to
performance issues, but bringing another system into the system may be one step too
far.
EagleYeSAP
Explorer
a week ago
0 Kudos
@FreekKeijzer : Free valuable information from FreekKeijzer. Nice blog.
As long as, you dont have any performance issues, you can use Embedded Analytics.
If you want analyse data from different systems/platforms and to perform some kind
of Forecast/Planning then you can go for Datawarehouse/Datasphere/SAC.
MKreitlein
Active Contributor
Monday
0 Kudos
Hello @FreekKeijzer
thanks for your response.
Unfortunately I have no real life experience ... since either eBW has been used only
for Data preparation, or live reading to import this data into SAC ... or there are only a
few Controlling department users, who consume the BI standard content in S4 with
which also only S4 data is read.... but the Queries require the embedded BW.
Nevertheless I know several small companies, who ask for eBW as a successor of the
stand-alone BW. They prefer to reduce their data volumes, to save additional license
fees and utilize the eBW and Live SAC access over moving to SAP Datasphere... the
monthly costs do not really compensate the benefits of their currently rather small
reporting landscape ... e.g. only SD/MM reporting.
BR, Martin
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