SAP has released SAP BW4/HANA – a solution designed specifically for data warehousing for the next generation digital enterprise, by enabling analysis of data wherever it resides both in and outside the organisation.
SAP BW4/HANA will be available in traditional on-premise deployment, as well as via Amazon Web Services and the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service. Other cloud deployments options are expected to be available in the future.
According to SAP’s announcement, the new solution will provide a “simpler and more way of achieving real-time analytics through a new foundation for logical data warehousing that provides the interactivity with historical and live data residing in a diverse IT landscape”.
SAP BW/4HANA will provide an open data warehousing environment for rapid application development, a modern user interface, multi temperature data handling and support for cloud-ready offerings. The platform will offer a more unified and streamlined data warehouse object model, as well as simplified governance features to enable agile data warehouse development.
BW4/HANA, to be released to customers on 7 September, will provide the ability to connect with the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud solution, as well as built-in connectivity to SAP Digital Boardroom. As well as these cloud capabilities, the platform will also be able to integrate live streaming and time-series sensor data collected from Internet of Things environments.
The platform can be implemented as a prebuilt data warehouse for applications such as those based on SAP S/4HANA, or a more standard SQL-based development environment. SAP is also promising an easy transition for customers with current SAP Business Warehouse implementations.
“The digitisation of business requires a modern approach to data management, data processing and analytics that can handle any data source and type in real time,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board, products and innovation, SAP SE. “With SAP BW/4HANA and our collaboration with AWS, the leading cloud infrastructure provider, we are providing customers with an easy-to-consume next-generation data warehouse platform that will further accelerate their journey toward becoming a live digital business.”
Fairfax Media has already implemented the new platform.
“As an early adopter of SAP BW/4HANA running on AWS, we reduced our end-to-end production time by 50 per cent, allowing us to deliver a powerful new analytics platform with minimal upfront investment in just three months,” said Diego Lombardini, head of finance systems, Fairfax Media. “To support our constantly changing business, we now have an extremely flexible, highly scalable cloud environment that is capable of future-proofing our business.”
