By Mariyah Saifuddin
This is the first of a two-part series.
The term Business Data Cloud (BDC) is on every SAP user’s mind, generating both excitement and questions. Is it a rebrand? A new product? Most importantly, what does it mean for your organization’s data strategy?
In a recent episode of “Tech-Driven Business,” Innovative Solution Partners host Mustansir Saifuddin was joined by Shawn Brown of SAP for the first of a two-part series to unpack the mission-critical details of BDC. The conversation provided a look at how BDC aims to solve longstanding challenges in the data and analytics space.
The 'why' behind BDC: Shrinking time to value
Shawn Brown began by tackling the most fundamental question: Why should SAP customers adopt BDC? He explained that while BDC is a new product, it’s more accurately an “evolution of everything that we’ve been doing for years… the next generation of what was.”
The core “why” attacks a fundamental pain point in analytics. According to industry analysts and verified by customer experience, as much as 70% or more of the workload and investment in any analytics project is spent just preparing the data. “That means the analytics is just 30% or less of the time,” Shawn explained. This lengthy, expensive cycle—extracting, transforming, loading, profiling, cataloging, and governing—dramatically increases the cost of asking each business question.
The primary mission of BDC is to fundamentally change this ratio. “The why is really about reducing the amount of time it takes to go around that whole wheel of data all the way around to analytics and planning,” Shawn stated. By short-circuiting this preparation phase, BDC aims to “increase the amount of analysis time.” The ultimate goal is to make business questions cheaper and faster to answer, empowering organizations to ask more questions and make quicker, data-driven decisions.
Key benefits: Speed, accuracy, and built-in governance
Building on the “why,” Shawn outlined the tangible benefits customers can expect from their BDC journey.
Speed of Delivery: The first and most obvious benefit is speed. Faster data preparation leads directly to faster insights and faster decision-making, a critical advantage in today’s business climate.
Accuracy and Confidence: BDC addresses the persistent “spread mart problem,” where users extract data into spreadsheets, leading to multiple, conflicting versions of the truth. By providing data with its original business context intact, BDC increases confidence. “The accuracy of the data is as accurate as it was entered into the business application,” Shawn noted. SAP curates the data for you, preserving the integrity from the source system.
End-to-End Governance: BDC integrates security and governance from the ground up. It leverages role-level security from source systems, eliminating the need to redefine complex rules. Shawn introduced the concept of “spaces”—dedicated areas for lines of business like finance or HR—to illustrate this. He used a powerful analogy of Japanese-style homes with paper-thin walls: “The spaces are separated… with a level of access that is very simple to provide when necessary.” This allows for both secure data segregation and seamless, governed sharing between different business units when required.
Your path to BDC: Unpacking the migration scenarios
A crucial part of the discussion focused on the practical steps for adoption. BDC offers clear paths for customers, regardless of their current landscape.
For existing SAP users:
HANA Enterprise Customers: For those on-prem with HANA Enterprise, moving to BDC is a “natural next step.” It’s a simple transition to a cloud-based environment built on the same powerful HANA technology.
BW Customers: Recognizing the immense investment many have in SAP BW, BDC provides a clear and flexible migration path. Customers on BW 7.5 and above can move their entire BW investment directly into BDC. From there, they can use the embedded “data product generator” to gradually convert BW assets into modern BDC data products, allowing for a phased decommissioning of their legacy BW environment. For those who want to keep their BW instance, moving to BDC offers extended mainstream maintenance, pushing the end-of-life for BW/4HANA to 2040.
For users with non-SAP strategies (e.g., Snowflake, Azure):
Shawn directly addressed organizations that have already built pipelines to pull SAP data into third-party platforms. He urged them to ask the hard question: “How much time and energy are you spending going from data all the way around that wheel to analytics?” If that number is 70%, 80%, or even the 90% one CIO recently cited, the current strategy is likely an exorbitant cost center.
Furthermore, these custom pipelines are fragile. When the source system changes—as it inevitably will with a move to S/4HANA—”Guess what just changed with your data strategy? Potentially everything.” BDC de-risks this by providing curated, business-context-aware data products that are maintained by SAP, insulating customers from backend changes.
Shawn summarized the value proposition with a simple analogy: “If I said, you have to dig a hole, it’s 10 feet deep… would you rather just dig five more feet or four more feet, or would you just rather start from ground level and dig 10 feet on your own?” BDC digs the first half of the hole for you.
The takeaway: A mandate for data leaders
Shawn’s key takeaway was a direct message to Chief Data & Analytics Officers and their teams. To provide true value, they must focus on two things:
- Deliver analytics quickly. Business users don’t want to wait weeks for answers to follow-up questions. “If you can’t say you can have that now, then you’re taking too long.”
- Stop being seen as a cost center. The goal is to “offer real value to the business community,” which means delivering insights that are not only fast but also accurate and cost-effective.
This, he concluded, is the entire foundation of the Business Data Cloud. It’s a strategic shift designed to transform the data and analytics function from a necessary evil into a powerful engine for business value.
Interested in more Tech-Driven Business podcasts? You can listen here
About the podcast guest: Shawn Brown
With over two decades of experience in SAP solutions, Shawn Brown currently serves as senior director for SAP’s Center of Excellence. Known for expertly identifying customer needs, Brown excels in presenting tailored solutions involving Business Technology Platform, Business Data Cloud, S4HANA, and Business AI.
A proven leader in demand generation and partner relationship management, Brown has successfully driven initiatives that enhance customer experience and streamline cloud solution adoption. Renowned as a thought leader and strategist, Brown frequently shares insights with CIOs and business influencers, fostering strong, trust-based relationships across multiple industries.