Business software giant SAP SE said it’s aiming to help enterprises eliminate the complexities of accessing and using data scattered across disparate systems and locations with today’s launch of its new SAP Datasphere platform.

SAP Datasphere is the next generation of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, designed to serve as the main, centralized integration point for connecting, harmonizing, and distributing data from SAP and non-SAP applications. It’s built atop the SAP Business Technology Platform, which provides strong enterprise security capabilities including database security, encryption and governance, the company said.

The platform is designed to do more than just provide easy access to business-ready data though, as SAP is also partnering with some of the industry’s leading data analytics firms, including Collibra NV, Confluent Inc., Databricks Inc. and DataRobot Inc. to help companies do more with their data.

The company explained that many businesses struggle to access data that’s spread across cloud providers, data vendors and on-premises systems and bring it all together in one centralized location where it can be better put to use. Customers have had to extract data from original sources and export them to a central location, which ends up losing critical business context, requiring them to try to recaptured it through ongoing, dedicated information technology projects and manual effort, the company said.

SAP Datasphere eliminates much of this manual work, providing a simpler way for companies to build a business data fabric architecture with business context and logic intact. From there, SAP said, companies can leverage their data in lots of useful ways.

“Taking a data-first approach is key,” SAP Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer Julia White said in a media briefing. “Data management and analytics have become the defining resources of corporations. Achieving this seamless data access is hard.”

White said SAP Datasphere is much more than a simple rebranding of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, citing new capabilities within the platform such as data cataloging that can automatically discover, manage and govern data. She also pointed to its more simplified data replication capabilities that enable data and its constant updates to be delivered in real time, and enhanced data modeling that preserves the business context of data from SAP applications.

“It’s a new generation of our data technology,” White said.

SAP also talked up its strategic partnerships, promising that these will aid millions of users around the world when it comes to making informed business decisions. For instance, Collibra is planning a tailored integration with SAP Datasphere to help customers build a complete data catalog with lineage across their entire data landscape, to aid with their governance strategies.

Other partners include Confluent, which will connect its real-time data streaming platform to SAP Datasphere, allowing customers to use this information to power intelligent applications. Meanwhile, Databricks said customers will be able to integrate their Data Lakehouse with SAP, enabling data to be shared more easily with semantics preserved. Finally, DataRobot will provide machine learning capabilities atop SAP Datasphere.

Early adopters of the platform include Messer Americas, part of Messer SE & Co. KGaA. Chief Information Officer David Johnston said the industrial gases company was looking to achieve simple and secure access to both SAP and non-SAP data to strengthen data-driven decision making within its organization. It used SAP Datasphere to build a modern data architecture that maintains the context of its entire archive of enterprise data.

“Data fundamentally can become a speed barrier,” Johnston said. Datasphere “has become a catalyst to helping us drive more transformation opportunities.”

SAP Datasphere is available starting today. Existing SAP Data Warehouse Cloud customers will be upgraded to the new platform immediately, with no additional steps or migrations required.

With reporting from Robert Hof

Photo: SAP