The launch of SAP Business Data Cloud

Ever since Cubis has been founded back in 2010, we had our focus on guiding, assisting and helping customers with every aspect of SAP’s solid data and analytics solutions.  

During the past 15 years, we have not only seen a significant growth in the number of companies which rely on our expertise and know-how, but we also witnessed a shift in the data and analytics approach at these companies. From being fully SAP focused all over their IT and data & analytics landscape, customers have evolved into requiring best-of-breed architectures to make sure they are able to make the best use of their data in the way they envision. 

SAP meets Databricks at Intellus 

To be able to respond to the changing needs of our customers which result from the change in their data and analytics approach, we expanded our services and area of expertise by also looking over the fence and adopting non-SAP technologies into our offering. 
The launch of Lytix, specialising in Microsoft’s data and analytics solutions, and Aivix, specialising in solutions for artificial intelligence and data science, allowed us to provide cross-vendor and cross-technology services as the overarching Intellus Group. 

This combined offering makes us, as Intellus, a leading SAP and Databricks partner. A role in which we already guided multiple companies on their journey to become more data oriented by crafting and implementing modern data platforms, tailored to their needs. 

Intellus’ modern data platform approach, integrating SAP solutions and non-SAP solutions like Databricks

We have hosted webinars and event sessions to present the integration of SAP and non-SAP data into a single platform by making use of SAP Datasphere and Databricks and have implemented modern data platforms using those technologies at various customers like Barco, Arvesta, Stellantis, Stib/Mivb and many more.

It should be no surprise that we are very happy to see that SAP has adopted this approach as well, and has now introduced their own and open solution for a setting up a completely integrated modern data platform, a solution that goes by the name of Business Data Cloud and will become generally available in Q2 2025.

SAP Business Data Cloud, the revolution we’ve been waiting for

© 2025 SAP – SAP Business Data Cloud framework

SAP Business Data Cloud is described by SAP as a fully managed SaaS solution that unifies and governs all SAP data and seamlessly connects with third-party data — giving line-of-business leaders context to make even more impactful decisions. It combines all the powerful functionality of SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP Business Warehouse, plus managed SAP Databricks and SAP Business Data Cloud Insight Apps, including data products from SAP line of business applications.

(SAP Managed) Data Products

The foundation of SAP BDC will be based on Data Products. Data Products provide access to curated, SAP managed and ready-to-use data products across your most important business processes, keeping its business context and semantics intact and fully governed. You could think of it as business content, but maintained by SAP.

Datasphere & SAC as a foundation

SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud are the cornerstones within SAP BDC for data modelling, semantics & cataloguing. Current investments in both tools are thus not in vain and will be seamlessly useable within SAP BDC. For example the knowledge graph functionality in Datasphere will be the basis in order to be able to use Joule our your data models.

SAP BW(/4HANA) is not dead

So far, we know that this new solution will allow the harmonization of all your SAP and third-party data with fully managed capabilities for a business data fabric architecture, business warehouse modernization, planning, data engineering and AI/ML.
This also means that organizations that are strongly invested in their on-premise BW(/4HANA) will be able to continue using their data in the cloud by moving to the private cloud edition of SAP BW in SAP Business Data Cloud. In addition to the well-known capabilities of SAP BW on-premises, customers will be able to consume existing SAP BW data as data products and take advantage of the latest capabilities — such as bidirectional data sharing, and support for data engineering, data science, and AI/ML workloads in SAP Databricks. This will also prolong the support windows for SAP BW (until 2030) and SAP BW/4HANA (until 2040), so we can clearly say that these data warehousing products are still very relevant in SAP’s data and analytics strategy.

SAP Databricks

Thanks to the close integration with Databricks, you can benefit from pro-code development of AI, machine learning and data engineering tasks for combining structured SAP and unstructured non-SAP data. Databricks inside of SAP Business Data Cloud has even been renamed to SAP Databricks, emphasizing the tight integration between both.
For us, this is a major feature, since more and more of our customers are starting to look into the use of SAP data in Databricks.

On top of this modern data platform, SAP Business Data Cloud users get prebuilt insight applications for advanced analytics and planning across all lines of business to deliver transformational insights. Insight apps in SAP Business Data Cloud are prebuilt analytical applications that help you uncover hidden insights and fast-track decision-making. These are fully managed, built on curated data products, and incorporate pre-defined metrics, AI models and planning capabilities, simplifying how you connect and integrate every part of your business.

Joule copilot, SAP’s generative AI assistant, is deeply integrated with Business Data Cloud. The knowledge graph in Business Data Cloud connects your data, metadata, and business processes—enabling AI agents, Joule, and large language models (LLMs) to understand your data within the context of its relationships. This mapping creates clear data links, making insights more reliable for users and applications.

What now?

All of this looks extremely promising and seems to make SAP Business Data Cloud the way to go for most of the companies who are looking into leveraging their on-premise, cloud, SAP, non-SAP, structured and unstructured data in one single solution.

We also realize that the introduction of SAP’s Business Data Cloud will raise a lot of questions and maybe even some uncertainties or doubts. That’s why we are committed to explore and investigate every aspect of SAP Business Data Cloud, and how it will allow us to provide our customers the best possible solutions for their data and analytics needs.

Don’t hesitate to contact us to learn how SAP Business Data Cloud can help you to tackle your organization’s data, analytics & AI challenges.

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