Introduction to SAP Business Data Cloud
In this blog, we will try to go over the Introduction to SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) and then the Components and Building Blocks of SAP BDC.
SAP BDC is a fully managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering from SAP designed to address this need of managing vast volumes of data originating from diverse systems. It consolidates and governs all SAP data while seamlessly integrating third-party sources, delivering contextualized, trusted data to business leaders for more impactful decision-making. By harmonizing mission-critical data into a unified semantic layer, the platform eliminates the overhead of data extraction and replication. Supporting a wide range of use cases across industries and business functions, SAP BDC ensures that data is consistently accessible, secure, and ready for advanced analytics.
Key Aspects of SAP Business Data Cloud
Intelligent Applications: AI-driven apps that leverage your data and business context to automate processes, adapt dynamically, and drive transformative outcomes in real time.Data Products: Prebuilt, customizable, and governed data assets that come enriched with business semantics, documentation, and APIs—accelerating deployment across a wide range of use cases.Business Data Fabric: A comprehensive data and analytics foundation that integrates SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, modernized SAP Business Warehouse, data engineering capabilities, and AI/ML innovations through SAP Databricks.AI-Enriched Decision Making: Enterprise-grade tools that deliver responsible, context-aware AI for reporting and analytics —empowering smarter, faster decisions.
Components of SAP Business Data Cloud
Source Systems: SAP BDC connects seamlessly to various source systems—such as SAP S/4HANA—to identify and extract key business data entities. These include tables, views, and other structures that contain mission-critical data across domains like HR, finance, supply chain. By integrating with these systems, SAP BDC ensures that foundational business data is readily available for analytics, governance, and intelligent application development.
Foundational Services in SAP Business Data Cloud: Within SAP BDC, data extracted from source systems flows into the Foundation Services layer. This foundational component is responsible for ingesting, integrating, cleansing, and harmonizing both structured and unstructured data. It ensures that the data is properly aligned and enriched as part of SAP-managed Data Products, forming the backbone of trusted, analytics-ready information across the SAP BDC landscape.
SAP Datasphere: SAP Datasphere serves as the modeling and governance layer atop the BDC Semantic Layer. It provides a robust set of tools for designing analytical data models, defining business logic, managing data lineage, enforcing governance and security. In addition to its core modeling capabilities, SAP Datasphere supports machine learning and AI extensions, making it a foundational component for advanced analytics and intelligent decision-making. Datasphere acts as the data engine behind SAP Analytics Cloud, feeding it with both prebuilt and custom insights for reporting and visualization. It also enables customers to create custom data products using the SAP Datasphere Object Store, which supports zero-copy data access via the Delta Sharing Protocol – ensuring efficient, secure, and scalable data sharing across the enterprise.
SAP Databricks: SAP Databricks is a specialized integration of the Databricks platform embedded directly within SAP BDC. It combines industry-leading capabilities in AI, machine learning, data science, and data engineering with semantically rich, business-ready data from SAP applications. This component significantly enhances analytics by enabling generative AI scenarios—without the need for complex data pipelines. Through zero-copy Delta Sharing, SAP Databricks connects directly to SAP Data Products, allowing seamless access and enrichment of data without replication. By bridging enterprise-grade SAP data with the flexibility of Databricks, organizations can accelerate innovation, streamline operations, and unlock deeper insights across their business landscape.
SAP Analytics Cloud: SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) empowers business analytics by directly consuming integrated data from the SAP Datasphere component within BDC. It supports rich visualization, reporting, and AI-driven analytics across the enterprise—all within a unified, cloud-based SaaS environment. By leveraging semantically aligned data from Datasphere, SAC enables organizations to generate actionable insights, build dynamic dashboards, and drive informed decision-making at scale.
SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA Integration: To support legacy compatibility, SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA objects can be technically onboarded into SAP BDC. This integration enables organizations to migrate data and maintain hybrid use cases—bridging traditional data warehousing with modern cloud-based analytics—until the official end-of-support timeline for BW systems. By incorporating BW artifacts into BDC, businesses can preserve existing investments while gradually transitioning to a unified, governed, and AI-ready data landscape.
Building Blocks of SAP Business Data Cloud
Provisioning an SAP Business Data Cloud Tenant
An SAP BDC tenant is provisioned via the SAP for Me portal using a guided, self-service workflow. This process enables organizations to activate and configure the components of SAP Business Data Cloud according to their commercial entitlements. The provisioning journey begins with the BDC Core Component or Cockpit, which serves as the central management interface for the entire SAP BDC landscape.
Once the BDC cockpit is provisioned, the next step is to provision (from SAP for Me) the core capabilities and applications, including: SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Databricks.
After these systems are successfully provisioned through SAP for Me, users can begin creating Formations—structured configurations that define how data products and applications are orchestrated across the landscape.
Formation in SAP Business Data Cloud
A Formation in SAP Business Data Cloud is a logical grouping of SAP systems and related components designed to support specific business scenarios or integration use cases. Formations simplify connectivity and provide a unified view of all systems, making it easier to manage integrations, extensions, and orchestrate data across the SAP BDC landscape. Formations are created by selecting the required SAP systems—these must first be provisioned via the SAP for Me portal. Once provisioned, they appear in the Systems tab of the portal and can be included in one or more formations. Each formation can consist of multiple systems such as SAP BDC Core, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP BW, SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Databricks. These systems are synchronized within the formation to enable streamlined operations and cohesive business processes. Multiple formations can be created to support extended or complex business scenarios.
Benefits of Using Formations
Simplified Integration: Centralizes the grouping and management of systems required for a business scenario.Scalability and Flexibility: Easily add or remove systems as organizational needs evolve.Governance and Control: Enables centralized configuration and oversight, improving compliance and reducing maintenance overhead.
SAP Data Products in Business Data Cloud
An SAP Data Product is a curated and refined dataset derived from data ingested from SAP solutions. It encompasses a Business Data Set that includes master data, transactional records, analytics datasets, and configuration data—all semantically aligned to ensure consistency and usability.
These datasets are enriched with meaningful metadata and documentation, making them easily consumable and understandable. Within the SAP BDC, Data Products serve as the core building blocks for Intelligent Applications, enabling advanced analytics and decision-making. SAP delivers and manages these Data Products as part of its SaaS offering, maintaining full lifecycle ownership. However, customers can customize them to suit specific business needs. Each Data Product includes all necessary artifacts—such as CDS views, connectors, flows, jobs, and lifecycle management tools—required to support its associated use cases within SAP BDC. They are easily discoverable through the SAP BDC product catalog. These products are designed by line-of-business experts to help organizations maximize the value of their data. Types of Data Products
Primary Data Products: Directly sourced from applications, representing original data from systems like SAP S/4HANA. They are not derived from other data products.Derived Data Products: Built by SAP using existing datasets or APIs. This offer added value by combining or transforming data from multiple sources.
Custom or Customer Managed Data Products : SAP BDC also supports custom data products, which can be curated within SAP Datasphere. These leverage the Datasphere Object Store and Delta Sharing Protocol, enabling zero-copy data access for efficient and secure data sharing.
Intelligent Applications in SAP Business Data Cloud
Intelligent Applications are AI-driven, visualization-centric solutions designed to address specific business scenarios. Unlike general-purpose analytics tools, these applications are built with SAP-managed analytical assets and functionalities that deliver value through process, domain, or analytical intelligence. They typically include data products, semantic models, and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) stories. These applications foster collaboration between analytics and data science teams by providing ready-made dashboards enriched with AI-generated insights. Their embedded business logic and contextual data models eliminate the need for organizations to build complex analytical frameworks from scratch—saving time and resources. The core structure of Intelligent Applications includes:
SAC Stories: Serve as the front-end interface, offering rich visualizations tailored to specific analytics use cases.SAP Datasphere Models and Views: Includes the backend logic and data orchestration.Semantic Models and Story Templates: Combined to deliver reusable, customizable dashboards.
These applications are cataloged within the SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC), making them easy to discover, deploy, and extend.
Installation and Customization
To explore and install Intelligent Applications:
Log in to the SAP BDC Cockpit. Browse the available applications and their documentation.Upon installation, a suite of artifacts is deployed across SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud, including Data Products, Replication Flows, Tables and Views, Analytic Models, Roles and Dashboards.
Customization Guidelines
SAP-managed applications and their dependencies are read-only, but users can copy and adapt components.SAC Stories can be duplicated and tailored to meet specific business needs.For advanced scenarios, users may replicate and modify the underlying analytic models ( within SAP Datasphere).Changes to models will affect both the original and copied stories, so version control and impact analysis are recommended.
Key Differentiation between Business Content and Intelligent Applications
Business Content provides a set of pre-built models and other artifacts, but customers manage the implementation, configuration and maintenance of these solutions.Intelligent Applications are fully managed and curated by SAP and delivered as software-as-a-service designed to cater specific business use cases or scenarios.
Hope this helps you understand the basics and get started on SAP Business Data Cloud.
Introduction to SAP Business Data CloudIn this blog, we will try to go over the Introduction to SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) and then the Components and Building Blocks of SAP BDC.SAP BDC is a fully managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering from SAP designed to address this need of managing vast volumes of data originating from diverse systems. It consolidates and governs all SAP data while seamlessly integrating third-party sources, delivering contextualized, trusted data to business leaders for more impactful decision-making. By harmonizing mission-critical data into a unified semantic layer, the platform eliminates the overhead of data extraction and replication. Supporting a wide range of use cases across industries and business functions, SAP BDC ensures that data is consistently accessible, secure, and ready for advanced analytics.Key Aspects of SAP Business Data CloudIntelligent Applications: AI-driven apps that leverage your data and business context to automate processes, adapt dynamically, and drive transformative outcomes in real time.Data Products: Prebuilt, customizable, and governed data assets that come enriched with business semantics, documentation, and APIs—accelerating deployment across a wide range of use cases.Business Data Fabric: A comprehensive data and analytics foundation that integrates SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, modernized SAP Business Warehouse, data engineering capabilities, and AI/ML innovations through SAP Databricks.AI-Enriched Decision Making: Enterprise-grade tools that deliver responsible, context-aware AI for reporting and analytics —empowering smarter, faster decisions.Components of SAP Business Data CloudSource Systems: SAP BDC connects seamlessly to various source systems—such as SAP S/4HANA—to identify and extract key business data entities. These include tables, views, and other structures that contain mission-critical data across domains like HR, finance, supply chain. By integrating with these systems, SAP BDC ensures that foundational business data is readily available for analytics, governance, and intelligent application development.Foundational Services in SAP Business Data Cloud: Within SAP BDC, data extracted from source systems flows into the Foundation Services layer. This foundational component is responsible for ingesting, integrating, cleansing, and harmonizing both structured and unstructured data. It ensures that the data is properly aligned and enriched as part of SAP-managed Data Products, forming the backbone of trusted, analytics-ready information across the SAP BDC landscape.SAP Datasphere: SAP Datasphere serves as the modeling and governance layer atop the BDC Semantic Layer. It provides a robust set of tools for designing analytical data models, defining business logic, managing data lineage, enforcing governance and security. In addition to its core modeling capabilities, SAP Datasphere supports machine learning and AI extensions, making it a foundational component for advanced analytics and intelligent decision-making. Datasphere acts as the data engine behind SAP Analytics Cloud, feeding it with both prebuilt and custom insights for reporting and visualization. It also enables customers to create custom data products using the SAP Datasphere Object Store, which supports zero-copy data access via the Delta Sharing Protocol – ensuring efficient, secure, and scalable data sharing across the enterprise.SAP Databricks: SAP Databricks is a specialized integration of the Databricks platform embedded directly within SAP BDC. It combines industry-leading capabilities in AI, machine learning, data science, and data engineering with semantically rich, business-ready data from SAP applications. This component significantly enhances analytics by enabling generative AI scenarios—without the need for complex data pipelines. Through zero-copy Delta Sharing, SAP Databricks connects directly to SAP Data Products, allowing seamless access and enrichment of data without replication. By bridging enterprise-grade SAP data with the flexibility of Databricks, organizations can accelerate innovation, streamline operations, and unlock deeper insights across their business landscape.SAP Analytics Cloud: SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) empowers business analytics by directly consuming integrated data from the SAP Datasphere component within BDC. It supports rich visualization, reporting, and AI-driven analytics across the enterprise—all within a unified, cloud-based SaaS environment. By leveraging semantically aligned data from Datasphere, SAC enables organizations to generate actionable insights, build dynamic dashboards, and drive informed decision-making at scale.SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA Integration: To support legacy compatibility, SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA objects can be technically onboarded into SAP BDC. This integration enables organizations to migrate data and maintain hybrid use cases—bridging traditional data warehousing with modern cloud-based analytics—until the official end-of-support timeline for BW systems. By incorporating BW artifacts into BDC, businesses can preserve existing investments while gradually transitioning to a unified, governed, and AI-ready data landscape.Building Blocks of SAP Business Data CloudProvisioning an SAP Business Data Cloud TenantAn SAP BDC tenant is provisioned via the SAP for Me portal using a guided, self-service workflow. This process enables organizations to activate and configure the components of SAP Business Data Cloud according to their commercial entitlements. The provisioning journey begins with the BDC Core Component or Cockpit, which serves as the central management interface for the entire SAP BDC landscape. Once the BDC cockpit is provisioned, the next step is to provision (from SAP for Me) the core capabilities and applications, including: SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Databricks.After these systems are successfully provisioned through SAP for Me, users can begin creating Formations—structured configurations that define how data products and applications are orchestrated across the landscape.Formation in SAP Business Data CloudA Formation in SAP Business Data Cloud is a logical grouping of SAP systems and related components designed to support specific business scenarios or integration use cases. Formations simplify connectivity and provide a unified view of all systems, making it easier to manage integrations, extensions, and orchestrate data across the SAP BDC landscape. Formations are created by selecting the required SAP systems—these must first be provisioned via the SAP for Me portal. Once provisioned, they appear in the Systems tab of the portal and can be included in one or more formations. Each formation can consist of multiple systems such as SAP BDC Core, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP BW, SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Databricks. These systems are synchronized within the formation to enable streamlined operations and cohesive business processes. Multiple formations can be created to support extended or complex business scenarios.Benefits of Using FormationsSimplified Integration: Centralizes the grouping and management of systems required for a business scenario.Scalability and Flexibility: Easily add or remove systems as organizational needs evolve.Governance and Control: Enables centralized configuration and oversight, improving compliance and reducing maintenance overhead.SAP Data Products in Business Data Cloud An SAP Data Product is a curated and refined dataset derived from data ingested from SAP solutions. It encompasses a Business Data Set that includes master data, transactional records, analytics datasets, and configuration data—all semantically aligned to ensure consistency and usability.These datasets are enriched with meaningful metadata and documentation, making them easily consumable and understandable. Within the SAP BDC, Data Products serve as the core building blocks for Intelligent Applications, enabling advanced analytics and decision-making. SAP delivers and manages these Data Products as part of its SaaS offering, maintaining full lifecycle ownership. However, customers can customize them to suit specific business needs. Each Data Product includes all necessary artifacts—such as CDS views, connectors, flows, jobs, and lifecycle management tools—required to support its associated use cases within SAP BDC. They are easily discoverable through the SAP BDC product catalog. These products are designed by line-of-business experts to help organizations maximize the value of their data. Types of Data ProductsPrimary Data Products: Directly sourced from applications, representing original data from systems like SAP S/4HANA. They are not derived from other data products.Derived Data Products: Built by SAP using existing datasets or APIs. This offer added value by combining or transforming data from multiple sources.Custom or Customer Managed Data Products : SAP BDC also supports custom data products, which can be curated within SAP Datasphere. These leverage the Datasphere Object Store and Delta Sharing Protocol, enabling zero-copy data access for efficient and secure data sharing.Intelligent Applications in SAP Business Data CloudIntelligent Applications are AI-driven, visualization-centric solutions designed to address specific business scenarios. Unlike general-purpose analytics tools, these applications are built with SAP-managed analytical assets and functionalities that deliver value through process, domain, or analytical intelligence. They typically include data products, semantic models, and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) stories. These applications foster collaboration between analytics and data science teams by providing ready-made dashboards enriched with AI-generated insights. Their embedded business logic and contextual data models eliminate the need for organizations to build complex analytical frameworks from scratch—saving time and resources. The core structure of Intelligent Applications includes:SAC Stories: Serve as the front-end interface, offering rich visualizations tailored to specific analytics use cases.SAP Datasphere Models and Views: Includes the backend logic and data orchestration.Semantic Models and Story Templates: Combined to deliver reusable, customizable dashboards.These applications are cataloged within the SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC), making them easy to discover, deploy, and extend.Installation and CustomizationTo explore and install Intelligent Applications:Log in to the SAP BDC Cockpit. Browse the available applications and their documentation.Upon installation, a suite of artifacts is deployed across SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud, including Data Products, Replication Flows, Tables and Views, Analytic Models, Roles and Dashboards. Customization GuidelinesSAP-managed applications and their dependencies are read-only, but users can copy and adapt components.SAC Stories can be duplicated and tailored to meet specific business needs.For advanced scenarios, users may replicate and modify the underlying analytic models ( within SAP Datasphere).Changes to models will affect both the original and copied stories, so version control and impact analysis are recommended.Key Differentiation between Business Content and Intelligent ApplicationsBusiness Content provides a set of pre-built models and other artifacts, but customers manage the implementation, configuration and maintenance of these solutions.Intelligent Applications are fully managed and curated by SAP and delivered as software-as-a-service designed to cater specific business use cases or scenarios.Hope this helps you understand the basics and get started on SAP Business Data Cloud. Read More Technology Blog Posts by SAP articles
#SAP
#SAPTechnologyblog
