SAP Datasphere review: turning data from a technical problem to a business data product.

• Read original article here

Jen Stirrup
Global keynote speaker, tech influencer and trusted advisor in AI, Data Science and Business Intelligence
Menu
SAP Datasphere review: turning data from a technical problem to a business data product.
Posted on
by Jen Stirrup
This post was kindly supported by SAP.
Despite technological advances, businesses still need help working with data. Data is complex, and companies often need to catch up on what they are trying to achieve. This is often translated as a technical issue, not a business one. They are also starting to realize – and accept – that data is challenging. Post-COVID, companies now understand that IT skills are different from data skills.  In this post, we will take a look at what is necessary to have a good solid foundation, and how you can turn your data from a technical problem to a business opportunity. 
It is easier to list the symptoms of a problematic data foundation as they are often pretty clear to business users. To summarise, a problematic data foundation misdirects people to make suboptimal business decisions due to incorrect data and information. In this post, let’s take a look at some of the ways that SAP Datasphere can help.
What does a sound, intelligent data foundation give you?
What does a sound, intelligent data foundation give you? First, it can provide continuous transformation opportunities for the organization. It can give business-oriented data strategy for business leaders to help drive better business decisions and ROI. It can also increase productivity by enabling the business to find the data they need when the business teams need it. Finally, productivity is accelerated because the data gives consistent answers, leading to a consistent understanding across the business. Put together, these factors help to provide the company with a competitive advantage since better data – and better use of data – leads to better strategies.
Data as a product as well as a foundation
The data foundation is critical for all types of reporting and analytics. Data needs to be respected in the same way as building a product. There’s a new trend for people to talk about data products, bringing a product management mindset to the production of data assets. Data on its own is not always interesting. Data needs to be turned into information, knowledge, and then wisdom. However, to turn data into a business problem, organizations need support to move away from technical issues to start getting value as quickly as possible. They need a solid data foundation to support primary data initiatives such as data integration, cataloging, semantic modeling, warehousing, federation, and virtualization through a unified interface to get value.
SAP Datasphere - delivering the solid data foundation
Earlier this month, SAP announced  SAP Datasphere , a comprehensive data service built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to help solve the everyday challenges that prevent businesses from achieving success with their data. SAP Datasphere simplifies data integration, cataloging, semantic modeling, warehousing, federation, and virtualization through a unified interface. 
Why is this interesting? Organisations are looking at ways of simplifying data; for example, through simple rebranding efforts to disguise the complexity.  However, SAP Datasphere goes much deeper deeper than a simple rebranding; it is the next generation of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. SAP solves everyday difficulties by adding new abilities that solve user problems with data, such as the discovery, modeling, and distribution of mission-critical business data. 
SAP Datasphere and the Data Fabric
There is also growing interest in the data fabric architecture, so, the SAP Datasphere could not have come at a better time. SAP Datasphere helps eliminate hidden data debt within organizations, enabling customers to build a business data fabric architecture that quickly delivers meaningful data with business context and logic intact.
Business Intelligence is often a search problem in disguise. Team members are searching for data they need within the reports and other analytic products created within the organization and also outside of it.
SAP helps to solve this search problem by offering ways to simplify business data with a solid data foundation that powers SAP Datasphere. It fits neatly with the renewed interest in data architecture, particularly data fabric architecture. 
Companies can't get a single view of the customer until they have a single view of the data. They fail to get a grip on their data.
Jennifer Stirrup