Preparing data for analysis is undoubtedly one of the fundamentals of business intelligence (BI), especially in today’s scenario in which the amount of data data to be managed, such as the sources from which it comes, are increasingly large. Added to this is the increasingly pressing need to enable the use of tools that can provide real-time answers. Often, achieving this requires drawing from multiple vendors, taking the best from each of the tools the market offers. An illustrative case of this scenario is the integration between SAP and Google’s Big Query, an advanced tool for managing Big Data.
A platform created for Google and provided to customers
Google’s Big Query is a Data Warehouse as a service which we have already discussed on these pages. It is part of the Google Cloud Platform and in many ways is complementary to Google Data Studio. Where the latter focuses primarily on true representation and intelligence, Big Query focuses on data management and preparation.
One of the aspects that make this platform particularly interesting is the fact that it be born as a functional tool for Google’s internal needs, later made available to customers given its effectiveness. It was born, in short, to meet the needs of one of the companies that, even today, manages one of the world’s largest masses of data.
Another aspect that makes its use in Business Intelligence particularly interesting is the possibility of linking to external data sources, including SAP. In this way, it is possible to put into practice the idea mentioned at the beginning: using Google’s tools for management and analysis, leaving SAP with the task of collecting operational and field data, through ERP and/or the various specialized tools.
But what are the advantages of getting Google and SAP to work together? Let’s look at some of them.
The benefits of integration between Google and SAP
Google BigQuery, as a cloud platform, offers some substantial advantages, most notably the Complete scalability: it is a platform that is entirely pay-per-use and the cost depends solely on the amount of data ingested, historicized and moved. Beyond that, however, there are some direct advantages to choosing a hybrid Google-SAP strategy. We summarize the main ones here:
Real-time SAP data access: BigQuery builds on SAP SLT to provide virtually real-time data alignment, with an extremely agile solution, thanks to a SAP Dedicated Connector. According to the official page of the latter, it is possible to have it Up & Running in less than an hour.
Ability to analyze SAP data along with other business data: data convergence is another key point. BigQuery has on its side the advantage of wide deployment, which opens up avenues for it to a very large number of third-party tools and services. Choosing to converge data to such a Cloud platform allows for accelerating not only analysis, but also accessibility to business intelligence tools.
Scalability and flexibility to handle large volumes of data: we have already mentioned this advantage, but nevertheless recall what this means in projection. Access to a consumer platform with virtually unlimited computing capacity also means being able to handle peak workloads with virtually no processing queues. This is an important advantage for all realities that have strong discontinuities in workflows that would force them, with on-premises or more traditional modes of use, to greatly overstretch their resources.
Reducing data management costs: finally, the economic aspect should not be underestimated. In a context where costs related to advanced IT services are a problem for many companies, BigQuery and the Google Cloud Platform in general offer rather aggressive pricing policies, strongly supported by discounts, promotions and offers, manageable from a simple and transparent dashboard.
The importance of integration
Beyond the theoretical and practical advantages of the combined use of two such important platforms, we know that what matters is their effective integration and operation in the “field.” In this specific case, companies that choose this path can rest assured since reassurances come both from Google, as we have seen, and from the SAP ecosystem, in which support for this choice is present and ongoing. In short, this is not just a viable option in manuals, but easily applicable to all major multi-cloud work and management contexts, even particularly complex ones where the number of vendors involved is large.
Regesta Lab, with its expertise in the use of Google BigQuery, can put this integration to good use for its customers, particularly those in manufacturing, to increase and streamline the use of data in the enterprise.
