Thursday, February 24, 2022

APOS Live Data Gateway Use Case – Non-SAP Data Assets

Using APOS Live Data Gateway to Expand SAP Analytics Cloud Connectivity to Non-SAP Data Assets

Challenge: Establish Live Data Connectivity to Non-SAP Data Assets

A Europe-based food ingredient manufacturer doing nearly €1 billion in annual sales deployed SAP Analytics Cloud with data from SAP BW/4HANA, but needed to expand live data connectivity for SAP Analytics Cloud to Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (MSAS) and Microsoft SQL Server. These expanded data connectivity needs focused on important data related to sales statistics, as well as customer incident tracking data, to be used for sales, operational, and executive steering committee management needs.

Requirements

• Expanded, high-performance, live data connectivity
  They needed secure, transparent connectivity to multiple non-SAP data assets to expand their analytics capabilities.
• Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (MSAS)
  They needed to populate multi-page. dynamic, monthly sales reports in SAP Analytics Cloud with data from MSAS cubes for timely distribution to management.
• Microsoft SQL Server
  They needed to extract TOPdesk incident and asset management data from Microsoft SQL Server to create weekly and monthly summary reports.
• Self-service analytics enablement
  They needed to enable IT and SAC users to perform self-service modelling and analytics and create reports in SAC from their non-SAP data assets.

Solution: APOS Live Data Gateway Live Data Connectivity

The customer investigated using Power BI to report on these Microsoft data sources, but  instead selected the combination of SAP Analytics Cloud and the APOS Live Data Gateway to meet their needs. In addition to maintaining SAP Analytics Cloud as their primary analytics solution, the deployment of APOS Live Data Gateway provides a clear path for future connectivity to non-SAP data assets.
APOS Live Data Gateway gave the customer:

• Connectivity to Microsoft SQL Analysis Services (MSAS), which is not supported by SAC.
• Access to MSAS cubes to create dynamic, multi-page, end-of-quarter sales reports in SAC.
• Live data connectivity to Microsoft SQL Server to avoid data replication.
• Access to non-SAP data assets to create monthly reports in SAC on customer incidents and changes.

Feedback

”APOS Live Data Gateway allowed fast development of efficient reporting workflows using live data connectivity across IT, analytics and line-of-business teams. This is providing a unified analytics solution to meet critical information needs for their sales, operations and management teams.”
Cathy Ramsli, Account Manager, APOS