Thursday, June 17, 2021

APOS Live Data Gateway Use Case – Postgres, SSAS Live Connectivity - Finance

Using APOS Live Data Gateway to provide performant live data connectivity between SAP Analytics and non-SAP data sources

Challenge: SAP Analytics Live Data Access in the Finance Industry

A top-ranked global reinsurance organization was undertaking a multi-year finance transformation project, and one of their top priorities was to provide real-time financial reporting to stakeholders. Their challenge was to make data from numerous data sources available for real-time reporting via SAP Analytics. These data sources included Postgres and Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) data cubes.

Solution: Live Data Connectivity – APOS Live Data Gateway

This global reinsurance organization selected APOS Live Data Gateway as the means of creating and maintaining live data connectivity for their SAP Analytics Cloud / S/4HANA deployment. APOS Live Data Gateway provides live data connectivity between SAP Analytics and SSAS data cubes, and acts as a live data query mechanism, allowing them to use the current data residing in the SSAS data cubes to facilitate their finance transformation initiative.

They assessed inherent connectivity options, but chose this solution rather than use other data import or linking options, because it was critical that they maintain strong performing live data connectivity to ensure data currency, and that the solution be transparent to non-technical analysts.

APOS Live Data Gateway gave them:

• Highly performant live data connectivity to Postgres and SSAS data cubes
  APOS Live Data Gateway provides a fast and performant data connection to these critical Microsoft sources in the current roll out, and in an upcoming phase of the financial transformation project this use will expand to leverage other non-SAP data assets, such as Postgres. Future options also include Live Data Gateway’s ability to provide data  for consumption by S/4HANA, Datasphere, and many other data/analytics platforms.
• Real-time reporting with up-to-the-minute data
  Because the connections between SAP Analytics and these data sources is live, the analyzed data is current while remaining in the original data source location, removing the challenges that come with importing or replicating of the data.
• Ease of deployment and use
  APOS Live Data Gateway’s web-based interface enables quick and easy development of semantic layer views on the target, non-SAP data sources, ensuring your SAP solutions and users can easily navigate to the data they need. The APOS Live Data Gateway is transparent to the story builders and recipients.

Feedback

“This customer needed to implement live data connectivity between their SAP Analytics and data from Postgres and Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) data cubes for comprehensive real-time reporting on their operations. Their investigation of both inherent and potential third-party solutions led them to APOS Live Data Gateway. After we demonstrated proof of concept for them, they implemented this product and were well-pleased with its performant live data connectivity, its ease of deployment and use, and its real-time performance with current data from non-SAP data sources.”
Alan Golding, Solution Consulting Manager, APOS