What is SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA

What is it?

SAP BW/4HANA – The NEXT GENERATION OF DATA WAREHOUSE – has been announced and released for three quarters.   I think most of you must be very clear about the selling points and strength of BW/4HANA by now, and you may notice that except all the advantages we have on the new platform, there is one important functionality missing – PLANNING (probably CONSOLIDATION as well).

The good NEWS is that a new SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (aka SAP BPC) is now released on the new data warehouse – SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA! (oops, you may think I forget ‘Objects’ after ‘Business’… but it’s on purpose, yes… rename is happening again…)

After years of having two flavors of BPC as BPC NW and BPC MS, now we are having the third! Some important points:

1. SAP BPC, version for SAP BW/4HANA (will be referred as BPC BW/4 for the rest of this blog) is NOT a legal successor of SAP BPC, version for SAP NetWeaver. Any existing BPC NW customer any need additional license to use BPC BW/4, details will be provided in later in another thread.
2. By the version number 11.0, you may already figure out that BPC BW/4 is offering with both Planning and Consolidation capability via standard and embedded model. As a starting point, it inherited most of the functionality from BPC NW. Of course, there are new changes/enhancements as well.
3. Due to the fact that it’s BW/4HANA platform which is always use HANA database, BW-IP and BPC standard on xDB is no longer supported.

Timeline

Initial release of SAP BPC 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA is planned for end of May 2017 and it will be followed by another three support packages until the end of 2017 (as always, it’s subject to change). Incremental changes can be expected within those SPs.

What’s the relation to S/4HANA?

When I was talking to SAP colleagues, partners or customers about SAP BPC supporting BW/4HANA platform, a frequent asked question is, how is it related to S/4HANA and BPC optimized for S/4HANA? Let’s start with below diagram.

• The left grey box is S/4HANA with an ‘Embedded BW’ which include BPC 10.1 NW as planning and consolidation engine. It’s based on BW 7.5x(BW 7.51 for S/4HANA 1610 and BW 7.52 for S/4HANA 1709) which on SAP NetWeaver platform.
• The right blue box is SAP BW/4HANA with add-on SAP BPC version for BW/4HANA installed.
• Both boxes are on separate servers with different platform, so BPC BW/4 is NOT related to S/4HANA at all (at least for now). And don’t ask me when they will be related because I have no idea L.
• And for positioning, they also different since BW/4HANA is a data warehouse gather all kinds of business data from different sources while S/4HANA is only for financial and operational data (in most cases).

What’s the selling points?

Simplification

• ONE product – BPC BW4 – offering on BW/4, unlike NW platform, we have BPS, BW-IP, BCS and BPC.
• Following the trend of BW/HANA, BPC BW/4 focuses on simplifying the backend core frontend as well as frontend.
• Simplify the ad-hoc reporting with enhancement in query and Analysis for office
• New web worksheet concept is introduced to simplify the web reporting/planning objects. Within one worksheet, you can have multiple grids and charts for reporting and data input.
• Simplified data integration can reduce the effort and time load data from external sources into BPC

Modern Interface

• Deeper integration with SAP Analytics Cloud (wait… what is it? Bingo, it’s aka SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. Yes, it’s also renamed… sweating…) allows business user to quickly sync data back and forth between BOC and BPC at story level. This also will enable BPC BW/4 customer to leverage BOC web client as an alternative option for both planning and analysis with BPC data.

• Re-designed Fiori like HTML5 web interface provides a fresh new look and feel. Hamburger menu and bread crumb navigation helps user to jump between different features with fewest clicks.

• Brand new home page including nicely pinged tiles for charts, quick access to any object and page via ‘Favorites’ and personal activities ordered by time. In additional, user can personalize the home page by re-ordering and re-sizing. (Getting excited, aren’t you?)

• New concept of web worksheet allows having multiple reports, input forms and charts.
• Re-signed ‘My Activities’ and BPF workspace design time.

Performance

• Push down query formula operation to HANA
• Further push down of FOX formulas to HANA
• Using aDSO for planning

Which Excel client shall I use?

SAP Analysis for Office 2.4 SP04(onwards) is the Excel add-in software shall be used.

• EPM Plug-in shall be used for BPC Standard
• AO Plug-in shall be used for BPC Embedded
• EPM Add-in 10.0 is NOT supported anymore on BPC BW/4

What features are removed from BPC BW/4?

• EPM Unwired is not supported anymore
• Virtual Provider in general and for planning special with Writeback Class is NOT supported
• FIM Integration
• Custom Branding

That’s almost all I would like to share within this overview, you may already have a question about how to migrate existing BPC NW customer to BPC BW/4. A very good question though, but with initial release BPC BW/4, the conversion tool (it’s now called conversion since BPC BW/4 is not the legal successor of BPC NW) is not ready. We will talk about conversion in detail in following blogs, and please wait as well for other BPC BW/4 relate content!

Additional information:

SAP BPC 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA Product Availability Matrix

Official Documentation

The Road to SAP BW/4HANA – Part 2

In the first part, we looked at the different paths to get to SAP BW/4HANA. Now let’s see which path makes the most sense for a given starting point of a customer’s landscape.

One or More Legacy Systems

Unless you are a brand new enterprise, your landscape will most certainly contain some databases or systems that are collecting various kinds of data. Now you realize that you need a way to define common semantics, harmonize data values, establish a ‘single version of truth’, and provide a single, comprehensive source of current and historical information across all these sources. You need a data warehouse… SAP BW/4HANA. The obvious path is to install a new SAP BW/4HANA system, connect all your data sources, and either load the data (traditional ETL) or consume the data remotely (logical data warehousing). Of course you want to put some thought into modeling and structuring your SAP BW/4HANA data warehouse so we recommend defining a layered scalable architecture that suites your requirements best based on the LSA reference framework provided by SAP.

Instead of rebuilding your legacy system or data warehouse completely in SAP BW/4HANA, you could move some or all of it directly into the SAP HANA database that SAP BW/4HANA is running on (separate schema or tenant). You can then leverage the content using mixed models between SAP BW/4HANA and SAP HANA views.

If you have a complex landscape, want to replace legacy data warehouse(s), or simply need help on your way to SAP BW/4HANA, please consider the path of using services offered by the SAP’s Data Management & Landscape Transformation group. We will setup a project that will lead you to a successful implementation of SAP BW/4HANA.

SAP BW powered by SAP HANA with SAP BW/4HANA Starter Add-on (aka SAP BW, edition for SAP HANA)

If you are running this release of SAP BW, are exclusively using objects compatible with SAP BW/4HANA (Advanced DataStore Objects, Open ODS Views, CompositeProviders, etc.) as well as using SAP BusinessObjects (or a supported third party frontend), then your system is mighty close to be ready for transitioning to SAP BW/4HANA. Perform a final system check using program RS_B4HANA_CHECK_ENABLE. If you get all green lights, your system can be converted to SAP BW/4HANA!

As mentioned in Part 1, the conversion tool is not quite ready for this job. You will have to wait for a bit until the required enhancements are completed. There’s no firm timeline available yet.

Although new installation or landscape transformation are technically possible paths, it’s quite unlikely that you would go this way because the system is just one step away from SAP BW/4HANA.

SAP BW powered by SAP HANA

About 3,600 customers are running this release. Go, BW on HANA! If you started your SAP BW implementation recently or have kept you system up-to-date with release upgrades to 7.5, then you are in a similar situation as customers who already have SAP BW, edition for SAP HANA. Upgrade slightly older systems to release 7.5 and install the “SAP BW/4HANA Starter Add-on”. If necessary, transfer classical to HANA-optimized data models and data flows. This might be the case, especially if you did a straight migration from another database in the past and continue to use InfoCubes and classic DSOs i.e. you haven’t fully transitioned to Advanced DSOs, CompositeProvider and Open ODS Views. We have a Transfer Tool (SAP Note 2238220) available, which will do this job for you.

If your system is still on release 7.3 and you are upgrading to 7.5, then you might have to adjust some of your custom code due to the change that came with 7.4. Please review SAP Note 1823174.

Generally, we recommend the system conversion path but in some cases you might want to consider a new installation approach. SAP BW powered by SAP HANA systems can be over four years old (yes, SAP HANA has been around that long). If you don’t want to go through the steps described above, you could go for a new SAP BW/4HANA instance, maybe transport objects and configuration (as far as possible and supported, see SAP Note 2361350), and reload data from your original system. This will give you a clean start into the SAP BW/4HANA world.

SAP BW on Any Database (other than SAP HANA)

The most challenging scenario can be a SAP BW system still running on other databases than SAP HANA. Here all three paths to SAP BW/4HANA are currently at par. To convert the complete system to SAP BW/4HANA will require a database migration, release upgrade, transfer to HANA-optimized objects, and custom code adjustments. A Unicode conversion will be required as well for non-Unicode systems.

We have done migrations to SAP HANA many times now, so overall the process is well understood and can be executed smoothly. Still, we are working to make this transition as seamless as possible.

The alternative is to go for a new installation of SAP BW/4HANA and build a new, simplified data warehouse environment. Added benefit is that your original system will not be impacted.

If your SAP BW system and data warehouse landscape is more complex, please contact SAP and check the many services that are available to help you. And of course many SAP Partners have similar offerings in their portfolio.

Multiple SAP BW Systems

We certainly see a trend to simplify landscapes and consolidate several SAP BW systems into a global instance running on SAP HANA. If you have multiple SAP BW systems – typically split by region or line of business -, then we recommend to check out the Landscape Transformation path. It’s best suited for customers who want to consolidate their landscape or carve out selected data models and data flows into an existing SAP BW/4HANA system. SAP’s Data Management & Landscape Transformation group is planning to offer a service package in order to setup a customer-specific migration project. This will include re-using standard tools for example to compare the configuration and security of your SAP BW systems.

Alternative is to treat the situation the same way as described in the “One or More Legacy Systems” chapter.

Summary

We understand our customers are starting their journey to a modern data warehouse from different places. That’s why we have created three distinct paths, complete with distinct services and tools, to help you achieve your goals in the most direct fashion, with the least disruption.

For more information about SAP BW/4HANA, please see the SAP Community Network and check out the FAQ document.

Source : https://blogs.saphana.com/2016/09/18/the-road-to-sap-bw4hana-part-2/

The Road to SAP BW/4HANA – Part 1

One of the most frequently asked questions is how you can get from your current data warehouse landscape to SAP BW/4HANA. At SAP, we realize each of our customers are starting their journey to a modern data warehouse from different places. That’s why we have created distinct paths, complete with distinct services and tools, to help you achieve your goals in the most direct fashion, with the least disruption.

One heads up: We are working on a “Conversion Guide” which will document all options and required steps in detail.

First, let’s look at the different implementation paths. In part two of this blog, we will take your starting point into consideration and show which is the recommended path or a possible alternative. For now, keep in mind that all three paths are applicable for mostly any existing landscape.

Path 1 – New Installation

Also referred to as “greenfield approach”, this path start by installing a brand new SAP BW/4HANA system. Get the SAP BW/4HANA master guide and follow the steps to check prerequisites, plan and prepare your landscape and installation. Then start the installation using the SAP Software Provisioning Manager. There is a new automated task list available to simplify the basic system setup tasks, like creating and configuring the SAP BW/4HANA background user, setting the SAP BW/4HANA client and installing the essential technical content.

Now there are two basic options for configuring your new SAP BW/4HANA system. Either you begin from scratch, connect any data sources – that could be a legacy data warehouse or any other data source available in your enterprise – and start modeling you data warehouse. We highly recommend following our layer scalable architecture framework (LSA++). Within minutes you can create your first queries and show data in a dashboard. Yes, it’s that simple now thanks to so called “HANA source systems”, field-based modeling, and a modern user experience for designers in Eclipse.

If you run already a SAP Business Warehouse (BW) system today and want a fresh start, you can get a head start by transporting certain configuration and data models from your existing landscape to SAP BW/4HANA. Please note that this is only supported for the initial system setup, not for continuously updating the new landscape. And, of course, it’s only supported for objects that are fully compatible with SAP BW/4HANA. If you are, for example, running already SAP BW powered by SAP HANA 7.4 and have used Advanced DataStore Objects and CompositeProviders, you could transport these to your new SAP BW/4HANA system.

Path 2 – System Conversion

Before we get ahead of ourselves, the option to convert an existing SAP BW system to SAP BW/4HANA isn’t available yet. Stay tuned… this isn’t the end of the world since there are some prerequisites that you can work on in the meantime. Following very much the strategy for data warehousing and recommendations we laid out for SAP BW customers in the past years, your intermediate target is to get to SAP BW powered by SAP HANA and transition to data models that are fully optimized for SAP HANA. That means, for example, no more InfoCubes and MultiProviders but using Advanced DataStore Objects for persistency and CompositeProviders for modeling joins and unions of your persisted or maybe even remote data.

Side note: The time of logical data warehousing is here and thanks for SAP HANA smart data integration it’s easier than ever to integrate many data sources without having the load the data. This approach can get you started quickly but does not overcome limitations in terms of performance of the source system or network capacity or latency connecting to the source. If your source is however on SAP HANA and in the same data center (or maybe just in another tenant in the same SAP HANA database that SAP BW/4HANA is running on), then please give it a go. Create an Open ODS View on top of the source data and use it in your data warehouse models. For maximum performance, you can always generate a Data Flow and Advanced DataStore Object to persistent the data in SAP BW/4HANA. Piece of cake!

As stated at the beginning, we want to make the transition as seamless as possible. For that reason, we developed a so called “Transfer Tool”. The tool is currently available as part of the SAP BW, edition for SAP HANA add-on (which installs in on your SAP BW 7.5 powered by SAP HANA system). This transfer tool allows you to create SAP HANA-optimized objects for all your standard SAP BW data models. Pick a data target, like a MultiProvider and the tool will determine all dependent object like InfoCubes, classic DataStore Objects, transformations, and DTPs and allow you to quickly create equivalent CompositeProviders and Advanced DataStore Objects including matching transformations and DTPs. We are working hard to make this tool work on a system-wide level to make the transition as seamless as possible.

The result is that you are running your SAP BW system as SAP BW, edition for SAP HANA which will take you directly to SAP BW/4HANA using a System Conversion process.

If you paid close attention, there are two main prerequisites here: First, you have to run SAP BW on the SAP HANA database and secondly, your system must be on the current SAP BW 7.5 release. If your system isn’t quite there yet, then as part of the project you will do a database migration and release upgraded. These can be combined – as we have done for several years now – using the Database Migration Option (DMO) for the Software Update Manager.

Path 3 – Landscape Transformation

The third and final option is to optimize more complex data warehousing landscapes resulting in a single, global SAP BW/4HANA system. One reason could be that you are running multiple legacy or SAP BW systems which you want to consolidate on the mighty SAP HANA platform. Another could be to carve out selected data models or flows into an existing SAP BW/4HANA system. In any case, the Data Management & Landscape Transformation team at SAP can help with a customer-specific migration project built around well-defined methodology and re-using standard tools.

One of the innovative tools is the “System Comparison Workbench” which can show you, for example, differences between several regional SAP BW systems and help define a strategy to integrating these into a global data model.

For a presentation style version of this blog (“The Road to SAP BW/4HANA”) and many more details on SAP BW/4HANA, 

please visit the SAP Community Network.