by Nathan Liston
Data is the cornerstone of today’s modern enterprise. Without it, you can’t drive digital transformation or artificial intelligence (AI). This is why organizations that stay ahead of the curve are constantly looking for new ways to utilize their data in transformative ways to drive more opportunities and revenue.
A recent groundbreaking development—the SAP Databricks integration—is paving the way for organizations to do just that and more.
· SAP has been a mainstay of enterprise operations for decades through programs like ERP (SAP S/4HANA), procurement (Ariba), HR (SuccessFactors), and travel management (Concur).
· Databricks has positioned itself as the leader in unified data analytics by combining data engineering, warehousing, machine learning, and governance into its Lakehouse Intelligence Platform.
· This past February, a groundbreaking partnership between these two industry giants was announced that can unleash new capabilities and further the evolution of the data platform’s role.
Why the SAP Databricks Integration Matters
SAP is trusted and used by more than 320,000 businesses across 180+ countries and plays a critical part of their operations. Despite the maturity and impact of the SAP applications, the business knowledge and the data supporting the individual solutions, have remained somewhat siloed. And as we know, data is the cornerstone of digital transformation, and the foundation for artificial intelligence (AI). Up to this point, realizing the value of these assets has come with costly and complex migration and/or integration efforts.
By joining these two powerful forces together, the partnership addresses a long-standing pain point: the complexity of integrating SAP’s context-rich, semantically structured data with modern data ecosystems.
The SAP and Databricks partnership means that businesses can now remove the barriers that have long kept them from merging their SAP data with external datasets, AI, and more, reshaping how organizations can manage their data, leverage AI and execute modern data strategies.
What the SAP Databricks Integration Means For Your Business
The devil is in the details, and those details still have to be flushed out. But just given what we know, here are some initial thoughts on why this partnership is going to be significant:
Transforming ERP and System Integration
Traditionally, businesses have relied on various methods to connect siloed systems — whether through APIs, integration hubs, or complex data extraction processes. One of the most powerful aspects of the SAP Databricks partnership is the “out of the box” bi-directional integration between SAP’s ERP systems and Databricks’ data intelligence platform. This bi-directional integration provides connectivity between disparate systems and data sources, unlocking new potential for cross-functional collaboration and data-driven decision-making. Given the bi-directional capability, the data that is accessible to Databricks is now a potential source for any of the applications within the SAP platform. And given the Databricks platforms’ capabilities, this isn’t limited to data alone. Think open-source and commercial AI and ML models, code, clean rooms and more. This flexibility enhances our ability to leverage diverse sources and becomes the integration hub itself.
Breaking Down Silos With Semantics
With the SAP and Databricks tightly coupled, you can now maintain the data with the semantics of the data, which includes structured and unstructured data; the barriers have been lowered. The impact of this semantic preservation extends beyond individual teams. Imagine having enriched business context for data across multiple domains like:
- Human Resources
- Supply Chain
- Finance
- Information Technology
- And countless others
Having this cross-functional knowledge and context opens new visibility and potential across the enterprise. This cross-functional semantic understanding creates new opportunities for:
- Enhanced visibility across the enterprise
- Novel applications of existing data
- Improved decision-making based on a holistic view of the organization
Elevating AI in the SAP Ecosystem
AI can now be a first-class citizen in the SAP stack. With this integration, new approaches to workflow automation using technologies such as Generative AI agents can be realized using the data and processes exposed to the Databricks platform. This eliminates the need for setting up complex integration workflows, making AI more accessible and impactful to the applications and the teams that utilize them.
Near-Real-Time Analytics
The proven Databricks Spark + Delta architecture, combined with ML model inference capabilities, offers a scalable framework for utilizing external data, internal cross-domain data, and AI/ML-driven decision-making in near real-time. This ability to perform near-real-time analytics in a standardized and easily supported manner is a significant benefit. By integrating events and data from SAP with Databricks streaming and model endpoint capabilities, you can further integrate the analytics into operational workflow processes.
Unified Governance with Unity Catalog
Databricks Unity Catalog will provide a unified view of SAP and non-SAP data, stretching data governance across the entire environment and solutions. This unified approach enhances data management, including AI compliance, like never before.
How CleanSlate Helps You Seamlessly Transition to SAP Databricks
This partnership highlights the ongoing trend of integrating data more closely with operations and business processes, transforming the data paradigm in applications. The combined scale of SAP and the capabilities of Databricks’ data intelligence platform are solidifying this change, potentially impacting the architecture of application systems of record. We are transitioning from isolated database structures to data intelligence platforms. This shift will continue to unlock the potential of today’s data and AI platforms, promising greater innovation and efficiency in our data strategies.
CleanSlate is focused on crafting tailored, cutting-edge cloud–native data and AI solutions that empower businesses with enhanced flexibility, accelerated innovation, and the strength to thrive in an ever-changing future.
Nathan Liston is the Sr. Director of Data and AI
at CleanSlate Technology Group.