Bridging Business and Intelligence Through Seamless SAP Integration

SAP systems hold some of the most critical and valuable data for enterprise customers. As businesses look to integrate their SAP data with other non-SAP data sources for comprehensive analytics, the need for robust and flexible connectivity options within platforms like Microsoft Fabric has become a top priority.

A Holistic Approach to SAP Data Integration

Integrating SAP data into Microsoft Fabric is guided by a core principle: to serve all analytics use cases and user personas from data engineers and data scientists to business analysts and citizen developers.

A multi-faceted strategy for SAP data integration:

• Built-in Connectivity: Providing a set of readily available, out-of-the-box connectors for standard SAP integration needs.
• Partner Ecosystem: Collaborating closely with broad ecosystem of partners to cover additional use cases and offer customers a wider choice of solutions.
• Deeper Integration with SAP’s Strategic Analytics Portfolio: Creating a seamless experience for customers with a combined SAP and Microsoft data strategy. We will focus on the first two points in this blog, with future posts dedicated to the third.

Built-in Connectivity: More Power and Options

Microsoft Fabric’s Data Factory already offers over 170 built-in connectors, and we are committed to enhancing this list with key SAP sources. For business users and citizen data integrators, the existing SAP BW connector and SAP HANA connector integrated with Fabric data flows allow for easy data wrangling, enrichment, and blending for self-service scenarios.

For professional, large-scale data integration, SAP expanded multiple offerings:

• SAP HANA Connector: This connector is now available in Fabric pipelines. It provides advanced scalability options, including built-in support for partitioning and using pipeline parameters for complex SQL queries.
• SAP Table Connector: This is highly-requested connector which is now available in Fabric pipelines. It provides access to SAP tables/views or CDS views and includes partitioning capabilities to transfer large data volumes in smaller chunks.
• SAP BW OpenHub Connector: This new addition to Fabric pipelines allows for extracting data at scale from BW InfoProviders (ADSOs, InfoCubes, etc.) via SAP BW’s OpenHub destinations.

All of these built-in connectors utilize the On-premises data gateway (OPDG), requiring customers to have the necessary SAP drivers installed on their host server or virtual machine. For OData-based scenarios like SAP SuccessFactors or OData services in SAP ECC and S/4HANA, the generic OData connector in Fabric pipelines remains the recommended option.

Let’s summarize the sources and use cases for the built-in SAP connectors:

Open Mirroring for SAP Sources

Capturing change data from SAP is both complex and mission-critical for enterprise analytics. To address this, Microsoft partnered closely with SAP-certified providers to enable deep integration with Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric. With Mirroring, customers can use these partner solutions to bring both initial loads and incremental changes into Fabric OneLake, while Fabric’s powerful change data capture engine ensures that data is delivered efficiently, consistently, and nearly in real time, ready for advanced analytics.

Looking Ahead

Having SAP data available in Fabric and combining it with other sources for comprehensive analytics is a top priority for our customers. Since requirements and use cases vary widely, our goal is to offer flexible options for every scenario. Today, this includes built-in connectors and deep integrations with partner solutions. Looking ahead, customers can also leverage SAP Datasphere to unify SAP applications with Fabric, while Microsoft continues to expand integrations between SAP Business Data Cloud and Azure through our strong partnership with SAP.

At Quadrant Technologies , we help organizations modernize their SAP landscape by simplifying data access and strengthening governance with Microsoft Fabric’s latest innovations like SAP connectors and Open Mirroring. Connect with our experts at marcomms@quadranttechnologies.com to learn more.