We recently brought together a dynamic "Ask Me Anything" session with experts from SAP and Collibra focused on one of today's biggest data challenges: building a strong business data fabric with end-to-end data and AI governance. Hosted by Mike Robertson (Collibra) and featuring Kat Chang (SAP), Glenn Leslie (SAP), and McKinley Bloomberg (Collibra), the discussion was packed with valuable insights. This article breaks down the key questions and expert answers from the event.

Listen to the on-demand webinar here.

Q: Could you provide an overview of the SAP and Collibra partnership?

Speakers: Kat Chang & Mike Robertson

Answer: The partnership focuses on building a business data fabric with end-to-end governance for data and AI. Collibra was a launch partner for SAP Datasphere in 2023, and the partnership has strengthened with the launch of SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), which now includes Datasphere. While BDC has its own catalog for managing SAP assets, the integration with Collibra provides a single, holistic view for data and AI teams across the entire data landscape—both SAP and non-SAP sources. This enables customers to establish trusted data and trustworthy AI, utilizing BDC as the data foundation and Collibra for comprehensive enterprise governance across cataloging, data quality, and AI governance.

Q: How does the partnership address data quality within SAP Business Data Cloud?

Speakers: Mike Robertson, Kat Chang & Glenn Leslie

Answer: Data quality in the SAP context is often tied closely to the Cloud ERP solution and getting the operational environment aligned to quality standards. BDC (Datasphere) offers features for additional data quality measures, including the use of BTP functions. However, to get a holistic view and quickly identify challenges across the enterprise, the partnership leverages Collibra's capabilities. Collibra brings a visual perspective and a suite of solutions that link up with BDC to address rigorous data quality requirements, extending beyond what is natively available in BDC.

Q: How does SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) work with Collibra? Is there competition?

Speakers: Kat Chang & Mike Robertson

Answer: MDG is more focused on master data management and is generally assumed as a best practice upstream, often in the context of S/4HANA or Cloud ERP. The integration with Collibra is an augmentation, not a competition. For customers with MDG, the combined solution allows for better management of data assets across the organization. For customers without MDG, the robust integration between Collibra and BDC helps enforce a higher data quality standard than generic governance procedures alone.

Q: Does SAP BDC provide out-of-the-box SAP business data quality rules specific to SAP domains like vendor, customer, or finance?

Speaker: Glenn Leslie

Answer: This depends on whether SAP's MDG is in play, which would typically help build data quality rules upfront. While BDC's capabilities may involve some custom routines, the process is streamlined by how a customer connects to the data source and the data sources used to feed BDC. A growing emphasis is on data products within BDC, where SAP is baking in specific quality rules, making it easier for customers to maintain a "clean core" and extend that clean data into the BDC realm.

Q: Both SAP (Information Steward) and Collibra (Data Quality and Observability) have data profiling tools. Do you see a benefit of using one as the primary tool with SAP data, and what is the future for Information Steward?

Speakers: Glenn Leslie, Kat Chang & McKinley Bloomberg

Answer: From an SAP roadmap perspective, the direction is moving away from Information Steward. The future direction is to use BDC’s native catalog functionality, augmented by Collibra. SAP Business Data Cloud is the statement of direction for future native data profiling tools. The benefit of using Collibra is its ability to work across all data sources (SAP and non-SAP) and its ease of use. Collibra uses AI to automatically recommend and generate data quality rules using natural language (GenAI). The combined approach provides full context and modernized tools to give the business audience a robust definition of data, which ties back to semantics and ensuring data is fit for AI use cases.

Q: How is the semantic fabric built within SAP Datasphere/BDC, and what is the source?

Speaker: Glenn Leslie

Answer: The cornerstone of the business data fabric is the introduction of formalized data products delivered by SAP. For these products, SAP defines the source (e.g., Cloud ERP) and the destination (BDC), providing the data movement. This process ensures the semantics are preserved. In custom scenarios, BDC relies on customer input and features like Semantic Onboarding, which pulls semantics from SAP line-of-business applications (including BW) to make BDC the central point of data access.

Q: What is the difference between SAP BDC/Datasphere catalog, Databricks Unity Catalog, and Collibra, and how do they work together?

Speakers: Kat Chang, Mike Robertson

Answer: Every data platform, including BDC and Databricks, has its own catalog designed to manage assets and artifacts within that specific platform. The integration with Collibra provides the holistic solution. Collibra specializes in enterprise governance, offering that one-stop view for cataloging, data quality, and all other governance needs across the entire landscape. Collibra adds additional business context (policies, glossary, stewardship), can trigger workflows based on data changes, and provides cross-system lineage (e.g., from SAP to Databricks to Power BI). Importantly, BDC shares its superior knowledge of its own lineage and semantics directly with the Collibra catalog through the integration.

Q: Can you please clarify the scope of BDC to Collibra metadata? Is it limited to BW and analytics, or does it include operational ERP metadata?

Speaker: Mike Robertson

Answer: Currently, the flow of metadata from BDC to Collibra is focused on the analytics layer, which includes Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, and BW. The future roadmap includes:

Bidirectional Flow: Attributing Collibra metadata back into SAP BDC.
ERP Side Integration: Ingesting additional metadata from operational ERP systems like S/4HANA (and in some cases ECC) through BDC.

Customers today are already leveraging existing Collibra integrations to support the operational ERP side while the BDC integration continues to mature.

Q: How do customers get started with Collibra and BDC? Does one have to be in place before the other?

Speakers: Kat Chang, Glenn Leslie & Mike Robertson

Answer: The good news is the partnership provides flexibility. When building a data strategy, BDC (for the data fabric foundation) and Collibra (for overarching governance) should be considered simultaneously in the design phase. Customers may start with one or the other based on their immediate priorities:

BDC First: Customers already on the BDC/Datasphere path can plug in Collibra's enterprise governance components.
Collibra First: Customers already on a Collibra journey, or those with a high-priority need (e.g., data quality, regulatory compliance), can start with Collibra and be assured that the partnership covers their future BDC journey.

Q: How does Collibra’s support for data products fit within SAP Datasphere/BDC in data products?

Speakers: Mike Robertson & Kat Chang

Answer: The focus of the partnership investment is heavily on data products. Collibra complements SAP's out-of-the-box data products by:

Data Product Governance and Life Cycle: Managing the life cycle of both SAP BDC data products and other data products across the organization.
Quality Assurance: Ensuring the quality of data powering the data products.
Discovery and Searchability: Making it easier to find and use data products (SAP and non-SAP) across the organization through the enterprise data marketplace.

Q: Are there any technical conflicts between SAP Databricks Unity Catalog, Databricks Unity Catalog, and Collibra?

Speaker: McKinley Bloomberg

Answer: While all three tools offer value, Collibra's role is to serve both the business and technical users, and there are no technical conflicts in connectivity. Collibra can connect to both Enterprise Databricks and SAP Databricks. It’s the platform that stitches the lineage between all sources together, maintains regulatory compliance, and provides business and technical analysis within a single platform.

Q: Can SAP BDC integrate with other data sources like SQL Server or Postgres?

Speaker: Glenn Leslie

Answer: Yes. Connectivity to non-SAP data sources has been a foundational capability within BDC (and its predecessor, Data Warehouse Cloud) since its inception. Standard, structured databases like SQL Server have native connectivity, while others, such as Postgres, support open standards like JDBC through BDC. The list of supported connections is robust and continually growing.

Q: Is there integration between Collibra and SAP Signavio?

Speaker: Mike Robertson

Answer: This is an area of growing joint interest. While not a core productized integration today, a solution is available through a custom services offering/accelerator asset available on the Collibra Marketplace. This enables organizations to align their process metadata (from Signavio, which details the IT landscape and process context) with their data context (from Collibra) to manage and understand both business processes and data together within the Collibra environment.

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Deeper Dive Session: If you're interested in data quality and observability, join us for a deeper dive session. (REPLAY COMING SOON)
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