Simplify Insights and Make Data One of the Most Valuable Assets in Your Organization with Google Cloud Cortex Framework

data analytics google cloud

Unlocking the value of the data in SAP is critical for business transformation and operational excellence. By harnessing this untapped enterprise data and enriching it with data from other sources, organizations can gain powerful insights to drive innovative solutions — not only for internal transformation initiatives but to also overcome and adapt to market challenges.

Over the last 25 years, data analytics has had multiple iterations of requirements. Initially, it was only running reports, the primary job function of IT, and over time there came large databases like Netezza, Teradata, etc., which acted as large data warehouses. After that came big data technologies like Hadoop, but they were not scalable due to the need for procuring Hadoop clusters and their maintenance. Cloud Analytics platform is the answer to the latest requirements for predictive and prescriptive analytics.

google cloud analytics platform

Google BigQuery

Google BigQuery is a fully managed, highly scalable industry-leading enterprise cloud data warehouse that helps customers to manage and analyze their data with built-in features like machine learning, geospatial analysis, and business intelligence. Google BigQuery’s serverless architecture lets you use SQL queries to answer your organization’s biggest questions with zero infrastructure management. BigQuery’s scalable, distributed analysis engine lets you query terabytes in seconds and petabytes in minutes.

Google Cloud Cortex Framework

Google Cloud Cortex Framework is specifically designed to meet these types of requirements by enabling data integration services from SAP systems, non-SAP systems, and 3rd party sources in a simple, efficient, and cost-effective way. Google Cloud Cortex Framework is a comprehensive approach to reducing the risks, complexity and cost of innovation in the cloud through scenario-driven architectures, accelerators and integration services. With Google Cloud Cortex Framework’s data foundation for SAP, organizations can organize, normalize, and curate siloed data sources in their SAP data estate and integrate them with non-SAP and 3rd party data to gain business insights needed to drive effective decision-making and better business outcomes.

Google Cloud Cortex Framework

Lemongrass SAP Analytics Accelerators

As a Google Cloud partner for data analytics and analytics platform modernization, and a partner for Cortex, Lemongrass has deep expertise in providing end-to-end data services including Ingestion, Data Modeling, Reporting/Visualization, and advanced analytics using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methodologies. Our knowledge of the SAP data models combined with BigQuery native skills and tooling means we can offer a unique set of skills to quickly deliver these outcomes.

SAP with Cloud native data services

Data Acquisition

There are various tools & patterns (batch loading vs replication) to ingest data into Google BigQuery. We can leverage any existing ETL tools which the customer has already procured, or we can bring in our own custom tooling based on customer requirements. We can also use Cortex’s predefined Change Data Capture (CDC) templates or the SLT (SAP Landscape Transformation) connector to replicate the data into Google Bigquery in real-time.

Data Foundations

Google Cloud Cortex Framework provides a data foundation that consists of all the necessary components like storage buckets, projects, tables, etc. We can enhance them based on the customizations in the source SAP systems (ECC, S/4HANA, etc). We also utilize various pre-built data marts like Finance, Order to Cash, etc, and extend them based on customer requirements.

Advanced Analytics

Using Vertex AI, build, deploy, and scale ML models faster, with pre-trained and custom tooling within a unified artificial intelligence platform along with BigQuery ML templates for key scenarios like product recommendations, and customer segmentation. These are made readily available for users in the Google Cloud Cortex Framework.

Visualization

Cortex provides plug-and-play dashboards in Google Looker. We can extend and enhance these dashboards based on customer requirements.

The architecture is engineered to simplify the process of creating a data warehouse using all the data in an SAP data estate. The data extractors can cut through the complexity in the SAP data model and bring data into a staging area where it can be harmonized and merged with multiple SAP instances and other non-SAP data, including an existing data warehouse, data marts, and native data that sits in Google BigQuery (i.e., Google search, trends, etc.). And, since we can build the core enterprise model and the virtual presentation layer, users can create their own reports and dashboards without IT support structures.

Lemongrass’s SAP Analytics Solution and Google Cloud Cortex Framework

  • Integrates SAP and non-SAP data sources to provide a single business layer for cross-functional analysis, helping customers answer questions and gain insights from an enterprise view
  • Leverages Google BigQuery’s AI and Machine Learning to provide deep data mining and predictive analytics
  • Delivers results in weeks instead of months because of pre-built integration and a user-friendly interface
  • Includes pre-built extract, transform, and load ETL data flows for self-service data access
  • Provides pre-built SAP data mapping, data marts, and data models to extract meaningful data from SAP logistics, financial, manufacturing, and other SAP modules
  • Optimizes end-to-end processing within the BigQuery Cloud Data warehouse, bringing about the scalability enterprises need to keep up with the exponential rate of expansion that is inherent to data

A real-life example of an SAP customer gaining powerful insights from their own data and third-party data can be found in a project Lemongrass executed with a global brewing company. Through augmenting their SAP data with ingested weather pattern data, the company was able to accurately correlate quality issues with certain weather patterns, enabling them to improve their output and reduce waste.

Transforming SAP Systems with Lemongrass and Google Cloud Cortex Framework

To learn more about how you can make decisions with greater speed, accuracy and efficiency by leveraging data insights from your SAP data and other critical data, reach out to us.

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