Unlock Real-Time Insights from SAP with Fabric Real-Time Intelligence
Coauthors: Kevin Lam, Xu Jiang
Challenge
Organizations generate massive amounts of operational data, but most analytics solutions process this data hours or even days later. That delay can mean missed opportunities, slower decision-making, and less effective AI-driven solutions.
Building a real-time analytics solution on SAP data isn’t easy. Traditional approaches rely on custom or third-party tools that:
- Replicate tables instead of capturing business events.
- Deliver near real-time insights with minutes of latency, rather than real-time solution with seconds of latency.
- Require rebuilding of SAP business logic, as the underlying data model is complex and not analytics friendly.
As a result, achieving real-time analytics with SAP data becomes painful and inefficient.
Solution
Fabric Real-Time Intelligence is a low-code, no-code platform that enables you to ingest, transform, visualize and act on data as its generated.
In today’s AI-driven world, fresh data matters more than ever. AI agents built on stale data won’t deliver meaningful insights. The first step in building AI solutions is to capture data as it’s generated, ensuring you make smarter, well-informed decisions and your AI agents provide up-to-date guidance to accelerate business outcomes.
How SAP easily integrates with Fabric Real-Time Intelligence (RTI)
SAP systems capture most operational data, making them the perfect source for real-time analytics. This data could be transactional (e.g. sales orders, inventory updates) or master data (e.g. customer details, product info). SAP Datasphere can easily integrate with Fabric Real-Time Intelligence:
- SAP Datasphere replication flow supports Kafka through premium outbound integration, allowing you to send changes from SAP systems like ECC, HANA, BW, and other systems in real-time as they occur.
- Fabric Eventstream supports Kafka via custom endpoint, enabling you to send changes from SAP systems in real-time to the Kafka topics provided by Eventstream’s custom endpoint.
This allows you to create real-time operational monitoring dashboards and alerting systems, enabling you to gain immediate insights from your business operations and act on those changes in real time.
Reference architecture of SAP integration with RTI using SAP Datasphere as an integration layer is illustrated in the following diagram:
Cost Impact
Many perceive SAP Datasphere as an expensive solution, but that’s only the case if you use it as a full-scale data warehouse. When used as an integration platform, all you need is a lightweight, lean layer that is both reliable and cost-effective.
Indicative Pricing Example:
- Replicating ~100 GB/day: ~3 TB/month via premium outbound integration
- CU (Capacity Unit) consumption: ~21,000 CUs/month
- Approximate monthly cost: ~USD 20k (without any discounts)
This approach allows you to leverage SAP data in real-time without breaking the bank.
Summary
With Fabric RTI and SAP Datasphere integration, you can:
- Capture operational data the moment it’s generated.
- Enable real-time decision-making across your organization.
- Feed AI systems with the freshest insights.
- Build a scalable real-time analytics solution without complex coding, which is easy to build and maintain.
If you’re interested in trailing this solution, refer to the detailed document outlining the step-by-step configuration process. Try it out and let us know your feedback through these channels:
- Share feedback or post a question on askeventstreams@microsoft.com or on the RTI forum: aka.ms/realtimeforum
- Submit an idea or vote on aka.ms/realtimeideas
