SAP promises to open out data flows in both directions

SAP has taken meaningful steps in opening its data to bidrectional sharing across the enterprise, and in decoupling the advanced analytics needed for AI from its ERP upgrade path.

During a technical conference last week, the German software giant adopted native support for Apache Iceberg, the open table format, and extended its partnership with Databricks to bring data from legacy ERP systems into its modern cloud analytics platform.

"By putting [a] stake in the ground with Iceberg, we now have SAP moving from a very closed application storage model to an open lakehouse model," said Aaron Rosenbaum, Gartner senior director analyst, referring to the concept which brings together data lakes and warehouses.

Also important was the bridge between modern analytics in the cloud and on-prem or hosted legacy systems such as ECC, the ERP system broadly adopted by global companies. …