Choosing the Right Data Strategy: SAP Business Data Cloud, BigQuery, or Databricks?
A Strategic Question for Today’s CIO and CFO
As organisations complete their S/4HANA transformations, many are now asking a different question:
“Should we keep our data entirely within the SAP ecosystem, or integrate with hyperscalers like Google BigQuery and Databricks?”
It’s no longer a purely technical decision: it’s a strategic investment in how your business will operate, govern, and innovate with data over the next decade.
The Changing Role of Enterprise Data
Data has moved from being a reporting asset to a strategic enabler of agility and automation.
The challenge is that not all data platforms are built for the same purpose:
- SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) focuses on governance, lineage, and semantic consistency — your “system of trust.”
- Google BigQuery focuses on analytics, scalability, and AI-driven insights – your “system of discovery.”
- Databricks focuses on data engineering, experimentation, and AI innovation – your “system of creation.”
The question for leadership is not which one is better, but how to align each platform to your business model and cost structure.
SAP Business Data Cloud: The Foundation of Trust
For CFOs, the value of SAP BDC / Datasphere lies in accuracy, control, and auditability.
It ensures your data is defined, governed, and consistently understood across functions.
Advantages:
- Deep integration with S/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud
- Built-in governance, lineage, and authorisations
- Consistent business semantics – one definition of margin, revenue, or inventory
- Ideal for finance, operations, and regulatory reporting
Limitations:
- Less suited for large-scale AI, streaming, or unstructured data
- Compute scalability and AI integration depend on extensions
For many organisations, SAP BDC remains the core data layer – the single version of truth.
Google BigQuery: Scale, Speed, and Embedded AI
BigQuery is Google’s serverless cloud data warehouse – designed for massive analytics workloads with minimal management overhead.
Why CIOs and CFOs use it:
- Elastic, usage-based pricing (you pay only for queries and storage)
- Seamless connection to Vertex AI and Gemini for predictive analytics
- Ideal for joining SAP data with non-SAP sources (marketing, logistics, IoT)
- New BDC Connect integration enables zero-copy, real-time access to SAP data
Business outcome:
Use governed SAP data in BigQuery for faster analytics and AI innovation, without moving your entire data warehouse.
Databricks: The Innovation Engine
Databricks provides an open, cloud-agnostic platform for data engineering, AI, and machine learning.
For data-driven organisations, it’s the lab where new insights, predictive models, and automation opportunities are created.
Use cases:
- Advanced forecasting models (demand, pricing, supply chain)
- Data preparation and feature engineering
- Integration of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data (text, images, sensor data)
Why it matters for CFOs:
Databricks drives innovation ROI – turning raw data into revenue-impacting use cases – but it requires more technical capability and governance alignment with SAP data models.
Building a Hybrid Data Strategy
Leading enterprises no longer choose one platform. They combine them – aligning each to its core strength.
This architecture ensures:
- Governance remains centralised in SAP BDC
- Analytics and AI scale through BigQuery
- Innovation and data science accelerate through Databricks
The Financial Perspective
| Decision Area | SAP BDC | Big Query | Databricks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Value | Governance, compliance | Analytics, scale | Innovation, AI/ML |
| Cost Model | License-based | Pay-per-query | Compute/hour (cluster) |
| Time to Value | Medium | Fast | Variable |
| Ideal for | Finance, operations | Analytics, marketing, CX | Data science, R&D |
| Key Risk | Limited AI flexibility | Data governance complexity | Skill dependency |
For CFOs, the winning model is not either/or, but right platform for the right workload.
How Liquid Peak Helps
At Liquid Peak Consulting, we help organisations modernise their BI and data strategies with:
- End-to-end SAP BDC and Datasphere enablement
- Integration with BigQuery and Databricks for AI-ready architectures
- Governance frameworks that align IT scalability with business trust
Our approach enables your teams to:
✅ Reuse existing BW/4HANA models via BW Bridge
✅ Extend data access through BDC Connect
✅ Maintain financial and operational consistency across platforms
The result: Faster insights, lower total cost, and a future-ready data foundation.
For today’s CIOs and CFOs, the question isn’t whether to move to cloud – it’s how to architect a hybrid data strategy that delivers value quickly while maintaining control.
With SAP Business Data Cloud as your trusted core, BigQuery for scale, and Databricks for innovation, your business can balance governance and agility – powering both today’s decisions and tomorrow’s AI opportunities.
📩 Explore how Liquid Peak can help modernise your SAP BI architecture:
