SAP Data Hub catches Docker/Kubernetes container fever
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As its TechEd conference kicks off today in Las Vegas, Enterprise software juggernaut SAP is announcing the release of version 2.3 of its Data Hub product. Among other things, the release heralds the arrival of containerization onto the Data Hub scene.
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Data junction, what's that function?
Introduced roughly one year ago, SAP Data Hub provides GUI-based data pipeline capabilities to integrate data among and between various SAP data platforms, as well as external sources of data. Data Hub seeks to integrate this data without requiring it to be moved, and can easily store the summarized, aggregated data in SAP HANA.
Also: SAP unveils its Data Hub
Now part of the recently-released SAP HANA Data Management Suite, Data Hub heavily leverages Apache Spark-based SAP Vora, and builds a data catalog as an artifact of the pipeline work.
Also: SAP launches HANA Data Management Suite | SAP Introduces Spark-based HANA Vora
Policy of containement
Given the versatility of Data Hub and its role as data connector and ombudsman, it makes sense that customers would want the flexibility to run it wherever their data may lie. In today's IT landscape, that means running both on-premises and across public clouds. And it seems SAP and Cisco have worked together to create a container-based solution for Data Hub that does just that.
Dubbed the Cisco Container Platform for SAP Data Hub, the solution leverages Docker container and Kubernetes orchestration technologies to deploy a containerized version of Data Hub, either to on-premises infrastructure or across the major public clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Given the data that needs to be integrated itself lies across these various environments, it makes sense that SAP wants Data Hub to be deploy-able to all of them.
Workforce data
SAP is also announcing a new product called "SAP Data Network, live insights for workforce," that leverages SAP Data Hub to combine aggregated and anonymized workforce data from SAP SuccessFactors human capital management software and the SAP Fieldglass cloud-based vendor/external workforce management system. SAP says the product is designed to "help companies recruit top talent based on data-driven hiring...about the labor market across industries and geographies."
The workforce data solution is made by possible by integrating SAP Data Hub with SAP Leonardo Machine Learning, SAP Leonardo Big Data capabilities, SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP HANA.
With data and applications for all
That SAP is using data hub to create its own productized data mashups shows the value in its integration platform. And cloud/analytics products aside, such a mashup highlights SAP's advantage in combining data technologies and enterprise software under one roof. More specifically, it shows the wisdom in SAP's acquisition strategy, which brought SuccessFactors (acquired in 2012) and Fieldglass (acquired in 2014) into the family.
Now let's see what SAP does in the area of data governance, something it has targeted for Data Hub since the product's launch last year and something that could be anchored by Data Hub's data catalog component.