Databricks and SAP expand their enterprise data and AI partnership

Databricks says the partnership’s next phase was announced at SAP TechEd and is intended to bring its data and enterprise AI capabilities to SAP Databricks within SAP Business Data Cloud.[2] SAP says its new Application Data Foundation makes SAP application data available through a customer’s chosen SAP Business Data Cloud engine, including SAP Databricks.[3] Databricks says SAP Databricks natively embeds the Databricks Data + AI Platform in SAP Business Data Cloud.[2] Databricks identifies SAP Databricks and SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Databricks as available today.[2]

Databricks says SAP data products can be shared through SAP BDC Connect for zero-copy access, avoiding extra pipelines, copies and silos.[2] It says customers can either use SAP data in SAP Business Data Cloud or bring governed SAP data into an existing Databricks estate, using any model on any cloud.[2] Databricks also says data engineers can build models on a semantically rich foundation so analytics and AI reflect how the business operates.[2] SAP says the cloud-native access provided by the Application Data Foundation can lower total cost of ownership and reduce time to value.[3]

Databricks describes Genie as an AI coworker that gives teams access to governed data and AI with enterprise context built in.[2] A planned two-way integration between Genie and SAP’s Joule can bring Genie’s answers and actions into SAP experiences, Databricks says.[2] Databricks describes Lakeflow as a unified solution for ingesting, transforming and orchestrating data, and Unity Gateway as providing multi-AI governance and cost control across agents, tools, models and MCPs.[2] It says Unity Catalog and Unity Gateway govern data, models and agents across SAP and non-SAP data.[2]

Databricks says Adidas, Zalando, Mondi and CAF have used SAP Databricks and SAP BDC Connect for Databricks.[2] It also says SAF-Holland uses SAP Business Data Cloud and SAP Databricks to unify more than 100 million customer, delivery and material records, and applies machine learning to predict the reliability of customer delivery schedules.[2] According to Databricks, SAF-Holland generates analyses five times faster than with traditional reporting approaches and turns complex SAP data into planning and supply-chain insights in minutes instead of weeks.[2] Databricks says customers can contact their SAP or Databricks account team to learn about the new foundation and expanded capabilities.[2]