Business data fabric
Build your data foundation for agentic AI
What is a business data fabric?
A business data fabric is an architecture that turns all your data and context in one governed foundation, serving as the trusted knowledge core for every enterprise application and AI agent.
Connect all your data with full business context
Harmonize SAP and third-party data with a trusted knowledge core that preserves business context and delivers unmatched understanding of your business.
Ground every AI agent in trusted semantics
Ensure every agent, application, and decision is grounded in universal business context, enriched by active metadata that continuously learns from new and existing data.
Adapt compute to every workload
Run data and AI workloads across Spark, SQL, and multi-model engines with flexible compute that matches the right engine to what each workload needs.
Explore business data fabric capabilities
Run any workload on any data type
Process analytics, AI, and transactional workloads across relational, graph, vector, and spatial data in a single, unified engine.
Manage compute with elastic scalability
Scale compute and storage independently with intelligent tiering to optimize performance and cost as workload demands evolve.
Improve predictability of AI costs
Execute AI compute with native workload management and in-memory speed, dramatically reducing inference time and lowering TCO.
Create unified data models
Combine and enrich data from multiple sources into governed models with shared semantics for consistent downstream use.
Map relationships with knowledge graphs
Capture relationships across business data, processes, and entities to support cross-domain reasoning and contextual understanding.
Define shared business semantics
Standardize business definitions and KPIs so data is consistently understood across domains, applications, and AI systems.
Access and build curated data products
Gain a 360-degree view of business processes with fully managed SAP data products or build and govern your own using SAP Business Data Cloud.
Share data across your ecosystem with zero copies
Use SAP Business Data Cloud Connect to share data and metadata bi-directionally with your data landscape, preserving meaning across every cloud and platform.
Discover external data with the data marketplace
Connect to SAP and partner data products to extend analytics and AI use cases across your business data fabric.
Unify your data with multiple integration patterns
Connect data using batch processing, replication, real-time streaming, and federation across your hybrid and cloud data landscape.
Browse governed data assets in the catalog
Discover SAP-managed data products across lines of business and activate them directly in applications for immediate use.
Enable domain-based data ownership
Organize and govern data with secure, virtualized spaces for controlled ownership and data products sharing across domains.
Consolidate and govern master data
Unify customer, supplier, and financial master data across SAP and third-party systems with consistent governance and quality controls.
Accelerate data management with Joule agents
Use Joule agents to automate modeling, accelerate planning cycles, and create analytical stories with actionable insights.
Orchestrate data pipelines with task chains
Coordinate multi-style data pipelines in a single execution chain with built-in monitoring and proactive failure handling.
Track lineage across every data movement
Capture and visualize end-to-end lineage to understand how data moves, transforms, and is consumed, ensuring auditability and trust.
Optimize cost and performance with FinOps
Attribute costs and optimize compute by business function using shared semantic definitions with full governance and visibility.
Connect more than just a knowledge graph
Bring knowledge graphs, data integration, analytical models, data products, and more into one system that compounds business value.
Operate on a centralized semantic tier
Synthesize and govern data products, metrics, business processes, and models to ensure consistent meaning across your business data fabric.
Build certified, trusted data models
Define canonical data models using semantic and analytical modeling to ensure consistent understanding across domains.
Simulate business impact with AI
Use AI to automate enterprise planning and analytics tasks such as risk assessments, forecasting, and Monte Carlo simulations.
Continuously adapt with active metadata
Capture usage and outcomes to refine context across your business data fabric, making applications and AI more adaptive over time.
Deliver universal business context to AI agents
Give every agent governed access to business semantics, relationships, and processes so they can reason and act with confidence.
Enable intelligent content at scale
Generate and enrich content and applications for every line of business, grounded in trusted business data and context.
Accelerate autonomous domain operations
Enable domain-specific agents to execute workflows, surface insights, and trigger decisions without manual intervention.
Build the data foundation for agentic AI with a business data fabric
Join a webinar to learn how SAP Business Data Cloud enables scalable AI by connecting data and business context across a unified, governed data landscape.
See how customers are succeeding with SAP
Preserving business meaning across a global network
Ericsson unified semantics and business context across petabytes of data spanning 180+ countries, driven by governed, reusable data products
Simplifying data governance across 350M+ customers
Vodafone reduced its BW footprint by 80% by consolidating multiple markets into a single semantic layer – delivering governed, trusted data that serves 350M+ customers
Treating data and AI as a shared business capability
Google reduced manual reconciliation by aligning finance and IT on shared organizational knowledge – enabling faster customer P&L reporting across their business data fabric.
Unifying 500 billion business signals in real-time for AI
Team Liquid unified real-time event, training, and health data with full context for AI, saving 10,000+ hours of manual work.
See what analysts are saying about SAP
SAP is a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms 2025 Vendor Assessment
Find out why SAP is recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape Worldwide Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms 2025 Vendor Assessment.
SAP is a Leader in Master Data Management
Find out why SAP is recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Master Data Management Solutions Q2 2025 report.
SAP is a Visionary in Analytics and Business Intelligence
Find out why SAP is recognized as a Visionary in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2025.
Resources
Measuring Data Fabric TCO
Explore how SAP Business Data Cloud saves up to 67% in TCO with a data fabric compared to DIY.
The fabric of data and AI
Learn how SAP Business Data Cloud brings together context, governance, and orchestration to accelerate insights and intelligence.
Getting started series: Experience SAP Business Data Cloud
Learn how to use SAP Business Data Cloud to turn raw data into real-time insights with prebuilt apps, data modeling tools, and SAP Databricks.
BDC Catalog in SAP Discovery Center
Explore SAP Business Data Cloud capacity services with missions, roadmaps, and guidance that help you connect, manage, and analyze SAP and third-party data.
FAQ
A business data fabric is an architecture that connects data and context in one governed foundation, serving as the trusted knowledge core for every enterprise application and AI agent. Unlike traditional data management approaches, a business data fabric preserves the meaning behind your data by design, making it foundational for scalable, trustworthy AI. It brings together critical capabilities such as data integration, lakehouse, data products, data marketplace, semantics, knowledge graphs, and modeling into a unified platform without compromising architectural flexibility.
A knowledge core is the central layer of a business data fabric that connects your data, processes, policies, simulations, and semantics into a unified system. It goes beyond a traditional knowledge graph by enabling AI agents to understand how your business actually works, not just what the data says. Without it, AI agents can conflict with each other or optimize for the wrong outcomes.
A data lake or data warehouse stores and organizes data but does not preserve the business context around it. A business data fabric goes further by connecting that context across your entire landscape, making data not just accessible but interpretable. This distinction becomes critical when AI systems need to make autonomous decisions that align with real business outcomes.