Let’s Talk Data: Data Professional Podcast | SAP

What happens when a company with 100,000 employees needs to turn massive amounts of data into something everyone can actually use? 

In this episode of Let’s Talk Data, Bradley Vaslik sits down with Oliver Huth, Head of Platform and Engineering at SAP, to unpack SAP’s journey from a centralized data warehouse and thousands of dashboards to a scalable data product economy. 

Oliver shares the real-world challenges behind SAP’s transformation—including data silos, changing business demands, governance, and the struggle to give employees faster access to trusted data. 

The conversation explores how SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP Datasphere, and Databricks are helping SAP build a more flexible and reusable data foundation—and why data products are becoming increasingly important as AI changes the way businesses work. 

But there’s a bigger story: AI is only as powerful as the data behind it. 

Oliver explains why trusted enterprise data is becoming the critical foundation for analytics, applications, AI, and intelligent agents—and why measuring data product adoption and reuse may be one of the most important metrics for modern data teams. 

A practical conversation about data strategy, governance, AI, and what it takes to make enterprise data truly work at scale. 

 

5 Key Topics of Discussion: 

The Evolution from Data Warehouses to Data Products 
SAP’s shift from a centralized data warehouse and dashboard model to a scalable, self-service data product approach.  

Building Trust and Governance in Data 
How data ownership, quality, governance, lineage, and adoption help organizations create trusted data that can be reused across teams.  

How SAP Defines and Manages Data Products 
The role of data product owners, domains, output ports, primary and derived data products, and the processes used to build and consume them.  

Business Data Cloud and the Modern Data Architecture 
How SAP Business Data Cloud, Datasphere, Databricks, and existing BW investments work together to support SAP’s data product strategy.  

Data Products as the Foundation for AI 
Why trusted, governed enterprise data is becoming increasingly important for analytics, applications, AI, and agent-based use cases—and why adoption and reuse are critical measures of success. 

 

 
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Connect With Bradley Vasilik 

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Additional Resources: 

To learn more about SAP Data and AI solutions, please check out SAP Business Data Cloud at https://www.sap.com/products/data-cloud.html

  

And to engage further, please join our Data Professionals Community on https://community.sap.com/t5/data-professionals/gh-p/data-professionals

In this episode of Let’s Talk Data, host Venkata Giduthuri sits down with Justin Lynch, SAP Data Architect Program - Americas Regional Lead, to discuss the modernization journey with SAP Business Data Cloud for on-premises SAP BW, SAP BPC, SAP BusinessObjects, and SAP HANA systems to embark on the Autonomous Enterprise journey. The conversation specifically focuses on what it takes to modernize SAP BW with SAP Business Data Cloud.

Justin outlines the importance of the modernization journey and how it differs from migration. The discussion highlights options for modernizing SAP BW to take advantage of the latest AI innovations in SAP Business Data Cloud.

The key highlight is the process of readiness assessment, getting into the details of how the information is collected and analyzed, taking into consideration various complexities built by the customers over the years.

Finally, Justin shares the benefits customers gain from the latest innovations in SAP Business Data Cloud after the migration, such as data products and knowledge graphs, which are the foundational elements of an autonomous enterprise platform.

Whether you are a BW engineer, NetWeaver administrator, enterprise architect, data architect, or platform engineer, this episode offers valuable insights into how to choose the best path for modernization with SAP Business Data Cloud to build for AI-driven architectures.

Key Topics of Discussion:

Why Modernization with SAP Business Data Cloud: Explore why organizations are modernizing SAP BW and moving toward a more cloud-ready, AI-enabled data landscape.

Options to Modernize SAP BW: Compare the lift-and-shift and greenfield approaches for moving SAP BW to Business Data Cloud.

Getting Started with SAP BW Modernization: Learn how organizations can assess their current environment and determine the right modernization path.

Readiness Assessment Insights: Understand what the SAP BDC assessment evaluates and how its findings help guide modernization decisions.

Innovation Benefits with SAP Business Data Cloud: Discover how BDC enables new AI, data product, knowledge graph, and analytics capabilities.

 

Subscribe to The Let’s Talk Data Podcast 

 Apple Podcasts 

Spotify 

YouTube 

 

Connect Justin Lynch 

Linkedin 

 

Connect With Venkata Giduthuri 

LinkedIn 

 

Links to CTA: 

https://www.sap.com/products/data-cloud/sap-bw-migration.html 

https://www.sap.com/products/data-cloud/sap-migration-assessment.html

In this episode of SAP Let's Talk Data Podcast, host Corrie Birkenes is joined by Ridwan Bhuiyan, Vice President of Digital Products at Chubb, and Tina Rosario, Chief Data Officer at SAP, for an insightful conversation on how data is transforming sustainability, resilience, and business decision-making.  

Ridwan shares his unique journey from environmental science to leading digital transformation initiatives, explaining how data quality, governance, and collaboration became the foundation for solving complex business challenges. Together, he and Tina explore why successful sustainability programs depend on trusted, high-quality data rather than technology alone. They discuss breaking down organizational silos, treating data as a strategic product, and creating modern data foundations that empower better decisions across the enterprise. 

The conversation also highlights the growing importance of geospatial analytics, external data integration, and cross-functional collaboration to measure environmental impact and climate resilience. Finally, they examine the opportunities - and responsibilities - that come with AI, emphasizing the need to balance innovation with sustainable resource consumption and long-term thinking. 

Whether you're a data leader, sustainability professional, or executive looking to build a more resilient organization, this episode offers practical insights into using data to drive meaningful business outcomes while preparing for the challenges of tomorrow. 

 

Key Topics of Discussion: 

 

Why sustainability data strategy doesn’t start with technology — it starts with evangelism and business buy-in

How sustainability teams inherit downstream data quality challenges from procurement, operations, and energy systems

The power of modern data platforms and data products to break sustainability out of the "ivory tower" report

Geospatial analytics as a storytelling tool for climate resilience and vulnerability assessment

What makes a great data and analytics leader — communication, consultative thinking, and comfort with iterative failure

A thought-provoking closing debate on AI, data centers, and resource competition — and whether we’re consuming at a rate future generations can sustain
 
 
 
 

Subscribe to The Let’s Talk Data Podcast 

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Connect Ridwan Bhuiyan 

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Connect With Tina Rosario 

LinkedIn 

 

Connect With Corrie Birkeness 

LinkedIn 

 

 

Additional Resources: 

From Silos to Strategy: What 20 Years of SAP Data Management Taught One Practitioner: https://community.sap.com/t5/data-professionals/gh-p/data-professionals   
To learn more about SAP Data and AI solutions, please check out SAP Business Data Cloud at https://www.sap.com/products/data-cloud.html   
And to engage further, please join our Data Professionals Community on https://community.sap.com/t5/data-professionals/gh-p/data-professionals  

Managing Sustainability Data Proactively: Corporate Sustainability Reporting (Directive) as a Driver: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/isj.70043  

From Silos to Strategy: What 20 Years of SAP Data Management Taught One Practitioner: https://community.sap.com/t5/data-professionals/gh-p/data-professionals  

To learn more about SAP Data and AI solutions, please check out SAP Business Data Cloud at https://www.sap.com/products/data-cloud.html  

Chubb Resilience and Risk Consulting: https://www.chubb.com/us-en/business-insurance/services/resilience-services.html  

Ridwan's LinkedIn profile:  www.linkedin.com/in/ridwan-bhuiyan  

And to engage further, please join our Data Professionals Community:  https://community.sap.com/t5/data-professionals/gh-p/data-professionals

What does it really take to become a data-driven organization? In this episode of Let's Talk Data, host Corrie Birkeness is joined by data strategy expert Shelly McQuigg and SAP Product Marketing Director Kara Reed for a practical discussion on building a successful data strategy that delivers measurable business value. Together, they explore why effective data strategies must begin with business outcomes—not technology—and how trusted, governed data is the foundation for analytics and AI success.  

Shelly and Kara share lessons from decades of experience leading enterprise data initiatives, including standardizing global KPIs, establishing executive sponsorship, and creating governance models that balance control with business agility. They explain why data professionals need both technical expertise and business knowledge to influence organizational change and drive adoption.  

The conversation also examines how modern data architectures, including data fabric, enable organizations to create a single definition of the truth without physically centralizing data. Finally, the discussion turns to AI, highlighting why data quality, governance, and trusted information have become more critical than ever before. Whether you're a data leader, architect, analyst, or executive, this episode provides actionable guidance for creating a scalable data strategy that supports business growth, operational efficiency, and trusted AI initiatives. 

 

Key Topics of Discussion: 

Building a business-first data strategy focused on corporate KPIs, measurable outcomes, and business value.  

The importance of data governance in creating trusted, standardized, and high-quality enterprise data.  

The evolving role of data professionals as business partners, strategists, and organizational influencers.  

Modern data architecture and data fabric, enabling a single definition of the truth across distributed systems.  

Preparing data for AI, emphasizing why governance, quality, and trusted data are essential for successful AI adoption. 

 

Subscribe to The Let’s Talk Data Podcast 

Apple Podcasts 

Spotify 

YouTube 

 

Connect With Shelly McQuigg 

LinkedIn 

Connect With Kara Reed 

LinkedIn 

Connect With Corrie Birkeness 

Linkedin 

 

Additional Resources:

To learn more about SAP Data and AI solutions, please check out SAP Business Data Cloud at https://www.sap.com/products/data-cloud.html

To engage further, please join our Data Professionals Community on https://community.sap.com/t5/data-professionals/gh-p/data-professionals

In this episode of Let’s Talk Data, host Daniel Dukes of SAP America is joined by Lisa Horwich, founder of Pallas Research and a leading B2B tech qualitative researcher who interviews CISOs, data architects, and security professionals to surface actionable insights for technology companies. 

Lisa and Daniel explore how AI is fundamentally reshaping the cybersecurity landscape- from AI-powered phishing and expanded attack surfaces to risks like prompt injection, jailbreaking, and data poisoning. They also tackle the persistent challenge of shadow data and data sprawl, where sensitive information lives outside sanctioned IT infrastructure, making it nearly impossible to classify and protect. 

The conversation covers the spectrum of security tools available to organizations, from point solutions to holistic Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) platforms, and closes with key best practices: zero trust, least privileged access, multi-factor authentication, and using AI defensively to combat the very threats it enables. 

 

Subscribe to The Let’s Talk Data Podcast 

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Connect Lisa Horwich 

Linkedin 

 

Connect With Daniel Dukes 

LinkedIn 

 

Additional Resources: 

To find out more about Lisa and security research, visit Pallas Research 

To connect with others on the topic, check out the Data Professionals community

SAP Trust Center: Data Protection & Privacy: SAP’s dedicated trust center resource covering data protection policies, privacy safeguards, and the security protocols SAP employs across its cloud ecosystem — directly relevant to the episode’s discussion of data visibility, shadow data, and keeping sensitive organizational data secure.