Thinking in Data Products: Why SAP Business Data Cloud Demands a New Modelling Mindset

The session

About this session

SAP Business Data Cloud changes the rules of data modelling, and the gap between how we currently work and what BDC actually demands catches even experienced teams off guard. A data product is not just a well-built view with a better name – it is a self-contained, governed, reusable asset with an owner, defined semantics, and a lifecycle built to be discovered and consumed by people and systems we may never meet.

This session gets into what actually changes when we make that shift: moving from project-scoped models to domain-owned products with explicit interfaces, and how versioning, ownership, and discoverability become first-class design concerns rather than afterthoughts.

Ingo also tackles the hardest part – which is rarely technical – including how to identify sensible product boundaries and how to avoid the trap of simply relabelling existing views as "products." We leave with a practical mental model for approaching BDC with fresh eyes and the confidence to know when we are building a genuine data product and when we are heading toward data product theatre.

What You'll Learn

• What distinguishes a true data product from a well-built view or model
• The core mindset shifts required: consumer-specific → reusable, project → product, build → publish-and-maintain
• How to identify good product boundaries – and the warning signs of data product theatre
• The organisational and governance changes that make the approach sustainable