Data is increasingly stuck in silos. Here’s how SAP BTP and Databricks break them down.
More data is being generated than ever before, over 400 million terabytes is being produced each day. For businesses, much of that valuable information doesn’t reach the teams who need it to make confident, accurate decisions. Instead, it ends up as inaccessible, siloed data.Â
The reality is, despite being in an age where data is everywhere, information is becoming harder to access. “Managing data is more complex than ever,” saidLynne McGrew, President at IT Services 2.
“With data coming from multiple sources –from legacy systems, cloud platforms and SaaS applications, creating a clear view of accurate, meaningful data is a growing challenge.”
Data silos do more than make information harder to access. They slow down decision making, increase duplication, and make it difficult to scale analytics or build reliable AI. Additionally, the more your business grows the more those barriers grow with it.
But there are new ways to combat data silo problems for SAP users. In this blog we will explore how to break down data silos using SAP Databricks. You will learn how the native integration with Databricks enhances the advantages of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), adds flexibility to your data landscape, and supports enterprise-scale use cases for AI and advanced analytics.
We will also explore real-world examples that show how SAP Databricks is helping organizations turn fragmented data into valuable business insight.
What are Data Silos?
Data silos occur when critical information is isolated within one system or department and cannot be readily connected with other enterprise systems. In modern businesses, this often results from using specialized platforms for specific functions. For example, SAP ERP may manage operations, while sales teams rely on third-party CRM tools and analytics teams work from standalone reporting environments.
Consider a scenario where the supply chain team uses SAP to manage inventory, but demand forecasts are stored in a separate data warehouse managed by the analytics team. Without a unified view, discrepancies go unnoticed, leading to overstocking, missed revenue, or delayed response to market shifts.
These silos limit visibility across the business and reduce the value of data investments. As data volumes grow, they become harder to integrate, govern, and use in AI or analytics.
Why are Data Silos Problematic?
Data silos are more than just a workflow issue. They create real operational and strategic risks that affect how your business runs and grows. When systems cannot talk to each other, leaders make decisions based on partial or outdated information. The results are costly and compounding.
Here is what silos typically lead to:
- Misaligned priorities
Teams make decisions in isolation without a full view of the business. - Duplicate effort and wasted resources
Analysts and data teams spend hours preparing and reconciling data instead of acting on it. - Delayed innovation
AI models, dashboards and forecasts fail when they rely on fragmented or ungoverned data. - Increased compliance and security risks
Without centralized control, enforcing data policies becomes inconsistent and error-prone. - Poor customer satisfaction
Inconsistent data across departments leads to broken experiences and slower service. - Loss of up to 30% of annual revenue.Â
The costs of a data silo can be substantial, according to IDC Market Research. Businesses with disconnected data systems face significant losses due to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.
How to Eliminate Data Silos: A Practical Path Forward
Eliminating data silos is not about centralizing everything. It is about connecting what matters and making it usable. That means unifying core business data across systems without losing accuracy or context.
SAP solutions make this possible through the combined strengths of SAP BTP, SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC), and the native integration with Databricks. Together, they give businesses a way to create a unified data foundation and activate that data across analytics and AI use cases.
This approach reduces complexity, improves trust in data and gives teams the visibility they need to make confident decisions.
Step One: Create a Unified and Governed Data Foundation
The first step to eliminating data silos is to unify your business data without losing the structure, meaning or control that your teams rely on. This is where SAP BDC plays a critical role.
Built on SAP BTP, SAP BDC connects data where it lives. It brings together SAP and non-SAP sources into a single view that reflects how your business actually operates. This federated approach allows you to work with real-time data while preserving accuracy and business context.
It also strengthens governance. Data definitions, access controls and usage policies are applied consistently across sources. That means… finance, operations and analytics teams can work from the same trusted data without manual alignment or rework.
While SAP BDC connects and governs data, breaking down silos fully, especially across modern data lakes and AI workloads, requires the added flexibility and scale provided through Databricks.
Step Two: Activate Your Data with SAP Databricks
With your data foundation in place, the next step is to put that data to work. This is where Databricks comes in through its strategic partnership with SAP.
Databricks is now natively integrated with SAP BDC. This collaboration gives organizations a direct path to activate SAP data alongside non-SAP and unstructured sources. There is no need for complex pipelines or disconnected tools. Instead, data can be analyzed, modeled and used for AI in one environment.
Your teams can build dashboards, train machine learning models or create agents that respond to real-time signals, all using business-context-rich data. Because the integration honors governance policies defined in SAP BDC, the work stays secure and compliant across systems.
The SAP and Databricks partnership bridges operational data with advanced analytics. It gives your business the speed, flexibility and intelligence needed to move from connected data to confident decisions.
Real-world results: The Advantages of SAP BTP to Combat Data Silos
During the official launch of the SAP and Databricks partnership, SAP shared a real-world scenario involving one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. This organization needed to optimize inventory levels using data scattered across more than 3,000 sources.
Previously, the reporting process took up to 48 hours. But with SAP BDC, built on SAP BTP, they unified SAP and non-SAP data without duplicating it. Then, using SAP Databricks, they activated that data for near real-time analytics. Inventory insights that once took two days could now be delivered in just 45 minutes.
This example highlights the clear advantages of SAP BTP. It’s used by over 15,500 SAP customers, and provides a trusted foundation for data unification and governance, while SAP Databricks adds the scale and flexibility needed for high-impact analytics.
When businesses operate with fragmented data, the disadvantages of data silos become difficult to ignore–delayed decisions, inefficiencies and limited visibility. Together, SAP and Databricks offer a practical way forward.
Ready to Make Data Silos a Non-Issue?
Solving the problem of data silos takes more than tools. It takes a clear strategy, a connected architecture and a team that understands how to bring everything together. SAP Databricks offers the technical foundation, but turning that into business value requires the right guidance.
iT2 helps organizations move from siloed systems to unified, intelligent data environments. Whether you are just starting to assess your data landscape or already building toward AI, we can help you take the next step with clarity and control.
If data silos are slowing you down, now is the time to move past them.
Contact us today. Let’s talk about how to make siloed data a non-issue for your business.