Special Edition on Data Federation and the KSA Data Center

[CorinnaKramer]

Managing global supply chains has become a challenging task in the context of increased costs and disruptions. Transparency and effective communication along the supply chain have become invaluable. Hence, businesses have more and more applied could solutions to transact through global digital networks, extend visibility and establish resilience across their operations.

As you might have learned from Joern Keller’s recent blog on ‘Data Federation: Bringing New Meaning to the Adage “Think Globally, Act Locally”’, we brought our network to the next level, turning it into a distributed, decentralized, and federated network. Data federation has been enabled for our solutions SAP Business Network for Logistics and SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration. And the solutions are now also available on KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) data center SA30.

This blog will dive into the details. I will compare before- and after-scenarios, describe the new scenarios that are now possible with the availability on the KSA data center, and explain how shippers/solution owners/asset operators (hereinafter called shippers) and carriers/data contributors/OEMs and contractors (hereinafter called carriers) can manage data federation.

But first, let’s get on the same page …

What is data federation?

Data federation provides operational information to be accessed and updated as though it resided in a single data center. It ensures availability across regions and data centers with high scalability, and performance.

SAP Business Network for Logistics, which includes the solutions SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration, SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace and SAP Business Network, intelligent insights add on, as well as SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration are currently available on data centers EU10, US20, and SA30. Data federation allows businesses to collaborate across these data centers and regions, while providing local data residency.  

How does data federation change collaboration between business partners?

With the 2412 release, SAP Business Network has been modernized and turned into a decentralized, federated network. Before, shippers had to be on the same data center as their carriers. Collaboration across data centers was not supported.

 Before – collaboration between data centers was not possible (KSA data center was not yet available)

 Now, business data can be exchanged across data centers. Shippers can join from their preferred local home data center and establish collaboration with business partners (carriers) across the globally federated trading partner directory.

 After – collaboration between data centers is possible (graphic does not include scenarios with KSA data center)

What additional scenarios are possible with the KSA data center?

SAP Business Network for Logistics and SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration are now also available on KSA data center SA30 to serve public sector and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) organizations. Shippers in the region, can now be compliant with data isolation regulation requirements.

 Collaboration scenario with KSA data center

Please note even if the carrier company is physically located in KSA, the account creation would happen in the US or EU data center, as the SA30 data center is dedicated to public sector and CNI companies.

How to manage data federation as shipper?

As a shipper, you can join SAP Business Network from your preferred home data center. To establish cross data center connections, you must ensure that the business profile is available in all data centers on the network.

In the ‘Manage Business Profile’ app, bring up your own profile and ‘Replicate to global regions of SAP Business Network’. Once enabled, the setting cannot be reversed. Future updates will be synchronized to all data centers. Additional details can be found on SAP Help Portal: Profile Settings | SAP Help Portal

 How to manage data federation as a shipper

To select a business partner operating in a different data center in the ‘Discover Business Partners’ app, you must first ensure that your company profile is available across all data centers.

Note: This feature is only available when the multi-cloud environment of SAP Business Technology Platform is used as integration platform.

How to manage data federation as a carrier?

During registration, carriers can select the data center on which they want to register their account. When the account has been created after December 16th, 2024, the profile is set to ‘public’ by default (the profile visibility for existing accounts remains unchanged).

The profile is automatically federated globally (this can be manually deselected), so they can be found by shippers in another data center.

Please note: There has been a UI change with regards to privacy settings. Carriers no longer find them in the ‘Manage Invitations’ app. To change the privacy settings, go to the ‘Manage Business Profile’ application and select ‘Options’. Select or deselect ‘Show my profile in search results’.

 How to manage data federation as a carrier.

[ZenonK]

Hi Corinna,

I only see the 'Options' button in Test tenants.  When this be available in Prod tenants?

Have the What's New pages been updated?

Thanks.

ZenonK.

[CorinnaKramer]

Hi,

this has been shared in our 'What's new' on Help Portal as part of the December release as 'Cross Data Center Connections' and 'New Data Center' and should be available in test as well as production tenants IF their are on the new the multi-cloud environment of SAP BTP as the integration platform.

Best

Corinna