Time and time again SNP Glue has proven it can meet the most challenging requirements for getting data out of complex SAP environments and into Cloud Data Platforms. It can do that within impressive timeframes, keeping large transaction volumes in sync with very little latency. It is no wonder the Snowflake <> SNP partnership is so successful, especially since SNP launched the Snowflake Native App last year.
Now, SNP Glue is about to get better. At SNP’s annual event, Transformation World, a heap of innovations were announced, either recently released or on the roadmap to be released soon. We’ll take a look at that shortly, but first let’s get this out of the way:
Full disclosure
Snap Analytics is an independent System Integrator. When we advise customers about vendor products, we do that based on the best fit considering product capabilities and organizational requirements (technical landscape, available skillsets, ways of working, and anticipated future requirements) .
SNP Group kindly invited me to the SNP Transformation World event where I, and other invited partners, enjoyed SNP’s hospitality. Many thanks SNP Group for organizing a great event, with lots learning, networking and fun, and thanks for your generosity.
SNP Group is not paying for this article, nor have they asked for any publicity in return for hospitality.
About SNP Group and SNP Glue
SNP Group assists companies with their digital transformation prsocesses for SAP. Their software is widely used for SAP migrations and for SAP company carve-outs and mergers. SNP Glue is a product in SNPs product suite which is perhaps less widely known, but very relevant for Coud Data Warehouse solutions. SNP Glue is built on the foundations of DataVard, which was bought by SNP Group in 2021.
SNP Glue – product capabilities
SNP Glue is a data replication tool, designed for replicating data from SAP to anywhere. It has some integration capabilities (for example, datatype conversion) and is starting to reach beyond SAP as a source, with capabilities to replicate data from various cloud platforms to any target. SNP Glue is a robust application which can handle data volumes at scale. It is implemented on the SAP application platform, which means you don’t need an enterprise license for the database to run it. (More info on SAP runtime vs enterprise license can be found here).
The SNP Glue product features overlap with replication products from other vendors, such as Theobald, Fivetran, Qlik Replicate and SAP SLT. There are important differences between the products, but each of these products can be used to move data up from SAP to a cloud data platform in ‘near real time’. I would love to see a product-by-product comparison for replication measures (how many changes / MB) can be captured and loaded into the cloud per second, how much load does the application put on the source system?). As far as I know there are no benchmark results publicly available. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence though. At Transformation World, Roger Pearson explained how Smith & Nephew uses SNP Glue to keep Snowflake in synch with a variety of SAP systems and very large tables (10x billions rows). Smith & Nephew had done a very extensive 3rd party tool comparison, and found that SNP Glue was the only product meeting their requirements. That doesn’t mean SNP Glue is the best fit for every customer – it is a testimony that SNP Glue works really well in a complex SAP landscape replicating large volumes of data.
User interface
SNP Glue is built on the SAP application platform which means the user interface looks like SAP and is aimed at technical users. I know many developers really like the SAP GUI, and so do I, but it does scare off some of the potential users. If you are a data engineer and you have never used SAP (GUI) before, you would probably prefer a slick web interface over the SAP GUI. Well, the web interface is here! I was invited to do a test drive and to my delight the user experience is very satisfying. It is responsive, clean and intuitive. Any data engineer can use this, without any SAP knowledge whatsoever.
Below are some screenshots. For those familiar with the SAP content you might notice that the interface seamlessly merges CDS views and tables in the available sources list. Nice.
Right-click on any of the above pictures and “open in new tab” for a full-screen image.
The SAP GUI is still available. The web functionality is not yet on par with the features available in the SAP GUI. Some specialist features are only available in the SAP GUI.
SNP Product roadmap
The biggest announcement was made during the keynote speech: SNP will launch a new product, SNP Kyano, which will support data replication from a wide variety of sources to a wide variety of targets. This means that enterprises could potentially use a single platform for all their data replication needs. There is clearly some overlap with SNP. Why SNP chooses to introduce a new product instead of building out SNP Glue (which was already moving into ‘anything to anything’ replication) is not clear to me. Hopefully in the next few months we see a clear roadmap for both products, to help understand which product is most suitable for what use case. Here is a link to the official communication about Kyano:
Data transformation features
For SNP Glue, there was mentioning of a ‘data transformation add-on’. Currently SNP Glue does not do data transformation, other than datatype conversion. With transformation capabilities, SNP Glue could become a one-stop-shop for data ingestion and data transformation for cloud data warehouses. The cherry on top would be if SNP Glue would also come with pre-delivered content models, as some competitors do for popular enterprise applications (Salesforce, ServiceNow). The institutional understanding of SAP in SNP Group is magnificent. I can’t think of any party better positioned to deliver pre-built SAP models, other than SAP themselves. This is only wishful thinking for now, it is not on the roadmap yet.
Further deep integration in Cloud Platforms
A final development to mention is the deep integration of SNP Glue with the hyperscalers and leading cloud data platforms: There is a native plug-in for Snowflake, close collaboration with Google Cloud Platform (Google Cortex) and (unconfirmed) rumour goes that deep integration with Azure OneLake/Fabric is in the making.
Alternatives to SNP Glue
The SNP Glue product features overlap with replication products from other vendors, such as Theobald, Fivetran, Qlik Replicate and SAP SLT. As well as similarities, there are important differences between these products as well. There is no best product for all solutions, and understanding your organisations’ requirements is key to being able to select the best fit for you. Examples of questions to ask are:
- Is the only scenario to consider SAP > Cloud or are there other replication requirements that could be supported with the same tool?
- Is database log replication an option for your sources (consider your licenses)
- How complex and up-to-date is your SAP landscape?
- Licensing/implementation costs, as well as costs for support/ongoing maintenance
Each product has specific strengths and weaknesses, and I can easily think of five different scenarios where a different product would come out on top for each scenario. Moving data up from SAP to a Cloud Data Platform is never easy, but thanks to the ongoing innovations in SNP Glue, Fivetran and Theobald, it does become a little bit easier. I wish you good luck with finding the right solution for your requirements, and do get in touch if you want any help during your journey of moving data from SAP to the cloud.
