Integration with Snowflake
Organizations can now seamlessly unify mission-critical SAP data with Snowflake's analytics and AI workloads, establishing a single, governed foundation for enterprise analytics, intelligent applications, and AI initiatives.
This integration (GA H1 2026) is made possible via introduction of:
- SAP Snowflake, which introduces Snowflake as a solution extension for SAP Business Data Cloud
- SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) Connect for Snowflake, for integrating existing Snowflake into SAP BDC
The integrations offer zero-copy, bidirectional data access, giving data and AI teams real-time access to semantically rich, trusted SAP data products — without the cost and complexity of ETL pipelines.
1. SAP Snowflake as an SAP Solution Extension
SAP Snowflake introduces Snowflake as an SAP Solution Extension (Solex) and provides customers the full power of Snowflake (without any compromise in functionality compared to native Snowflake), delivered and supported directly by SAP as an extension of SAP Business Data Cloud.
Customers provision their SAP Snowflake directly in SAP for Me, just as they would any other SAP cloud service, the enrollment and connectivity of SAP Snowflake with SAP BDC is fully automated and managed by SAP through the integrated SAP Experience.
Architecture
When to choose this integration option:
- If the business does not already own a Snowflake AI & Data cloud as part of their data landscape and want to introduce snowflake as part of their data strategy.
- For a fully integrated, SAP managed Snowflake experience
- Simplified procurement, billing, and support, managed by SAP
- For zero-copy real-time access to governed and semantically rich SAP Data products without data transfer fees and data duplication.
2. SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Snowflake
With the new SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) Connect for Snowflake, organizations can integrate their existing Snowflake environments with SAP Business Data Cloud.
BDC Connect for Snowflake enables secure, bidirectional, zero-copy sharing of data products between SAP BDC and Snowflake AI Data Cloud.
SAP BDC Connect for Snowflake, enables the exchange of trusted data between SAP BDC and Snowflake with near real-time metadata changes, ensuring users always have access to the most current information.
Architecture
When to choose this integration option:
- If the organization already owns Snowflake AI & Data cloud
- If they need zero-copy real-time access to governed and semantically rich SAP Data products to avoid data duplication.
3. SAP Snowflake and Snowflake AI Data Cloud co-integrated with SAP BDC
As the most flexible, best of both worlds option that allows organizations to choose either SAP ecosystem or SAP Snowflake without compromising on their existing investments in native Snowflake as well, both Snowflake environments can be integrated with SAP BDC.
Architecture
When to choose this integration option:
- When organizations want to establish a unified data product strategy across SAP and non-SAP platforms.
- Ease of operating within SAP ecosystem for SAP workloads and leveraging the SAP-delivered Snowflake solution extension for new analytics and AI workloads, while also continuing investments in an existing enterprise snowflake via BDC Connect for Snowflake for interoperability with open data ecosystems.
Advantages:
- This integration allows harmonizing SAP data via Zero Copy architecture with any of their non-SAP (external) data residing in their snowflake environment(s). This ensures the single source of truth for the SAP data as it always remains consistent and current, no matter which environment it is accessed from.
- This approach delivers maximum flexibility without compromising governance.
SAP Data products sharing with both platforms (SAP Snowflake SolEx and Native Snowflake) follow the same consistent workflow. - SAP data products shared to SAP Snowflake can be combined and enriched with data from native Snowflake (accessed via Secure Data Sharing in SAP Snowflake), enabling teams to create derived data products that can be shared back to SAP BDC for broader enterprise use.
SAP automatically handles the provisioning and integration of Snowflake Solution extension with SAP BDC. Once the SAP BDC landscape is set up with SAP-delivered Snowflake SolEx in place, enterprises can then bring their native Snowflake environment into the same formation using BDC Connect for Snowflake.
Key Differentiating factors common to all SAP BDC - Snowflake integrations:
- Discoverability with SAP BDC and Snowflake Horizon Catalog:
The bi-directional data sharing integration allows trusted data products to be shared and discoverable via the SAP Business Data Cloud Catalog and the Snowflake Horizon , which is Snowflake's integrated governance solution that governs and protects all data and AI assets across any cloud and any region from a single control plane, ensuring the data is always secure, compliant, and discoverable.
- SAP Snowflake for SAP-centric use cases
Customers can utilize SAP Snowflake for enterprise data and AI workloads including SAP-centric use cases and workloads. They can then run their AI models closer to where their data resides for better performance and governance. Minimizing the volume of SAP data leaving allows their SAP teams to maintain the security, governance, and compliance of your most sensitive SAP data (even if the data is only being federated out of SAP environment).
- Agent Development at scale with Snowflake's Cortex AI
Cortex AI is Snowflake's fully managed service that provides access to large language models (LLMs) and GenAI capabilities through common interfaces like SQL and REST APIs. It democratizes AI by enabling any user to get insights from unstructured data, build custom chatbots, and create intelligent applications without complex AI expertise and with no-code development features. It enables accelerated AI decision making with semantically rich SAP business data.
- Secure, and Real-Time SAP Data Exchange via Open Data Exchange
The data exchange from SAP Business Data Cloud to Snowflake, that BDC Connect enables, is based on industry standard open data protocol (delta sharing), enabling interoperability across different computing platforms, cloud environments, and applications. The data-sharing exchange provides secure, fast, and federated real-time access to semantically enriched, consumption-ready SAP data—eliminating the need for data duplication and complex ETL processes.
- Flexible infrastructure choices:
Helps customers leverage the power of seamless AI app and data agent development at scale with Snowflake, while utilizing SAP's mission critical business processes and semantically rich data. It opens up choices for running user’s data and AI workloads on the optimal compute and storage for the job. With SAP Joule and Snowflake Cortex AI, this integration helps choose the right AI agent for any task—from automating next best actions to building intelligent applications.