The basic principle is that control over the data is not lost. The solution only processes meta data in the cloud during live connections. The actual data, on the other hand, remains in the company's system - without external replication.
Many companies ask themselves whether the data in a cloud is just as secure as on the servers in the company's own data center.
What is often not considered, however, is that on the one hand, the company's own "on-site" data center is also susceptible to data espionage or cybercrime, and that the costs and effort for moderation and operation of an on-premise solution must also be taken into account.
On the other hand, cloud solutions today are already considerably more secure than many people think - and are equipped, for example, with modern TwinCore technologies as well as IP VPN tunnels for secure data transfer.
SAP Analytics cloud software is basically set up, hosted, maintained and updated entirely by SAP in its own data centers as "Software as a Service" (SaaS).
It still makes a difference whether a company uses SAP HANA on-premise or whether the data is located in a non-SAP HANA environment. So if a company operates SAP HANA as an on-premise solution, SAP Analytics Cloud is accessed via a browser; in this case, the company data is accessed via a reverse proxy, and the data remains in the company.
If a company runs SAP Analytics Cloud in a non-SAP HANA environment, on the other hand, the data is replicated to the cloud - and the data leaves the corporate network.
In addition, there is the question of data sources. On the one hand, companies can connect data via a "Live Connection". The data remains in the corporate network because the data is queried directly in the system - and not replicated. This applies to SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW, BW/4HANA and SAP Universe.
On the other hand, companies can load data into the cloud via an import data connection and process it there. This is possible, for example, for data from the following sources: SAP BW, SAP BPC, SAP ERP, SQL Database, SuccessFactors, Salesforce (SFDC) or, for example, Google Drive.
Many companies prefer "Live Connection" with SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA because the data remains in the company, the replication process does not need to be maintained and existing authorizations and metadata can be reused.
The live data connection with SAP BW on AnyDB and SAP BW/4HANA is enabled with the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) feature. Here, too, the data flow - as with the Live Connection via Reverse Proxy - only takes place between the browser and the BW/4HANA system, so the data does not leave the company's network.