Integration is a hot topic in all organizations. If you are an SAP customer the complexity of the integration is even higher.
In this rapport, I'm sharing the best ideas I have for how to make integration work in an SAP Landscape.
It covers topic like SAP PI/PO Migration, support. How to look at the SAP Cloud Integration (CPI) offerings.
How to go about your SAP Integration 2019, SAP PI, and cloud
1. The Future of SAP
Integration and How to
Prepare Yourself for 2019
December 2018
Daniel Graversen of Figaf discusses what is
going on in the SAP Integration World
2. Table of Contents
About the Author
1 Integration: High Priority
2 Understand your Integration
2.1 Integration Solution Advisor Methodology (ISA-M)
2.2 CIO Guides for Integration
3 Existing Integration
3.1 What You Should Expect in your Landscape
3.2 Onprem Integration
3.3 Migration to Single Stack
3.4 Single stack 7.31/7.4 upgrade to 7.5
3.5 BPM/BRM
4 SAP iPaaS
4.1 Benefits to a SAP-First Strategy to integration
4.2 Downsides to the SAP-First Strategy
4.3 Integration Content Advisor
4.4 Open Connectors
4.5 API and API Hub
4.6 Cloud Workflow
4.7 Masterdata Service
4.8 Events
5 Operations
5.1 Devops
5.2 Support
5.3 Documentation
5.4 Skills
Figaf IRT about supporting you
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3. About the Author
Daniel Graversen
Daniel Graversen have been working in the SAP Integration space for over 15 years. Daniel is
the founder of Figaf a company specialising in SAP Integration and tools for the platform. He
have worked with XI, PI/PO and Cloud Integration among other tools.
He is a SAP mentor. He is hosting the Enterprise Integration Podcast, where he is discussing
all topics regarding integration as a way to help integration developers understand what is
going on.
Figaf is a company specializing in making SAP Integration development faster by automating
the processes that take up a lot of resources like testing your SAP PI/PO or CPI, documenting
what was developed or improving the support that you can deliver. You can read more about
how Figaf can help you at Figaf.com
4. Integration: High Priority
Integration Architecture and Organization is one of the key areas being
considered in modern enterprises. There is also a big need for Cloud Integration,
which allows more integrations in less time, which is a key need for most
integration professionals.
Overall, the area of Integration has been given high priority among developers and
with SAP.
I recently went to TechEd, and I want to share some of the main points that were
made there and how they relate to the field of Integration.
Integration was talked about 20-minute in a 75 minute keynote from SAP TechEd,
demonstrating that SAP has a strong focus on Integration. They want to make it
easy for customers to integrate their systems and understand that it is crucial to
make the Line of Business Application (SuccessFactors, Ariba and more) easy to
work with out of the box. SAP is also working to make it easier to implement other
applications and to have an integration offering that customers want.
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1
Out of the Box
Integration
Customers need to be able to integrate
quickly. The ideal would be ‘click and
run’ integration, and although we are
not quite there yet. It is a good goal.
Holistic Integration
Holistic Integration would make it easier
to see what is going on in any integrated
application, whether it is an SAP
application or not, creating a standard
view to all topics in the integration.
Again, this is a target capability for SAP
that they are working to improve.
Open Integration
Open Integration makes it easier for
everyone to integrate and interact with
the SAP community using the API Hub to
publish APIs and use open standards.
AI-Driven Integration
AI-Driven Integration includes content
that helps customers integrate
tools more easily in the B2B space,
and extend the capabilities for A2A
integration.
5. Understand your
Integration
It is key to understand what you are integrating,
what is going on in your own landscape, and what
you hope to accomplish with the integration.
Without a goal or a reason, you will get a confusing
mess of ‘spaghetti’ instead of a cohesive smooth
integration. This was also a key area of discussion
for the International Focus Group I recently
attended.
Most SAP customers these days are carefully
considering S/4 and where they are currently
in that journey, when they will be making that
move, what impact that will have, and what
Cloud Products they will be purchasing. In the
past, a business might buy an application and
the developer had to figure out how to actually
integrate with existing applications and structure
so that it would work as expected. Next this
process had to be put in the charter, which led to
the need to have the architecture approved before
being implemented.
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It is key to understand what you are
integrating, what is going on in your
own landscape, and what you hope to
accomplish with the integration.
6. 7
Integration Solution Advisor
Methodology (ISA-M)
One of the key recommendations is the
Integration Solution Advisor – Methodology
(ISA-M) from SAP which is being used by a lot
of customers to get an understanding of what
they are actually doing. It is a process from SAP
that allows you to understand the tools and
concepts in your organization. Many high-profile
organizations are using it to create guidelines
for the integration process. It works by giving
recommendations as to which patterns to
choose and then maps the patterns that makes
the most sense. This is a free presentation
that can be accessed by searching ISA-M and
requesting access.
Keep in mind that depending on the capabilities
and experience in your organization, it may be a
good idea to get some external assistance with
working with this methodology.
ISA-M can help by setting up an architecture
board to understand your organization’s needs.
It can guide you in evaluating the different
integrations purchased by the business and how
they work. It will also help you examine the roles
in your organization, in terms of Integration,
and how those areas actually interact. Finally,
it will help you make a business case for
how to improve the scope of the Integration
Department by acquiring the applications that
you need to run efficiently. You will be able
to say what patterns are appearing when you
use these applications, and what you need to
fix them, what the cost will be, and what the
benefits will be.
2.1
User-Centric
Applications
Real World
Objects
User2Cloud
C/4 HANA
Business
Partner
Integration
Domains
Integration
Styles
Integration
Mapping
Business
Suite
S/4 HANA Non SAP
Non SAP
Cloud Apps
Gouvernment
Agency
Cloud2Cloud
Cloud
On-Premise
OnPremise2Cloud
User2OnPremise
Integration Domain
OnPremise2OnPremise Thing2OnPremise
Thing2Cloud
B2B B2C
7. 7
CIO Guides for Integration
SAP Vision for Integrating SAP®
Applications in Cloud and Hybrid
Environments
Process & Data Integration in
Hybrid Landscapes
SAP is also working on CIO Guides for Integration – Further Information and Detailed Technology
Guidance from SAP they are long description of the different missions, some is marketing and
some is about what you can actually do in your organization right now. They have not included all
the new features, but rather those things you can actually implement now.
2.2
8. 8
Existing Integration
Your history matters and so does your existing integration. Most companies have
a lot of integrations running already, and they need to work for your company to
work.
A lot of the questions we had were about existing Integration. People were
wondering about what they currently have and what the dependencies are on
these things?
The PI Roadmap appears as follows:
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There are 11000 existing
PI customers
The end of support for
7.5 is projected for 2025
CPI on PI updates to add
new functions
Customer Engagement Initiatives
(CEI) in progress include:
A testing tool similar to the Figaf testing
tool (though not as good)
A B2B Add-on tool
The next PI version is projected for
release in 2022
Java 10+
May not contain ABAP, BPM and BRM
Support until 2030
What You Should Expect in your
Landscape
If you are going to use the Cloud content on your PO system, you will need
to upgrade more often than you are now used to because of continuous
development of content. You will need to be able to upgrade every 3-6 months if
you are using CPI on the PO system, and you will need to patch solutions faster
and set your landscape to be scalable so that you can grow the data volume.
3.1
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Onprem Integration
3.2
When you are working on Onprem Integration,
it may be good to keep in mind that PI has a lot
of real advantages in some scenarios and we
may well be doing PI for quite a long time. PI is
powerful for handling messages that are ‘simple’
and is easy for EO/EOIO.
PI flows well for patterns where it can be used
out of the box, such as Async and Sync patterns
or for flows where a single lookup can be
performed and for some bridges.
If PI flows is not enough you have the options:
Doing local development may still be a little
extra work, since the platform is not as mature
as the cloud version.
Use CPI for
delivered content
and technical
processes.
BPM or Cloud
Workflow will be
better platforms in
some cases, since
CPI is missing user
actions.
https://figaf.com/7-steps-sap-pi-po-
migration
https://figaf.com/migrate-from-
seeburger-to-sap-pi-b2b-addon-webinar/
Migration to Single Stack
3.3
As systems evolve, if you are on a dual stack, it
will be a good idea to migrate to a single stack
(a 7.5 release) because it makes figuring out
what is going on with your system much easier.
You will also be able to upgrade and process
more request. One consideration might be a
Seeburger migration might be a very good idea.
Here are some resources for helping with that.
A Seeburger migration would give you the
option to use CPI on PI for the technical BPM.
Keep in mind that getting it running would be a
large project. Here are some resources for this
migration:
10. 10
CIO Guides for Integration
BPM/BRM
Recently, I was talking with a customer about whether or not a migration from fairly recent 7.4 sp
versions to 7.5 is necessary. I don’t think it’s a very big difference for the time being, depending on
your situation.
7.5 will give you some improvements that will not be back-ported, especially the iFlow and the test
tool and possible the B2B add-on enhancements. There a big improvements in the BPM but if you
will not use the solution then it does not matter.
The Iflow tool is with 7.5 really useful, I have seen a lot of shortcomings with it in the previous
release, I’m not sure if it have been back ported.
BPM UI is part of the update, but you may consider if it is worth developing new things in a
deprecated interface. There is an option to run CPI onprem, so you can make workflow on the
system. There will be extended support, which will be needed to bridge the gap for next release.
The biggest advantage will be the option to run CPI on the same server in your landscape, and
such requirement may come fast. So the preparedness may be useful.
I recommend that you continue to run the existing process until the Cloud developments become
what you need. New technical processes should be implemented in CPI, if possible, and workflow
processes can use Cloud Workflow. You need to know the limitations of the tools and where you
need to use the existing tools.
3.4
3.5
11. SAP iPaaS
iPaas (Integration Platform as a Service) is a concept about having a lot of different
services for integration. So you can support the different scenarios.
Another important SAP announcement at TechEd was the Cloud Platform
Integration Suite. This is a bundle of all the integration-related products from
SAP called iPaaS. There is not a SKU yet but the Cloud Integration Enterprise
Edition contains many of the components we work with. If you need additional
services you can purchase them on a consumption basis, with the cloud credits.
There are about 10 different products in the bundle and they may serve the
different use cases you may need to support.
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Benefits to a SAP-First Strategy to
integration
I think that if you have a SAP PI system, you are probably an SAP shop, and that
having an SAP-First strategy makes sense. This will give you one place to shop,
transport, monitor and manage, allowing for more seamless integration, you don’t
have to look at too many different patterns that you want to support, you can pay
as you go to get an integrated product with more seamless function. You will then
have a Cloud Integration Suite from a trusted vendor with fewer tools, etc., some
solutions are fairly cheap to try out and some have free trials. This way, you can
determine if the SAP solutions matches your requirements, and if not, you can
look elsewhere.
4.1
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Downsides to the SAP-
First Strategy
4.2
Of course, SAP-First may not always be your best
option. You may get a better price or different
features from a direct vendor. For example,
Apigee has more features and better community
in some areas than SAP’s API Management.
SAP may even not have a component that
supports that pattern you are looking for. Then
you anyway need to find a third party solution.
Open Connectors
API and API Hub
Integration Content
Advisor
4.4
4.5
4.3
Open Connectors was released just before SAP
TechEd. This is a harmonized open framework
for making API-based integration, allowing you
to create a generic partner/contact and Open
Connectors can determine which partner to
deliver messages to, based on the rules you
have set up. This feature requires a bit of a
learning curve, but once you figure it out, it is
very easy and powerful to use with your custom
fields.
With this, there is no reason to read all providers
of API documentation from each cloud service,
this is abstracted in the API, which saves a lot of
time and makes it so that there is no need for
custom connectors. All groups of interfaces are
‘identical’ in the API and you can use it as a hub
to distribute data based on the company. It is
priced at about 1.000 EUR/month for 1.000.000
API calls.
There was quite a lot of information at TechEd
about API and API Hub. It is clear that API will
have a large role in the future integration. The
API Hub is one central place to find all APIs
and Integration content hosted by SAP and
all types of interfaces including REST, ODATA,
SOAP, Events, Integration content for CPI or API
Management.
Integration Content Advisor is a tool that uses AI
to help with your mappings. it is only available
in the Cloud Integration Enterprise Edition. This
is a new cloud-based mapping tool primarily
for B2B, but it also makes sense for A2A
applications. It allows you to create mapping for
your EDI documents based on semantics like
country or industry, then it uses an ML to make
the best predictions or to find the best matches.
From there you can generate XSLT to map the
documents for CPI and will be able to use them
on premise on PI.
13. Masterdata ServiceCloud Workflow
Masterdata Service
4.84.6
4.7
SAP have released events for SAP S/4 and other
platforms that will then be published to a event
broker. Events is something like Order 124
Created. Then you can have different application
subscribing to the events and processing
something when they occur. It is just like the MQ
system but just more systems connected and
smaller messages.
It will mean that integration can be done in a
different way making it a lot easier for some
scenarios. In the R/3 days you had the option
to make changes with changes points and send
them. You may not have that option for all cases
in cloud systems so it makes sense just to send
a message that something has been created.
I had the opportunity to get a hands-on
experience with the Cloud Workflow tool, and
think it’s a pretty cool option. It is the next-gen
workflow tool on Cloud Platform and is a BPMN
modelling tool. It features 3 ways to create user
tasks: code them, generate templates, or create
a simple form. This requires scripting to run and
test the implementation, such as Javascript, or
you can use the generic flow. It also requires
portal, web ID, and a Workflow service to run.
One of the big points of Integration is that
you want to synchronize your master data
all across your landscape. The Masterdata
Service is a concept that allows (nearly) real
time synchronized masterdata to flow between
systems. In the begining it will be used between
the SAP Line of business apps. I the future for
use by customers, but it may help getting your
cloud systems working together.
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14. Operations
As integration become a bigger topic, many of us need to figure out how we can
perform Integrations with the available new tools. We also generally need to do
more with less. So many developers need to figure out how they want to approach
all the new products and patterns and tools.
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Devops
Devops or Continuous Integration and requires an understanding of new ways of
developing, testing and deploying content. It is used at all the top Web Companies
to ensure they can grow and delivery functions fast.
These new methods can speed up development and ensure that any ongoing
development does not impact the rest of the system. The concept is about
making sure that whenever someone introduces a change, it will be tested so you
would know what the impact of the change is. There is then build, transport and
regression at multiple levels to ensure nothing is broken.
Regression testing is important to figure out how it all ties together. It is helpful to
stay up to speed on what others are doing so that you can work together in the PI
and the rest of the SAP world.
5.1
15. SkillsSupport
Documentation
4.84.6
4.6
I have noticed that most integration developers
are around 40. I don’t see that many new people
in that space in Europe and the US. You can
outsource to Asia for development, but the
architecture requires some knowledge about
all the tools used and the underlying structures
and how to contextualize.
So outsourcing can work, but a balance with
in-house developers makes more sense when
you need to understand the tools to be more
productive and you need to understand what
your workers are doing.
Integration is more important than ever, so
developers must be able to identify problems
and solve them as quickly as possible with ever
faster responses to incidents. One way we can
be effective is to share knowledge with one
another, and based on that information improve
our services, rather than duplicating efforts. This
allows us to create a way to classify incidents
and automate some responses to some
common cases.
Documentation is increasingly important so that
people at a later stage can understand what
happened. It is important to create documents
that allow you to be agile and solve issues, not
just for the sake of creating a document.
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16. Figaf IRT about
supporting you
We want to make it possible for you to achieve level of
productivity as you need to be successful in the integration
world. That is the reason we have build a lifecycle management
tool for SAP PI/PO and Cloud Integration (CPI).
It is a common platform that allow you to create development,
test and support the integration. The process it supports it the
following.
Or you can just use it as a test tool to test your SAP PI/PO
Upgrades and save time in the process.
Document which objects was changed and the reason for
the change. So you can see which mapping was changed,
and log it to a Service Request. That way people can follow
your trail if something is broken later.
Based on the mapping the tool shows you which interfaces
you need to do a regression on. If there is no test cases it
helps you create test data from your live system.
Then it run all the test to ensure that nothing is broken.
Once you transport to test system the same test can be
run on that system, to validate that nothing else is broken
and you have all transport and configuration.
Once you are live, it also enables you to track all support
incidents log, automate handling if possible and document
solutions. So the next supporter that sees the option can
solve it.
Check it out for free at
figaf.com/irt
