Defining the Integration Strategy

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
  • Explaining SAP`s integration strategy
  • Explaining SAP`s digital architecture and event-driven architecture

Introduction to the Lesson: Defining the Integration Strategy

This lesson provides an overview of the various technologies and tools that can be used to develop an integration strategy based on the organization's specific requirements and objectives. It explains the basic principles and approaches necessary to ensure effective and seamless integration of systems and processes.

This lesson contains the following topics:

  • SAP's Integration Strategy: At a Glance
  • SAP's Integration Strategy: A Deeper Dive
  • Cloud Integration Automation Service
  • Integration Monitoring Toolchain

SAP's Integration Strategy: At a Glance

Integration Center of Excellence Value Chain

Integration center of excellence value chain.

Established integration methods are time-consuming and repetitive, and with the dramatic growth in data volumes from users, machines, cloud applications and sources, sensors, and existing on-premise systems, traditional integration tools cannot keep pace.

Ad-hoc approaches such as do-it-yourself integration are not only costly and cumbersome, but also contribute to data fragmentation across multiple cloud and on-premise data silos and applications. Although they were each developed for different purposes and are necessary for businesses of all sizes it remains true that the separation of application integration strategies (transforming and transferring data from one application to another in real time) and data integration strategies (moving and combining data from multiple sources in a standardized way) is not wise. A holistic integration strategy is needed.

Integration today is about opening up an organization's technology landscape to a broader ecosystem of suppliers, consumers, and machines by creating deeper integration between customer interaction, business processes, and technology.

The above graphic outlines a strategy for successfully integrating business and technology to capitalize on opportunities to collaborate and share digital assets across organizational boundaries in an open and secure way.

Such a function could enable the ultimate sharing economy by establishing a Center of Excellence for Integration (CoE) that allows users to access or request the applications that they need. In turn, developers can focus on the user interfaces of the applications and simply use the standardized integration paths and protocols established within the CoE framework to access data ecosystems. Organizations want to drive innovation and unlock new business opportunities through ubiquitous access to and seamless use of data. Integration is the driving force behind this data utopia.

Integration building blocks.

The Five Key Imperatives for Next-Generation Enterprise Integration

The five key imperatives for an Integration Center of Excellence must abstract away excessive complexity by avoiding known pitfalls, implementing best practices and taking advantage of integration services for straightforward, secure digital use of data and business logic - while keeping an eye on time and cost to release. This seemingly impossible collection of simultaneous tasks can be achieved if an Integration Center of Excellence is based on the following five key imperatives:

  • The Platform Matters
  • Agility and Scalability
  • The Rise of The Citizen Integrator
  • Have A Strong Governance
  • Don't Forget Reporting And Analytics

The Platform Matters

The recommended approach is a versatile, dynamic, and platform-based integration approach. This enables comprehensive enterprise connectivity and orchestration. A unified platform can cover various integration applications and thus contribute to higher productivity and operational flexibility. In particular, a cloud-based platform that understands business processes and provides a standardized method of connecting all elements can greatly simplify the integration task. Such a standardized platform approach enables companies to respond to integration issues in real time and resolve them effectively.

Agility and Scalability

Organizations must integrate their people, processes, and systems on a central platform that is adaptable to future requirements. This can be achieved with interchangeable integration components and repeatable patterns within a platform framework. A competence center for integration can optimize these processes. APIs are fundamental technology building blocks that make it possible to communicate and introduce requirements and changes at an early stage. They enable dynamic environments with constantly updated connections and can help companies to transform their digital assets into new business models.

The Rise of The Citizen Integrator

The use of reusable integration components that enable non-IT business users, also known as "citizen integrators", to create and update integrations intuitively and without specialized programming knowledge. These tools, which can also be supported by AI, are similar to the user interfaces of smartphones and tablets. They enable users to understand and efficiently handle their data and business logic without having to go through an intensive learning curve, helping to maximize business value.

Have A Strong Governance

The enterprise integration strategy must include a plan for managing integration paths and protocols in the Integration Center of Excellence. Documentation of access control, change management processes, enhancement rules, system credentials, and data encryption are important. Application developers often focus on short-term goals, which can compromise governance and data protocols. A center of excellence for integration that operates intelligent lifecycle management is therefore essential for a consistent and adaptable integration strategy.

Don't Forget Reporting And Analytics

Analyzing integration activities provides insights into the flow of data between companies, endpoints, and business units. Predictive intelligence can be used to suggest integration patterns based on business data. With a suitable integration platform, companies can better predict how external factors such as pandemics, natural disasters, or changes in the economy could affect their business.

SAP's Integration Strategy: A Deeper Dive

SAP BTP Integration Services

Integration as a pillar of SAP BTP.

SAP's integration strategy has evolved significantly from a traditional, on-premise middleware approach to a modern, holistic, and cloud-centric one. The core of this strategy is the SAP Integration Suite, a service available on SAP BTP). Its primary goal is to provide a single, comprehensive solution to connect all SAP and non-SAP applications, data, and business processes across hybrid (cloud and on-premise) landscapes. The strategy is built on several principles which are:

  • Predefined Integration Content
  • Open Integration
  • Holistic Integration
  • AI Integration

Predefined Integration Content

Predefined Integration Content

The SAP Business Accelerator Hub (formerly known as the SAP API Business Hub) is a public, central, and free-to-use web portal provided by SAP. Think of it as a central library or an "app store" for all the digital building blocks you need to integrate with, extend, and build upon SAP solutions.

Its primary purpose is to help developers, architects, and business analysts discover, explore, test, and consume a vast catalog of pre-built content, APIs, and business services. By providing these reusable assets, the Hub dramatically accelerates development projects, reduces integration complexity, and promotes the use of standard, best-practice solutions.

Open Integration

Open Integration

Some businesses may not be running on SAP alone. The strategy is designed to be open, providing seamless connectivity to third-party applications (like Salesforce, Workday, etc.), legacy systems, and public cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP) through open standards like OData, REST, SOAP, and pre-built connectors. Open Connectors is a key component of SAP's integration strategy, designed to simplify and accelerate connectivity to non-SAP cloud applications. It offers a catalog of prebuilt, feature-rich connectors for popular third-party applications and a unified API layer and standards-based implementation across various backends (REST, SOAP, proprietary SDK, database, etc.). Open Connectors drastically reduces the time needed to connect to top non-SAP SaaS applications and creates a consistent approach for developers regardless of the application's underlying technology. Of particular note is that Open Connectors offers robust security measures like secure authentication protocols, encrypted data transmission, and data masking.

Holistic Integration

Holistic Integration

Integration is not just about connecting two systems (A-to-B). It's about covering all aspects of an enterprise's needs, including application-to-application (A2A), business-to-business (B2B), business-to-government (B2G), event-driven architectures, API-led integration, and data integration.

AI-Driven Integration

AI-Driven Integration

SAP's integration strategy leverages Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to simplify and automate complex integration tasks. This includes AI-assisted mapping recommendations, anomaly detection, and automated testing, which significantly reduces development effort and errors.

Event-Driven Architecture

Summary

The event-driven architecture is introduced to enable more flexibility and real-time business processes. This architecture supports the integration of different systems and applications by using events as triggers for data processing and workflow activities.

Introduction

An event is a significant change of state Notification events or data events can be sent from the event source to inform about the change. A message with the event description in a coded format is sent via an event broker.

Principle of event driven architecture

Notification Event

  • Extra Small.
  • Additional synchronous step required.
  • Controlled data access.
  • Suitable API needed on top of suitable event.

Data Event

  • Small to Large.
  • Required data included in event.
  • Size differs ( Full > Custom > Decision).
  • Raises topics like data access and protection.

Benefits of Event-Driven Architecture

From a technological perspective:

  • Loose coupling leads to flexibility and scalability.
  • Improved fault tolerance through the use of suitable patterns.
  • Incremental growth through incremental addition of event consumers and event sources, leading to better workflows and higher quality.
  • Enables a new type of technical integrations and extensions in real time.

From a business perspective:

  • Improve situational awareness by providing information about relevant events in business real time.
  • Business decisions based on up-to-date information.
  • Hyper-automation of business processes resulting in improved response time and lower costs.
  • Open approach across vendor boundaries makes new business scenarios possible.

SAP's Event-Driven Ecosystem

Event sources

  • SAP S/4HANA
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud
  • SAP ERP
  • SAP SuccessFactors solutions
  • SAP Marketing Cloud
  • SAP Fieldglass solutions
  • SAP Data Intelligence
  • SAP CPQ
  • Other SAP solutions
  • 3rd party

Eventing infrastructure

  • SAP Integration Suite
  • SAP Event Mesh
  • Advanced Event Mesh

Event consumers

  • SAP Integration Suite
  • SAP Build
  • SAP BTP Services and Apps
  • SAP back-ends (SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA, SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA using add-on.)
  • SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime
  • SAP Data Intelligence
  • Azure Event Grid (Beta Program)
  • Third-party

Tools

SAP Event Mesh

  • Low barrier to entry for event-driven architectures with usage-based pricing.
  • Integration and extension of SAP applications in an event-driven manner based on the SAP Integration Suite.
  • SAP BTP deployment and native event broker for SAP S/4HANA, free add-on for custom ECC events.
  • Openness and focus by supporting open standards and providing additional benefits to the SAP ecosystem: Good scalability with certain limits.

SAP Integration Suite, Advanced Event Mesh

  • Complements SAP Event Mesh for more demanding scenarios.
  • Improved performance, reliability, security and governance; scalable for very large use cases.
  • Distributed network of event brokers deployed in private or public cloud environments.
  • Comprehensive range of event services, including event streaming, event management and monitoring.
  • Advanced features such as dynamic message routing and fine-grained filtering.

Architecture Blueprint

Sample Architecture Blueprint

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Identity Integration

Summary

This lesson emphasizes the importance of user and identity management in integration. It is recommended to manage identities centrally to improve the security and management of user access.

Introduction

The secure operations map covers a variety of security aspects. This guide focuses on user and identity management, authentication, and Single Sign-On (SSO), roles and authorizations as well as the associated integration and lifecycle aspects.

Security operation map

Authentication and Single Sign-On

The end-to-end business processes of the intelligent suite offer integrated solutions that span various individual applications. The integration between the identities and roles of the users in these individual applications and the SSO functionality are essential. The following is a sample scenario.

Sample Setup Supporting Single Sign-On in a Heterogeneous Scenario

Identity Lifecycle Management

Identities also have a lifecycle. Therefore, aspects beyond protocols for authentication and authorization such as SAML or OpenIDConnect must also be taken into account. Data synchronization or replication of identities plays a particularly important role. This is not only required across different applications, but often also across multiple data centers. The following is a blueprint architecture for identity lifecycle management in a complex hybrid environment.

Livecycle Mangement

For a consistent identity lifecycle, identities should be centralized in SAP Cloud Identity Services. It offers a standardized interface for identity and authorization management and support SAP applications, including those with their own user administration. The services manage the entire lifecycle, including deletion, and enable lightweight applications to use tokens instead of user replication. A unique user identifier (UUID) ensures consistent identification of a user across all SAP systems and hybrid scenarios.

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Cloud Integration Automation Service

Cloud Integration Automation Service

Two phases for technical configurations.

Think of the Cloud Integration Automation Serviceas an intelligent, guided setup wizard for complex integration scenarios within the SAP ecosystem.

Its primary purpose is not to run the integrations themselves (that's the job of SAP Integration Suite), but to automate the tedious, manual, and error-prone process of setting up and configuring those integrations. It simplifies the end-to-end setup by providing a step-by-step, workflow-driven experience. It acts as the "easy button" for the complex configuration work that traditionally precedes any integration go-live.

The Core Problem Cloud Integration Automation Service Solves

Integrating SAP systems, especially in a hybrid landscape (e.g., on-premise ERP with SAP Ariba in the cloud), involves a long checklist of technical configuration tasks. These tasks often require deep expertise across multiple systems and components.

A typical manual setup might involve:

  • on-Premise ERP: Configuring RFC destinations, setting up web services in SOAMANAGER, activating services in SICF, creating technical users, exporting certificates.
  • SAP Cloud Connector: Exposing the on-premise system to the cloud, setting up access control lists.
  • SAP Integration Suite: Deploying the integration flow (iFlow), configuring security artifacts (credentials, certificates), and setting up endpoint URLs.
  • Cloud Applications (e.g., Ariba): Configuring API endpoints and authentication.

This process is:

  • Time-Consuming: Can take days or even weeks.
  • Error-Prone: A single misconfiguration can cause the entire integration to fail.
  • Requires Specialized Knowledge: Needs experts in ABAP, Basis, security, and cloud integration.
  • Inconsistent:Different teams might configure things differently, leading to maintenance challenges.

Cloud Integration Automation Service automates the majority of these technical setup steps, drastically reducing the complexity and time required.

How It Works: The Process

The service operates based on pre-defined, SAP-delivered integration scenarios. The user follows a simple, guided procedure:

  • Select a Scenario: The user starts by choosing a supported integration scenario from a catalog, for example, "Integration of SAP S/4HANA with SAP Ariba Network" or "Integration of SAP Cloud ERP with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central."
  • Connect to Systems: The user provides the necessary system information and credentials for the source and target systems involved in the scenario. This allows the service to connect and perform configurations remotely.
  • Execute the Guided Workflow: The service presents a workflow of tasks. Some tasks might require minimal user input (like confirming a parameter), while others are fully automated.
  • Automated Task Execution: Behind the scenes, CIAS executes a series of automated steps using APIs and remote calls. This includes:
    • Checking prerequisites on the systems.
    • Creating and configuring endpoints.
    • Configuring the SAP Cloud Connector.
    • Deploying and configuring the required integration content (iFlows) in SAP Cloud Integration.
    • Setting up security credentials and certificates.
  • Confirmation and Testing: Once the workflow is complete, the service provides a summary of the actions performed. The integration is now technically configured and ready for testing and use.

Key Features

  • Pre-packaged Integration Scenarios: Provides a growing library of best-practice scenarios for integrating SAP Cloud solutions with SAP S/4HANA (Cloud and On-Premise).
  • Guided Workflows:: A user-friendly, wizard-like interface that guides users through the entire setup process.
  • Automated Configuration: Automates technical tasks in the connected backend systems, middleware, and cloud applications.
  • Role-Based Execution: Tasks can be assigned to different personas (e.g., a Basis Administrator for on-premise tasks, an Integration Developer for cloud tasks), allowing for collaboration.
  • Connectivity and Prerequisite Checks: Before executing, the service validates system connectivity and checks if all necessary prerequisites are met, preventing failures later on.
  • Integration with SAP Tools: It is tightly integrated with other SAP tools like the SAP Maintenance Planner and SAP Cloud ALM.

Key Benefits

  • Reduced Time and Effort: Cuts down integration setup time from days/weeks to hours.
  • Increased Quality and Consistency: Ensures integrations are configured according to SAP best practices every time, reducing errors and support tickets.
  • Simplified Complexity: Abstracts the deep technical details, making the process accessible to administrators and less-specialized IT staff.
  • Empowerment: Allows organizations to perform standard integration setups themselves in a self-service manner.

Relationship to Other SAP Services

It's important to understand how Cloud Integration Automation Service fits with other services:

  • SAP Cloud Integration:

    • Cloud Integration Automation Service is the setup/configuration tool.
    • Cloud Integration is the runtime engine that actually processes the data and executes the integration at runtime.
    • Cloud Integration Automation Service automates the deployment and configuration of iFlows onto the Cloud Integration tenant.

  • SAP BTP:

    • Cloud Integration Automation Service is a service that runs on BTP. It uses SAP BTP framework for its operations.

  • SAP Cloud Connector:

    • For hybrid scenarios, Cloud Integration Automation Service can automatically configure the Cloud Connector to expose the required on-premise systems to your BTP subaccount.

Integration Monitoring Toolchain

Overview of Monitoring Solutions

Overview of monitoring solutions

Integration is essential for hybrid IT environments containing SaaS, PaaS, private cloud services, and on-premise systems. Since hybrid environments are not going away anytime soon, integration will continue to be necessary for the smooth seamless execution of business processes across multiple systems. Part of the setup and usage of integration scenarios is their monitoring. The most effective monitoring strategy is to identify problems by ensuring that integration relevant data is recorded and monitored and alarms are triggered in the event of anomalies. Analysis tools investigate causes based on current and historical data, while automation functions help to resolve them. Problems with the execution of integration scenarios can originate from various sources such as issues with the execution of message flows, interface calls, performance, or throughput. SAP's comprehensive integration monitoring solutions provide a complete solution for organizations and encompass not just mediated scenarios but also point to point ones also covering on-premise, hybrid, and cloud solutions.

The main solutions in this area are:

  • SAP Solution Manager
  • SAP Focused Run
  • SAP Cloud ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) for Operations

Let's take a quick look at each.

SAP Solution Manager

SAP Solution Manager

SAP Solution Manager is an application lifecycle management (ALM) platform developed by SAP, designed to help customers manage their SAP and non-SAP systems. It acts as a central hub for implementing, maintaining, and integrating SAP solutions, while also offering tools for troubleshooting, change management, and documentation. Essentially, it streamlines the entire lifecycle of SAP applications and IT landscapes.

In respect to the monitoring of integrations SAP Solution Manager offers comprehensive monitoring for on-premise solution landscapes, including process orchestration, message flow, and interface/connection monitoring. Process orchestration monitoring enables centralized monitoring of different process integration domains, with self-tests, status checks, and aggregated message monitoring. Extra functions include message search and alerting. Message flow monitoring assembles data fragments into message flow instances based on integration model information. Interface and connection monitoring checks connectivity and data exchange, records exceptions, response times, and interface utilization. It collects data from SAP systems and SAP SaaS and PaaS offerings such as SAP BTP, SAP Ariba, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP Sales Cloud.

SAP Focused Run

SAP Focused Run.

SAP Focused Run is a specialized solution derived from Solution Manager, focused on high-volume system and application monitoring, alerting, and analytics. It is aimed at service providers and customers with advanced needs in system management and monitoring of complex landscapes. SAP Focused Run covers both on-premise components and SAP-based SaaS products.

In respect to the monitoring of integrations SAP Focused Run offers advanced integration monitoring that monitors extensive interfaces and message flows, compiles end-to-end integration flows and uses predefined scenarios to visualize integration problems. The solution monitors message flows processed by SAP Process Orchestration or SAP Integration Suite and supports interface technologies such as IDocs, Web Service, OData, REST, and RFC. The integration fragments are captured at the finest level so that correlation with end-to-end message flows is possible and messages can be tracked end-to-end. Exceptions can also be managed for almost all SAP Cloud services and on-premise systems.

For a more in depth discussion of SAP Focused Run please see: SAP Focused Run – Operations of Hybrid Landscapes

SAP Cloud ALM for Operations

SAP Cloud ALM for Operations

SAP Cloud ALM for Operations is a key component of SAP's application lifecycle management solutions, designed to help businesses operate their cloud-centric and hybrid SAP solution landscapes efficiently and effectively. SAP Cloud ALM is a redesigned, cloud-native operations tool for cloud-based solutions that is available at no additional cost to SAP Cloud subscribers. Some of its key feature are:

  • Problem detection, routing, and resolution
  • Transparency of business services, including event calendars and service level management
  • Serving as a central entry point for operating your complete SAP landscape
  • Improving operations efficiency by automating tasks, streamlining monitoring, and proactively identifying issues
  • Helping ensure business continuity through comprehensive monitoring and alerting

In respect to the monitoring of integrations it provides monitoring for integration and exceptions by monitoring and correlating interface calls and message flows between cloud services and systems and reporting exceptions. These capabilities are integrated with analytics, alerts, and operational automation to improve the problem resolution process between business and IT.

For a more in depth discussion of SAP Cloud ALM please see: Operating with SAP Cloud ALM

SAP Solution Manager versus SAP Focused Run versus SAP Cloud ALM

While all three solutions are complementary a good rule of thumb is to keep the following in mind:

  • SAP Solution Manager:

    Manages the lifecycle of SAP and non-SAP solutions, with a strong emphasis on on-premise and hybrid landscapes.

  • SAP Focused Run:

    Designed for businesses with large, complex IT landscapes, particularly those requiring high-volume system and application monitoring, alerting, and analytics.

  • SAP Cloud ALM for Operations:

    Specifically designed for cloud-centric customers and their cloud-based and hybrid solutions.

Summary

Siloed data and fragmented processes are the primary barriers to becoming an Intelligent Enterprise, and SAP's strategy is to provide through the integration capabilities of SAP BTP a complete solution that breaks down these barriers. This allows companies to truly be agile, resilient, profitable, and sustainable.

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