Setting up Integrations with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Deployment Options

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Discuss integration for SAP S/4HANA Cloud deployment options

Integration in the Intelligent Enterprise

Key Integration Principles for the Intelligent Enterprise

SAP's integration strategy is based on four key principles:

Out-of-the-box integration

  • Prepackaged content supporting integration of the end-to-end business processes in SAP's intelligent suite (Lead to Cash, Design to Operate, Source to Pay, and Recruit to Retire)
  • Prebuilt integration content can be found in SAP Process Navigator and the SAP Business Accelerator Hub
  • The Cloud Integration Automation Service (CIAS) enables easy deployment of supported SAP Best Practices integration scenarios.

Open integration

  • SAP is open for any third-party integration and custom extensions that leverage public APIs.
    • An Application Programming Interface (API) is a messenger that allows two applications to talk to each other. An API delivers a request from one system to another, then returns a response. They facilitate communication between systems by selectively exposing certain functionalities, allowing different applications, websites, or devices to communicate with each other.
  • SAP provides prebuilt connectors for 160+ third-party applications with Open Connectors in the SAP Integration Suite.

Holistic integration

  • SAP provides a holistic integration technology portfolio that covers all flavors of integration required in cloud and hybrid landscapes.
  • With SAP Integration Suite, SAP supports all types of integration use cases, ranging from process, data, user, and IoT, to analytics-centric integration.
  • The Integration Solution Advisory Methodology helps enterprise architects shape the integration strategy for their organizations, which can include integration technologies from SAP and third parties.

AI-driven integration

  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning are used to simplify the development of integration scenarios.
  • For example, the Integration Advisor capability has a crowd-based machine learning approach to enable users to define, maintain, share, and deploy Business-to-Business (B2B) and Application-to-Application (A2A) integration content much faster than building it from scratch.

Integration Solution Advisory Methodology

Integration Solution Advisory Methodology

SAP has provided the Integration Solution Advisory Methodology (ISA-M) as a component of the holistic integration principle. This methodology is designed to support enterprise integration architects in shaping and documenting their integration strategy. ISA-M includes a collection of typical integration use case patterns in a hybrid landscape that can be mapped to various integration services/technologies based on a customer's requirements. The methodology is open to include SAP and non-SAP integration services and technologies in the overall integration strategy.

The Integration Solution Advisory Methodology consists of three major components:

  • Integration domains are entry points of the methodology that describe typical integration areas within a hybrid system landscape, such as on-premise-to-cloud or cloud-to-cloud integration.
  • Integration styles describe the different categories of integration: process, data, user, and IoT centric. Each integration style has specific characteristics and can be refined by use-case patterns.
  • Integration technology mapping takes integration styles and use-case patterns and maps them to integration technologies and services, including technologies from SAP and third parties. This allows enterprise architects to derive integration guidelines for their organizations. A sample integration guideline could state that the SAP Cloud Integration service is the preferred integration technology for the process integration style within the on-premise-to-cloud integration domain. This mapping depends on the customer context, which takes into consideration aspects such as existing investments and available skill sets.

SAP Integration Suite

SAP Integration Suite Overview

The SAP Integration Suite offers a modular set of integration services covering all needs in cloud and hybrid landscapes:

  • Process integrations (application to application) across value chains, such as lead to cash, recruit to retire, source to pay, and design to operate
  • Master data integrations that provide master data consistency leveraging SAP One Domain Model
  • API-driven integrations, including full API lifecycle management and omnichannel access
  • Event-driven integrations to support sense-and respond scenarios based on business events
  • Data integration and pipelines to support artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data lake or data warehousing scenarios with the SAP Data Intelligence solution
  • B2B integrations to integrate with suppliers across the digital ecosystem, including e-government - business to government (B2G) - integrations to support document compliance
Note
SAP Integration Suite is complemented by existing on-premise technologies such as SAP Data Services software (from the solutions for enterprise information and data management from SAP) and SAP Process Orchestration software.

SAP Cloud Integration, SAP Cloud Connector, and SAP API Management

SAP Cloud Integration, SAP Cloud Connector, and SAP API Management are integral components of the SAP Integration Suite. Watch the video to learn more.

Note
Find prepackaged integration content, APIs, and open connectors in the SAP Business Accelerator Hub

Integration Monitoring

Integration Monitoring with SAP Cloud ALM for Operations

SAP Cloud ALM for Operations supports integration monitoring with the Integration & Exception Monitoring component for cloud or on premise systems set up as managed systems in the Landscape Management app. The target audience is business users and the IT organization.

The purpose of Integration & Exception Monitoring is to provide transparency for the data exchange processes. It supports the monitoring for peer-to-peer interfaces as well as interfaces using orchestration platforms and provides a unified user experience for all interface types using a common look-and-feel and handling pattern.

Capabilities of Integration & Exception Monitoring in SAP Cloud ALM:

  • End-to-End monitoring by correlating single messages to end-to-end message flows across cloud services and systems
  • Monitoring of integration-related exceptions
  • Support of peer-to-peer interfaces as well as orchestrated integration
  • Closes gap between business and IT during problem resolution process (technical issue vs. business issue) by:
    • Alerting to notify responsible persons in business and IT about discovered integration related problems
    • Search and track single messages based on exposed business context attributes e.g. order numbers
    • Operation automation to trigger operation flows context sensitively for automated correction of problems

Integration Monitoring with SAP Solution Manager

SAP Solution Manager supports integration monitoring with the Interface and Connection Monitoring and Exception Management components for cloud or on premise systems set up as managed systems in the Landscape Management app. The target audience is business users and the IT organization.

Interface and Connection Monitoring in Solution Manager comprises all the metrics from Interface Channel Monitoring, Connection Monitoring, and the former Interface Monitoring metrics from Business Process Monitoring in one powerful tool.

SAP Exception Management includes the proactive monitoring of mission critical components that are required for a smooth and reliable flow of the core business processes in heterogeneous cross-technology landscapes. In addition, it provides tools for deeper error analysis, processing and documentation.

SAP Solution Manager Focused Run

Focused Run for SAP Solution Manager has many capabilities, one of which is advanced integration monitoring. Service providers monitoring many customers, and customers with large, integrated landscapes who need to monitor, create alerts, and track integrations on a single interface or message level will find this solution most useful.

Integration Monitoring in SAP Business Technology Platform

The SAP Business Technology Platform Cloud Integration capability within SAP Integration Suite has multiple out of the box monitoring functionalities targeted to integration developers and more technical roles.

The start page is divided into the following sections, each covering a specific task area:

  • Monitor Message Processing: View the number and status of processed messages within a specified time window.
  • Manage Integration Content: View the number and status of integration content artifacts (e.g. integration flows).
  • Mange Security: Manage certain tasks related to the setup of secure connections between your tenant and remote systems.
  • Manage Stores: Manage temporary data stores on the tenant.
  • Access Logs: Monitor audit logs (resulting from system changes) and analyze errors that occurred during inbound HTTP processing.
  • Manage Locks: Display and manage lock entries that are created (in the in-progress repository) to avoid the same message being processed several times in parallel.

Integration Monitoring in SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP Analytics Cloud provides the SAP Cloud Integration Reporting Dashboard with analytic widgets targeted to business users. The dashboard is designed to provide an "at-a-glance" view of relevant KPIs in the SAP Business Technology Platform tenant where your SAP Cloud Integrations are running. The widgets in the dashboard displays data in a simple metric that helps you visualize the context information with slicing and dicing capabilities.

Using the dashboard, you can:

  • Monitor the integration flows which has the highest processed messages.
  • Analyze the status of processed messages.
  • Get the count of the deployed artifacts.

Integration Monitoring with SAP Fiori Apps

In the application layer, app-related interface logic (e.g. business validations, business mappings) is often distributed through different technologies. Some interface logic may be implemented in user exits or business add-ins (BAdIs), while other logic is defined in various coding places. Even with the best middleware technology, there will be failed IDoc postings and service calls in the application layer that require monitoring and quick resolutions (e.g. validating and reprocessing failed sales orders).

The SAP Application Interface Framework (AIF) is a solution designed to make it easier to manage application-to-application (A2A) process integration by enabling you to create, deploy, monitor, and manage all of your application interfaces in one location. AIF enables business users to reduce the time needed for error handling because they are able to monitor interfaces and troubleshoot issues without IT. AIF is embedded in SAP S/4HANA via the Message Monitoring SAP Fiori apps.

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