Overview
Integration is a key enabler for intelligent enterprises. SAP's integration strategy for the intelligent enterprise is based on four core principles. ISA-M complements SAP's technology portfolio by a methodology that helps enterprise architects to shape their integration strategy. It provides a holistic view on integration including all types of integration use cases needed for full end to end integration.
Read more about SAP's Integration Plan in the Cloud here: https://sap.com/cloud-integration
Integration challenges for Enterprise Architects
The scope and amount of integration is constantly increasing along the digital transformation of today's organizations, which may include the transition of applications and technologies to the cloud which results in fast evolving hybrid landscapes. Furthermore, new business trends and new technologies come along with new requirements regarding enterprise integration.
For enterprise architects it is challenging in such a dynamic environment to identify an appropriate future integration architecture which includes a hybrid integration platform that meets current and future integration requirements. Integration governance and a practice of enablement are key to master enterprise integration.
Furthermore, enterprise architects need also to take the customer context into account, like the enterprise architecture strategy, existing investments, skill-sets that may also influence decisions regarding an enterprise integration strategy.
Simplify Integration by a Systematic Integration Approach
The following figure provides an overview on how ISA-M can be applied in organizations. Depending on the specific needs of your organization, you can flexibly select from the possible use cases and use the ISA-M template as a starting point and adapt/extend it to your specific needs. Based on this template, you can create your customer-specific integration strategy and/or guidance document(s).
Phase 1: Assess your Integration Strategy
Objectives and approach:
- Assess your integration maturity level
- Documentation/review of your integration architecture
- Scoping of focus areas - for example, future building blocks
- Use-case driven approach (technology-agnostic)
Reasons for integration strategy assessment:
- Need to cover new integration patterns
- Implementation of new cloud applications
- Transition to SAP S/4HANA
- Standardization and governance
- Integration technology consolidation
- Mergers and acquisitions
Phase 2: Design your Hybrid Integration Platform
Objectives and approach:
- Mapping of use case patterns to integration technologies and services
- Open to SAP and third party integration services
- Derive integration guidelines for your organization
- Highly depends on the customer context
Sample customer context:
- Enterprise architecture strategy
- Future application landscape
- Existing investments
- Skill-sets
- Commercial aspects
Phase 3: Define Integration Best Practices
Objectives:
- Govern and safeguard the implementation of integrations across your organization
- Achieve transparency about integration design and implementation
Approach:
- Define architecture blueprints for integration use case patterns complemented with decision criteria for choosing an architecture blueprint
- Define integration do's and don'ts for common integration use cases or solutions
- Derive integration guidelines tailored to your organization's technical and business requirements
Phase 4: Enable a Practice of Empowerment
Objectives:
- Establish integration as recognized discipline
- Position integration as a strategic differentiator
- Provide holistic view on integration
- Democratize integration delivery
- Establish knowledge sharing culture (best practices)
- Improve communication between teams / SIs
Sample approach*
- Define and introduce integration roles
- Setup a dedicated integration strategy team
- Roll-out integration guidelines in your organization
- Establish an enterprise architecture board
- Rollout solution architecture blueprints
- Define areas for self-service integration
SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology
In order to help organizations to tackle this integration challenge SAP has introduced the SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology (ISA-M): it allows you to raise the integration maturity level of your organization by moving from a non-systematic approach toward a well-defined approach to enterprise integration.
Enterprise architects and integration leads can choose how to adopt and extend the provided accelerators to meet specific integration needs:
- It includes a technology-agnostic framework to define and execute an integration strategy: This means you can also apply the concepts to integration technologies from other vendors.
- Delivers adaptable integration use case patterns, architecture blueprints, and best practices
- Covers all integration dimensions in today's hybrid and diverse environments such as process, data, analytics, user and thing integration
ISA-M is a customer proven and mature methodology which has been widely adopted. ISA-M has got a community of ~2,500 participants of SAP employees, customers and partners.
More details about the ISA-M can be found on Integration Solution Advisory Methodology: https://www.sap.com/services-support/integration-solution-advisory-methodology.html
Implementing ISA-M in LeanIX1st Phase: Assess your Integration Strategy
The following two figures examine the implementation of ISA-M in the LeanIX1st and LeanIX2nd phase.
SAP Integration Strategy - Additional Information Sources
Additional sources of information:
Intelligent Enterprises are Integrated Enterprises
SAP's Integration Plan in the Cloud - your success is our mission. You are wondering when, what, and how to transform to be well equipped for your changing business needs? SAP is here to guide you through your transformation and to support you along the way. Download the document.
Community Home about the SAP Integration Strategy:
Follow the topic page on https://community.sap.com/topics/integration-strategy to get the latest news from the experts through blog posts and SAP Community Calls. You have the opportunity to ask questions and to share your knowledge and experiences by writing blog posts.
SAP Integration Architecture Community:
This external group allows customers and partners to exchange information on integration architecture related topics. Link to the community: https://jam4.sapjam.com/groups/NdrS8VLV054ivZSq202PWJ/overview_page/hU3Hap6WuM2AILjSggile3
Integration Architecture Guide for Cloud and Hybrid Landscapes Based on SAP® Integration Solution Advisory Methodology:
Consult this guide to understand how enterprise and integration architects can evolve their existing integration architecture based on SAP Business Technology Platform and the SAP technology offerings available today. Learn about the integration services available that cover all integration needs in heterogeneous landscapes.
The document can be downloaded from https://www.sap.com/documents/2020/11/400ae14b-bf7d-0010-87a3-c30de2ffd8ff.html