Assessing Your Integration Strategy: Template Based

This lesson focuses on the assessment of an organization's existing integration strategy. Methods and tools are presented to analyze the current integration landscape, identify weaknesses, and determine opportunities for improvement.

This lesson provides a method for assessing an organization's existing integration strategy. It includes analyzing the current integration landscape and identifying strengths and weaknesses.

You start the assessment by reviewing the existing integration architecture, followed by a scoping of future building blocks. To perform such an assessment, the methodology provides a clearly defined top-down approach for scoping the requirements for the future integration architecture. This is done with the help of integration domains, integration styles, and integration use case patterns.

The motivation for conducting such an integration strategy assessment can vary: one of the most common reasons is the transition to SAP S/4HANA, which also allows you to streamline your integration approach and benefit from new integration options. Depending on your organization's business and technology strategy, there may also be other reasons for an integration strategy review, such as:

• The need to cover new integration use cases, for example, when introducing new technologies.
• The implementation of new cloud-based solutions that offer new integration opportunities.
• The standardization and control of the technology landscape.
• The consolidation of existing integration technologies, which may require the elimination of selected integration technologies.
• Mergers and acquisitions to eliminate potential redundancies or overlaps in integration technologies.

The goal is to define the building blocks of your company's integration architecture that fulfill both the current and future integration requirements of an organization.

In this phase, you create three documents:

• List of relevant integration domains.
• List of relevant integration styles.
• List of relevant integration use case templates.

If the templates provided by SAP do not fulfill all your requirements, you can adapt and extend them according to your needs.

Perform the first stage of the integration architecture assessment by selecting the integration domains relevant to your organization.

SAP offers two options for applying the SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology in an organization.

In the following, the training focuses on the template-based approach.

Describes how to determine the scope of the integration domains. This includes identifying the relevant business areas and data sources to be included in the integration strategy.

Integration domains are the first step in scoping your future integration architecture. Integration domains form the entry point into the methodology and can be used as an "overall picture" for the integration.

They represent different integration points of business applications in today's cloud and hybrid IT landscapes, such as business applications, user-centric applications, and real-world objects.

Integration domains are defined independently of technology. They can therefore also help in the design of a hybrid integration platform, which can consist of integration technologies from different providers (SAP/third-party providers).

Perform a scoping of your integration domains

The various integration styles are defined and evaluated. This also includes selecting the most suitable integration approaches for the specific requirements of the organization.

Once you have determined the relevant integration domains, the next step is to identify the relevant integration styles. Integration styles represent key integration archetypes that describe how an integration scenario between a business application and its target is realized. The current version of the methodology includes five integration styles:

Perform a Scoping of Your Integration Styles

This unit describes the identification and documentation of integration use-case patterns. These patterns serve as templates for the design and implementation of integration scenarios.

The final step in evaluating your integration strategy is to identify the integration use-case patterns relevant to your organization. Each integration style can be refined through use case patterns that describe commonly used integration use cases in enterprise landscapes. Based on the same principles, cross-use case patterns can complement one or more of the five core integration styles, for example, "API-managed integration" or "event-driven integration." Like the integration domains and integration styles, the cross-use case patterns are also defined independently of technology.

The SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology contains a catalog of integration use case patterns that you can use as a starting point for your company. If necessary, you can flexibly customize the library of integration use case patterns, for example, by adding customer-specific integration use case patterns or removing those that are not relevant for your company.

The SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology contains a catalog of integration use case patterns that you can use as a starting point for your company. If necessary, you can flexibly customize the library of integration use case patterns, for example, by adding customer-specific integration use case patterns or removing those that are not relevant to your business.

Before the integration use case patterns are identified, you must first understand what exactly they are.

Perform a Scoping of Your Integration Use-Case Patterns

A catalog of integration use-case patterns is presented. This catalog provides a collection of proven solutions and best practices for the design and implementation of integration scenarios.

The integration use case patterns are grouped by integration styles and the cross-use case patterns form a separate group.

A description, an illustration, and examples in the context of an SAP business application are available for each pattern in this catalog. There are two different types of examples:

• Predefined by SAP: These integration examples are delivered by SAP, like predefined integration scenarios as part of SAP solutions or integration content packages that you can find in the SAP API Business Hub.
• Defined by customers or partners: These are customized integration examples that are configured and implemented by customers or partners.

So that they can be assigned during technology mapping, all integration styles have different colors and are given a unique name.

The integration style provides four use case patterns that describe the various requirements for connecting business processes between business applications and other units involved. These are:

The Data Integration Style provides four integration use-cases that describe different approaches for synchronizing or accessing data across business applications and data sources. These are:

The Analytics Integration Style provides two integration use-cases to enable analytical queries and insights into business applications. These are:

The user integration style provides three patterns for the integration of use cases. These allow users to access data from one or more business applications through different user interfaces (UI), such as web-based user interfaces, mobile applications, or chat. These are:

The Thing integration style consists of four integration use-case patterns that allow you to connect real-world objects (such as sensor-equipped machines or devices) with business applications and data sources. These are:

Cross use-case patterns can complement one or more integration styles. The current version of the SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology foresees five cross-use cases. These are:

Catalogue of Integration Use-Case Patterns

Describes how integration domains and styles can be combined to develop an effective and efficient integration strategy. This combination enables a customized adaptation of integration solutions to the specific requirements of the company.

Once you have defined the integration styles depending on the integration pattern, you can summarize everything and bring together the information for our integration request to perform a technology mapping in the next step.

You can create an optional view for this purpose.

To carry out the scoping of integration use case patterns, first check the catalog provided for relevance to your company. You can label the various relevant options with different fonts:

The difference between the template-based approach and the integration assessment is explained. This lesson shows the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches and offers recommendations for selecting the most suitable approach for the respective organization.

Both the template-based approach and the integration assessment have similar objectives. However, there are significant differences.

It seems that a combination of both approaches is best. Phases one and two are fully supported. In phases three and four, the documents have to be created manually and everything has to be made available together, for example, through a work zone portal.

The integration assessment is more efficient when creating the required decision documents.