Introduction
SAP Business Network for Logistics (SAP BN4L) is run on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) leveraging the various services provided by the platform. SAP BTP offers a variety of application environments that customers and internal SAP organisations can choose from, to build SAP applications and business solutions in the cloud. One critical service used by SAP BN4L is the SAP Cloud Integration (previously known as SAP CPI) which acts as the single integration platform for all customers and partners for SAP BN4L. This is owned and maintained by SAP BN4L development team and enables customers and partners to maintain necessary connectivity configurations using applications such as ‘System Connections’, ‘Configure Partner Connections’, etc. Customers can also monitor the messages relevant to them via ‘Manage Integration Logs’.
SAP Cloud Integration used by SAP BN4L is hosted in Neo environment of SAP BTP. SAP BTP Neo environment is the oldest of the application environments and is built on a proprietary SAP technology stack. The Neo environment in SAP BTP has been deprecated and will be sunset on December 31, 2025 for internal SaaS applications (see SAP Note). SAP Cloud Integration is also offered in a multi-cloud foundation in SAP BTP and this is the new platform that will be used by SAP BN4L.
This means that your existing connections from your backend Transportation Management Systems will be invalid post sunset and you need to migrate your connections to the new integration platform. This is true for both premium customers of SAP BN4L connecting to SAP S/4HANA using SOAP messages. As well as freemium customers connecting to SAP BN4L using standard APIs and EDI connectivity. This would mean configuration changes in your backend TMS system as well as in configuration applications in SAP BN4L. These new changes will be made available in SAP BN4L as part of the upcoming monthly releases. As of June 22, 2024, any new connections will be created in a premium tenant's System Connections app will be in the new integration platform. Detailed migration guide targeting the customers of SAP BN4L will be published in the upcoming releases.
Please note that for SAP BN4L Global Track and Trace (GTT) customers connecting to SAP BN4L from SAP backend systems using IDOC, there's no impact as they're connecting directly to their sub-accounts.
Update
As of July 21, 2024, we've enabled the migration for all tenants in SAP BN4L (test and production). You can find the detailed migration guides published in the application help. Linking the same below:
We encourage customers and partners to migrate to the new integration platform for your test tenants first. In accordance with SAP BTP’s decision to sunset Neo environment, SAP Business Networks for Logistics has decided to stop the support of the existing Neo integration platform on May 16, 2025, as part of our May 2025 release. We urge the customers to do the migration at the earliest.
Feature Parity
As an end customer of SAP BN4L, you would get all the connectivity features as before when migrating to new integration platform. The high availability of SAP BTP multi-cloud environment should provide a better resilient platform the customers. Added to the existing features, customers migrating to the new platform will benefit from new features in the roadmap such as automatic provisioning of credentials and SFTP schedulers for freemium customers, enhanced monitoring and automatic reprocessing of integration logs, etc.
Once the migration is enabled in SAP BN4L, any new connection created in System Connections app (for premium customers – shipper, solution owner, etc.) will refer to a connection in the new integration platform. Your existing connections will refer to the old integration platform and will be highlighted to differentiate from the new ones. You should be able to edit the existing connections and continue using them until the sunset of integration platform. However, you won’t be able to create any new connections that refer to the old integration platform.
A new column in monitoring application – ‘Manage Integration Logs’ will mention the integration platform that was used for the message log.
Why Migrate?
Apart from the sunset of integration platform, the migration to the new platform has its benefits. Listing some of these below:
- Improved data persistence resources for integration logs: In the current integration platform, resources for database are limited and at the maximum possible limit. Customers rely on integration logs and payload download feature to debug/validate any integration issues. If the DB memory limit is breached, integration scenarios would work fine but there would be discrepancies in the way logs/payloads are stored. Migrating to the new platform will ensure proper log monitoring and payload download.
- Improved security for communication between SAP Business Networks for Logistics apps: Better authentication protocols will be deployed for communication between SAP Business Networks for Logistics backend apps and the new integration platform. • New features: Improvements to platform features will be based on the new integration platform. Some of these upcoming features include hourly auto-reprocessing of failed/escalated logs.
- Self-configuration to set up inbound communication for freemium customers: Freemium customers such as ‘carriers’ used to rely on the ticketing process to set up inbound authentication/communication to SAP Business Networks for Logistics. This was true for both API and EDI communications. Part of this was because of a lack of support from the older integration platform. In upcoming releases, we intend to make these provisioning available via configuration apps for freemium customers.
Migration Strategy for Customers and Partners
We understand the critical role that connectivity plays in SAP Business Network for Logistics. The primary focus is not to disrupt the existing integrations between your backend systems and SAP BN4L. So, your existing configurations should stay intact and continue to work as long as the sunset. In the meanwhile, we have made it possible for you to migrate from the old platform to new using the configuration apps in SAP BN4L. This would mean some changes in SAP BN4L configuration apps as well as in your backend systems. You also need to update your firewall/SAP Cloud Connector configurations as the IP range would be different for the new integration platform. The detailed steps required to be made for SAP BN4L premium and freemium customers are captured in a migration guide.
Support
In case of any queries or clarifications, you can raise a support incident with SBN-LBN-INT with the subject line – [Queries on migration of integration platform].
References
You can refer the following documentation for more info related to SAP BTP Neo migration:
