10+ ways to reshape your SAP landscape with SAP Bu...

pinakiray · ‎2024 Apr 18

Blog 5: How hybrid Integration upholds the role of Clean Core

Summary: In this blog series we will look at the role of the SAP Business Technology Platform in reshaping your SAP landscape including SAP and Non-SAP systems. In this seventh blog we’ll look into the important role of integration in terms of clean core and the overall transformation journey.

We’ve learned about the The Central Role of Clean Core in the first issue of this blog series. The concept of a clean core refers to keeping the core ERP such as SAP S/4HANA as up to date, unmodified, documented, consistent, efficient, and cloud compliant as possible. And while extensions - either as in-app or side-by-side - probably come to mind right away when talking about these topics, it’s imperative to apply the same guiding principles to integration.

Being Aware: A Broader Perspective

Some of the more severe technical debts in terms of integration include an existing, oftentimes rich SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PO) landscape, which is going to be out of mainstream maintenance until 2027, along with the Business Suite 7. On top of that there’s usually a multitude of non-SAP Adapters and Connectors, probably collected from multiple vendors and solutions over the last decade(s), which have created not only duplications, but also technical-, as well as commercial- and knowledge lifecycles. The Assessment-, Migration and ISA-M- Tooling as well as the SAP Edge Integration Cell will make this transitions as plannable and digestible as possible and are all included with the SAP Integration Suite.

The significance of integration extends far beyond the migration and modernization phase.
APIs have become ubiquitous across the technological landscapes, forming the backbone of communication and service delivery and must be centrally secured, monitored and documented. But modern API-Management is not just about managing technology - it's about managing business outcomes. It enables organizations to leverage the full potential of their digital assets, create expansive ecosystems, and deliver exceptional user experiences while achieving and maintaining security, compliance, and performance.

Decoupling for Flexibility and Agility

Staying as close as possible to the standard through decoupling go hand in hand with the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). In terms of integration the hybrid PaaS/on-prem runtime SAP Integration Suite covers all kinds of cloud-to-any as well as ground-to-ground integration needs.

With its comprehensive integration capabilities, the SAP Integration Suite provides the following contributions and qualities:

“Standard” in terms of integration

In the ongoingly updated SAP Integration Strategy Paper Christian Klein, Juergen Mueller and Thomas Saueressig have outlined the SAP road map towards an integrated intelligent suite and declared SAP Integration Suite as SAP’s strategic standard. Check out the updates regularly and learn about the most recent integration highlights.

Documentation and Consistency

Documentation: ISA-M is an invaluable open framework and toolset included even with the free plans of Integration Suite and helps in defining and standardizing integration strategies,
-styles and -practices. By providing a clear structure and methodology for SAP as well as non-SAP requirements and technologies, it ensures that all processes like integration governance, integration quality assurance- and responsibilities are defined and documented consistently and are backed by corresponding best practices and reference architectures.
Consistency, Governance and Monitoring: an integrated and complete suite of tools for centralized connection, mapping, transformation, management, monitoring and governance of integrations, providing a single pane that helps maintaining all styles of integrations and keep consistency across the enterprise landscape.

Efficiency and Cloud Compliance

Instead of just providing templates (which is the industry standard), the SAP Integration Suite provides curated out of the box content, for example in the form of more than 3’400 integration process flows. Let’s say you’re using one of those standard iFlows to easily filing your companies annual tax returns to the government and said government changes/adds requirements - either from a technical and/or compliance point of view, SAP is usually going to adapt to these changes and will refactor/change, test and update that iFlow at no additional cost.

Cloud-Native Integration: As a cloud-native solution, the suite facilitates modern cloud principles, ensuring that the core system is efficiently integrated with cloud services without requiring any modifications to the core. The Edge Integration Cell follows the same design principles and provides an on-prem runtime, usually at no additional cost

Keeping the Core Clean

Get started quickly with predefined process integrations for the most commonly used scenarios, including APIs, events, and well-documented integration flows to integrate SAP applications as well as third-party applications with minimal effort. Benefit from aligned domain models to synchronize master data objects between different LoB’s
Graph: Extending traditional API Management, Graph enables you to abstract the landscape, share data by removing and/or extending data sets for different use cases, connect all major SAP business objects out of the box while hiding the landscape complexity (replicated, distributed, or shared data).
Decoupling Extensions: By allowing businesses to build extensions and custom applications outside the core ERP side by side on the BTP, the suite ensures that the core remains unmodified, which is a key aspect of the clean core concept.

Conclusion

Preparing for the Future

The combination of cloud computing, a clean core strategy, and the move to SAP Integration Suite as one central, hybrid iPaaS positions businesses for future growth, market dynamics and innovation. It lays the groundwork for quickly adopting emerging technologies like AI, machine learning or event driven architectures as well as the next big thing to stay ahead in the digital race!

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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

SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology (ISA-M)

Integration Software | SAP Integration Suite

Integration Assessment provided by SAP BTP

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