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SAP Cloud Platform Integration

Working Paper · January 2018

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13981.00482

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SAP Cloud Platform Integration

Abhishek Kumar
Arpit Arora
Soumya Pirlamarla
Introduction

Every business and industry has its own unique set of requirements. Therefore ERP
systems are designed to provide the robust foundation of a business management
solution while allowing businesses to handpick the precise complementary
software they need to add to make to their solution ideally suited to their specific
needs.

Envisioning business software like a set of Lego, ERP forms the foundation; each
piece of Lego bricks over it is a complementary solution that can be used to
construct the exact software and set of features needed to meet a business’
requirements. Without the right foundation and pieces, the finished product will
never meet expectations.

It is essential to choose an ERP with the capability to grow and expand as the needs
of a business change in the long run and that can integrate with the solutions
needed both now and in the future. Missing this means confining the success of a
business to a tiny box. You will run the risk of missing out on huge business
opportunities, and the chance to make your ERP as robust and efficient as it can
be.

SAP’s ERP solutions are the most preferred among businesses big and small across
the world. With SAP’s vision to move its upcoming solutions to the Cloud, it makes
sense to introduce a Cloud-based integration platform. Turning to Cloud is not just
about saving money, but also to provide faster, simpler, securer and smarter
solutions. This helps business to ramp up with innovation, flexibility, rapid response
and precautions for ever-changing business needs and market dynamics.
Most SAP customers are inclined towards leveraging their existing live On-Premise
setups with Cloud. Business needs are best met with hybrid solutions, leveraging
existing investments with the integration of Cloud and On-Premise landscape. It
then boils down to the integration aspect - how the security is maintained, what
would be the data transition time, system maintenance, and who will execute it.
SAP’s answer to these questions is Cloud Platform Integration (CPI).
Background

SAP offers a huge number of applications that can be adapted to meet the needs
of almost any business; the array of options available within SAP creates a challenge
when answering general questions about how to integrate with other systems.

SAP released its first Integration product – SAP Exchange Interface (XI) 1.0 -- back
in 2002 to help integrate the SAP system with external systems. Gradually
improving its integration technologies with time, SAP introduced Process
Integration (PI) in 2006, which marked a move from the initial dual ABAP and Java
stack to only Java stack, greatly improving the integration performance. Continuing
with the innovation in its integration technologies, SAP introduced SAP Process
Orchestration (PO) in 2012.

SAP Process Orchestration (PO) is an On-Premise middleware platform to design,

model, execute and monitor business processes by ensuring connectivity to
multiple business/technical systems and applications (SAP and non-SAP). It is a
combo product provided by SAP that helps to address the specific needs of
integration.

The SAP landscape is, however, changing with the improvement in Cloud
technology. Over the last few years, SAP has begun moving towards a Software-as-
a-Service (SaaS) business model, which does away with customers’ need to
maintain their own hardware, and staff for its maintenance. Over time, SAP plans
to move all its solutions to the SAP Cloud Platform.

SAP Cloud Platform Integration is SAP’s strategic secure Cloud-based integration

platform with a strong focus on process and data integration across domains -- SAP
Financial Services Network (FSN), SuccessFactors, Cloud for Customers, Ariba,
Business by Design, Concur, and so on. It provides Process Integration (HCI-PI) and
Data Integration (HCI-DS) capabilities.

SAP Cloud Platform Integration enables you to connect your Cloud applications
quickly and seamlessly to other SAP and non-SAP applications (Cloud or On-
Premise) without extensive coding. This integration-as-a-service solution from SAP
can help you integrate your business processes and data in a secure and reliable
environment. Another important point to understand is that SAP Cloud
Integration is not SAP Process Integration on Cloud.
Product Overview

SAP Cloud Platform Integration is a Cloud-based integration platform hosted on

SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) for integrating Cloud applications with other SAP and
non-SAP Cloud and On-Premise solutions, supporting both process and data
integration needs of customers.
SAP CPI lets you seamlessly connect with Cloud and On-Premise solutions from
various vendors using the pre-packaged integration content that comes out-of-
the-box, requiring minimal configuration before it can be used in productive
scenarios, and that can be easily discovered using a web-based Content Catalog.
Custom integration flows can also be built, giving customers the freedom to wrap
together various system protocols, messaging transformations, and services into a
pleasant visual entity.

SAP Cloud Platform Integration is fragmented into different tenants.

A tenant represents the resources of the platform allocated to a customer and
must be securely connected to the associated component in the customer
landscape. The transport protocols available in SAP CPI allow for various transport-
level security and message-level security options.
Both Web UI-based or Eclipse-based tools are available and can be used to create
and modify integration artifacts. For integration developers, there exist plug-ins
that can be installed on Eclipse IDE to model integration flows. The set of adapters
provide a wide variety of connectivity options such as SOAP, SFTP, IDOC, RFC, and
even applications such as SuccessFactors (SFSF) adapter.
SAP CPI is a future-proof Cloud platform product that provides a flexible and
powerful messaging pipeline along with enterprise tools for administration,
monitoring, and security.
Features and Benefits
 Reduced Maintenance Effort: SAP CPI receives monthly updates that are
automatically applied to all the tenants. These upgrades are backward-
compatible and provide added functionality so that compatibility of the
existing integration content with the latest platform release is not an issue.
 Pay-As-You-Go: SAP CPI works on a subscription model that results in
minimal investment on the On-Premise infrastructure, also removing the
associated operational costs, and reducing the Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO).
 Increased Reliability: With its quick failover mechanism, SAP CPI makes sure
that the hosted applications and services can easily be transited to any of the
available servers in case of any server failure.
 Improved Security: SAP CPI provides both message- and transport-level
security with features such as content encryption and signing, certificate-
based authentication, encrypted data storage, and data isolation at runtime.
 Pre-Packaged Integration Content: SAP provides considerable pre-built
integration content to connect SAP ERP, SAP HCM, SAP SRM, SAP APO and
SAP Financial Services with On-Premise or On-Demand solutions. These
come free out-of-the-box and are maintained by SAP.
 Seamless Process and Data Integration: SAP CPI comes with pre-built
adapters to common data sources such as SOAP, IDOC, RFC, OData, HANA,
SFTP, HTTP and Mail, plus an adapter SDK that lets you get data from any
source for a 360-degree view of your business. SAP PI Integration content
can also be imported into SAP CPI.
 Pleasant User Interface: SAP CPI comes with an intuitive and clean interface
for configuring, deploying and monitoring the integration content, making it
easily understandable.
 Conclusion
Every business has its own unique requirements. With many complementary
solutions being used to meet these requirements, an integration platform serves
like the glue required to build a comprehensive end-to-end business solution.
SAP Cloud Platform Integration offers to do just this with minimal investment and
effort. Even with the pleasant interface it offers, SAP CPI takes care of exchanging
information among your complementary solutions in a secure, reliable and cost-
effective environment. Taking note of your previous investment, SAP also lets you
import your PI integration content to help you seamlessly migrate to HCI.
Leveraging the benefits of being a Cloud solution, SAP CPI covers the maintenance
required and keeps you updated with its latest offering without any extra effort on
your part, reducing the Total Cost of Ownership.

References:
 http://www.bcone.com/pdf/SAP-HCI-overview.pdf
 https://blogs.sap.com/2014/08/17/hana-cloud-integration-hci-an-
overview/
 https://blogs.sap.com/2013/10/17/sap-hana-cloud-integration-an-intro/
 https://blogs.sap.com/2016/10/19/get-started-sap-hana-cloud-platform-
integration-service/
 https://help.sap.com/viewer/368c481cd6954bdfa5d0435479fd4eaf/Cloud/
en-US

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