Why migrate to SAP Cloud Platform Integration?
Meet the Experts
Key Takeaways
⇨ SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite helps organizations connect cloud and on-premise applications with other SAP or non-SAP applications.
⇨ The deadline for ending mainstream maintenance SAP Process Orchestration to 2027 and 2030 means that businesses using SAP Process Orchestration need to migrate to SAP Cloud Platform
⇨ SAP Cloud Platform Integration has preconfigured integration content that requires minimal configuration to become productive
Organizations embark on digital transformation journeys to generate value, unlock opportunities, drive growth, and deliver new efficiencies, and are increasingly moving from siloed linear processes to integrated cyclical processes to improve outcomes like customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue growth. Integration plays an important role as different systems are brought together quickly and cost-effectively. For example, to get a comprehensive view of customer data, an organization must focus on CRM and integrate other systems used for other processes such as marketing, sales, or commerce.
Solutions like SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite, a modular integration platform-as-a-service enable seamless integration across applications and systems, whether they are SAP, non-SAP, on-premise, cloud, or hyperscale.
Benefits of SAP Cloud Platform Integration
SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite helps organizations connect cloud and on-premise applications with other SAP or non-SAP applications. The key factors that are motivating businesses to migrate to SAP Cloud Platform Integration are:
- SAP has announced the end of mainstream maintenance for SAP Process Orchestration by the end of December 2027 and extended maintenance by December 2030.
- Customer already using SAP Process Orchestration and embarking on Rise with SAP need to migrate the interfaces from SAP Process Orchestration to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite.
Below are some of the benefits of migrating to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite according to SAP Forrester Report:
- Cost saving from legacy integration tools ongoing maintenance compared to SAP Cloud Integration.
- Multiple pre-built integration scenarios connect SAP and non-SAP applications in one place.
- When compared to SAP Cloud Integration, SAP Process Orchestration involves high effort, cost, and duration of upgrades.
Migration paths to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite
Organizations can adopt the following options (Figure 1) to migrate to SAP Cloud Platform Integration.
Figure 1: Migration paths to SAP Cloud Platform Integration
Source: SAP
Option 1 — Complete Migration
In complete migration, businesses can move all scenarios from SAP Process Orchestration to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite; however, this is a time-consuming effort and a significant project for the organization. This option should be adopted by customers who have started the Rise with SAP journey or are on an older version of the process orchestration.
Option 2 — Hybrid Migration
In hybrid migration, businesses can develop new scenarios on SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite and migrate scenarios from SAP Process Orchestration depending on the business requirement, cost, time, and efforts. As a start, businesses can move all cloud (cloud-to-cloud) and hybrid (ground-to-cloud) integration scenarios by default to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite. This option can be adopted by businesses operating on an older version of process orchestration and are yet to start digital transformation to SAP S/4HANA and work with several interfaces.
Like SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), an on-premises enterprise resource planning system, businesses invest in custom development and making SAP Process Orchestration stable to connect to multiple SAP and non-SAP systems. Many want to reuse the existing content in the SAP Process Orchestration Enterprise Services Repository to reduce efforts, cost and duration while migrating to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite. There are automated tools available which can support this, use best practices, and also reduce costs.
Migration approach for SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite
For interface migration, the below approach (Figure 2) is best suited.
Figure 2: Migration approach for SAP Cloud Integration
Assess and Plan: In the assess and plan phase, a thorough assessment of the legacy landscape provides visibility on the cost and efforts of migration. In this phase, the overall integration strategy is planned and created by leveraging SAP Cloud Integration and Process Orchestration. This phase also addresses questions related to SAP Cloud Integration benefits, key considerations for moving the existing interfaces to the SAP Cloud Integration, integration impact on business, cost and duration to migrate, and best practices for SAP Cloud Integration. The following scenarios can be explored under this phase:
- Rehost: Migration is done with minimal changes and includes lift and shift from SAP Process Orchestration to SAP Cloud Integration platform.
- Refactor: Migration is done with few changes in adapter like REST or HTTP or additional code to be replaced by groovy scripts.
- Rebuild: Migration requires customization according to the customer requirements and needs to be developed from scratch on the SAP Cloud Integration platform.
- Replace: Migration is not possible and development is on SAP Cloud Integration from scratch.
- Prepare and Migrate: In this phase, assessments done in the plan phase are used to design workshops and migrate the scenarios to the required integration tool.
- Test and Go-Live: In this phase, scenarios are tested and deployed in the production system.
Organizations such as SAP, HCL, and Figaf have developed assessment and migration tools that can be leveraged to understand the effort, cost, and duration of the complete migration process. The below can be accessed to evaluate and assess such factors.
Considerations
Below are some of the considerations to keep in mind during assessment and proof of concept:
- SAP Cloud Platform Integration does not support SAP Process Orchestration custom adapters.
- SAP Cloud Integration Platform Suite does not support SAP Process Orchestration adapters such as RFCs.
- User-Defined Functions (UDFs) with function libraries, imported archives or parameters are not supported when importing message mapping in SAP Cloud Platform Integration.
- Message mapping with reference to value mapping is not supported at runtime in SAP Cloud Integration Platform. Cloud Platform Integration value mapping should be used and message mapping should be redesigned.
- ABAP mapping is not supported and logic must be reimplemented using other mapping methods such as Graphical Mapping, XSLT, or Javascript/Groovy script.
Conclusion
The deadline for ending mainstream maintenance SAP Process Orchestration in 2027 and 2030 means businesses using SAP Process Orchestration must migrate to SAP Cloud Platform Integration. However, migration such as this needs to be carried out keeping in mind the requirements, duration, cost, and pace.
