SAP launched a nice initiative to gather all the SAP partners belonging to the SAP Integration domain for 2 days to show all the functionalities and all the best practices to implement it. I personally believe that these discovery sessions are super good to raise awareness of the last features and the use cases where you can apply them.
The meeting was held in the SAP offices, Building number 3 in St. Leon-ROT. This facility is oriented mostly to conferences, where there were more than 100 consultants from different partner companies. From Code10, Jakub Turminski and me (Antonio Valladares) had the pleasure to participate.
Most of the features were not new to us, because we either had previous experience with them or because we encountered them in different trainings. The opportunity to hear from product owners and recommendations about the best use of them, makes this event worth the while
Our first objective was to discover the roadmap of both integration and data replication (Datasphere), to know what we can expect for the next years. The second but not less important was to have a good time talking and sharing experiences with both SAP and Partners.
The first conference in the agenda was a generic overview of the integration capabilities and the usage of the integration in BTP, there were some significant numbers and facts we learn over there:
- 14400+ Customers using SAP Integration from BTP
- 75% of the scenarios are having 1 or both connections with non-SAP systems
But its better one image:
Related with the use of AI, we will have during 2025 the different features that powered by GenAI:
- Generation of iflows based on GenAI
- Script optimization
- AI anomaly detection for API calls
The second exposition was more marketing oriented, and we still saw some interesting figures in the SAP slides. The great surprise is that the BTP services represent a big percentage of the Cloud revenue of SAP, even more than the ERP cloud services. So, the conclusion I can take from that fact is that for SAP, investing in SAP BTP is still a very profitable business and they should not stop doing that as is a super complete platform.
Another interesting point that they shared with us is that SAP BTP is the only platform that is positioned as a leader or challenger in Integration/Process Automation.
The next topic was about modernization of the ERP implementations, and for that matter there are needed just 2 words: “Clean Core”. And over there we cannot agree more, over developments in SAP it’s not only causing problems to upgrade the systems but also is a heavy stone to modernize the enterprise processes. This is our day-to-day fight and both SAP and Partners, we should keep fighting it, because I always understood that a Digital Transformation should lead in process improvements, not only in IT software.
To have access to all the new features that SAP releases every year, we need to run ERP upgrades, and the best way to do it on a regular basis is to use BTP to develop those customer specific requirements or enhancements. If you are interested in learning how to do it and you want to lose the fear of Cloud development, just ping us and we will show you the benefits.
So, integration plays a very important role in the concept of clean core, and tools like API Management or SAP Graph, where we can merge API calls getting slide and dices of both worlds (Standard and cloud enhancements) are an important part of it.
The next session was integration modernization in a nutshell, and there was a repeated sentence, there is a big wave coming and we need to be ready. The modernization and transformation of the integrations does not have the speed and awareness that it requires, and a lot of customers are just waiting for an extension that I feel is not going to happen, but more over I think it should not happen. Let’s be clear, while the rest of the world has modern integrations, API first, with secure protocols and authentication methods, we cannot still stick with our beloved SAP PI/PO. And the main reason is that will not get much more updates…
The best and the last story to illustrate that is the update that Gmail did to the authentication, when they implement OAuth 2 authentication, and this is not possible using SAP PI/PO. Of course, everything is possible in SAP PI/PO because it’s a JAVA based system, but while in SAP Integration Suite it was 10 minutes task, in SAP PI/PO is a JAVA development using Google Java Libraires.
“In the modern world the big fish do not eat the small fish, it is the fast fish the one that eat the slow fish”
During the presentation of “Unlock Business Growth with SAP BTP Enterprise Integration” we heard some benefits and success stories from projects that used SAP Integration Suite´s last features to take all the power of the platform. I hope sooner than later one of those success stories will be from Code10 because we already do technology edge projects with SAP Integration Suite and other BTP features.
In the last common presentation of the day, Udo and Shilpa did a full overview of all the Integration features that we have available now in the system, and a small demo on how to configure some of them. That overview was needed because is important to raise awareness of what is included in the Integration capabilities of the BTP. It was a light overview and if you try to keep yourself updated with the latest features, there was nothing new for you, or at least for the people that are playing every day with the SAP BTP platform.
The SAP Integration Suite with the last features included, starts to become a monster slide. It’s amazing how they can squeeze in one single slide that many features… every year it looks more and more like a Tokio metro in a rush hour.
One of the things that I like is the revitalization of SAP AIF as an Event generator, I always think that SAP AIF is one of those great tools that almost nobody used properly. I like that SAP AIF becomes a free tool for the ones that purchase an Advance Event Mesh license, I would love it was free for all the SAP Integration Suite Standard license holders, because it will increase the Clean Core and SAP BTP extensions´ philosophy, but let´s take it one step at the time.
Event Driven Architecture and API Lead where probably the words that we hear the most.
The last session of the day was Data Integration in Datasphere, where we had an overview of all the actual features of Datasphere and the ones that are planned for 2025. Not being an expert of Data integration, seems that SAP is closing the gap with all the missing functionalities that the platform had. It will be a very useful information that we will share with our big-data Team.
After the last conference we all headed to the Golf Club where SAP hosted a nice dinner for all of us The dinner was nice, but the company was better, I would say that the best of those events is always the networking part, and in our table, we had a lot of implementation stories and funny situations. In this picture is not the whole crew but a good representation of it. Thank you for the good time!
The second day started with Methodology, to define a proper enterprise architecture integration. So, this means SAP ISA-M + LeanIX + Integration Suite. Honestly speaking this whole setup sounds super interesting and super good practice, but it’s really oriented to large enterprise only, unfortunately most of the customers cannot afford a mini project of 6 months or more to discover a Solution Advisory, document it in LeanIX, match use case with patterns or blueprints, and iterate it to learn from the mistakes… I know because I did it for large enterprises, but this is something that with the actual level of modernization of the enterprises is a utopia for most of the customers. At the contrary I see that all these tools and know how it´s super useful for Service Implementation Companies, so maybe if someone from SAP is reading this, I am sure that we can take some benefits of an adaptation of the LeanIX for Partners, where we can apply the previous knowhow in a structured way. I need to do my homework in this area and learn more about it.
The SAP Integration Suite RoadMap was one of the most expected moments, SAP didn’t release any bombs with any news, but the agenda was full of initiatives. Also, it was a good moment to ask Udo about how and what different things SAP has in their roadmap.
SAP is looking for feedback and collaboration to improve SAP Integration Suite, and this is a great way to build a good product. We do have 3 channels to contribute with ideas: SAP Customer Influence, Feedback hub and Customer Engagement Initiative.
After the Integration Suite roadmap, there were parallel sessions of multiple topics, I attended one where API Management and integrated with SAP Graph was exposed. I have the impression that companies that want to have a clean core strategy really need to explore the use of Graph to allow fetch data from different sources and with the shape of a single API Call.
Next parallel session I attended was about the Integration Advisor and Trading Partner Management, where they covered the last features SAP released last year.
The last session of the journey was more commercial, orienting SAP partners to know the different licenses and options, to be able to find the most suitable configuration for our customers.
To close the event, we had one hour of networking and stands where we were able to talk with the different Product Owners of both Integration and Data BTP tools. I think it was one of the best initiatives, and I would love to see more chances to talk 1 to 1 in future events with partners.
My personal conclusion is that the SAP recommended way to modernize your Integrations is use API philosophy and Event driven architecture (especially with AEM for payload events).
My “2 cents in contribution” is about the combination of Event Driven Architecture with API Lead. Events to determine what object has been modified and the consumer of the event will query the information whenever its suitable via API.
Navigating the Upgrade Decision: SAP PI vs CPI SAP PI VS CPI With SAP ending support for most PI versions Read more
Key Features and Benefits of SAP Cloud Platform We have all heard of SAP Cloud Platform (CP), even more so Read more
SAP Azure SAS Integration: AzureBLOB Authentication Business scenario / Requirements For the SAP Azure SAS Integration, you must actively transfer, Read more
Effective regression testing in PI/PO to Integration Suite migration: Learn how to optimize your project with quality test cases and Read more
Code 10 IT Managing Partner and Senior SAP Integration consultant.
Experienced SAP Integration consultant in projects in 3 different continents.
No responses yet