If you are into SAP and Integration you have been evaluating what to do next. Does it make sense to migrate and if so which platform? Why migrate to SAP Cloud Integration when you have alternatives in Boomi or Mulesoft?
I was challenged by Igor Mitrovic about what to recommend for a migration. Does it make sense for an organization to migrate and what is the best platform?
Without knowing the customer, landscape, and roadmap it is of course difficult to give concrete advice. In this post, I’ll try to share my thinking on the topic.
There are a few options:
- Stay on SAP PI/PO for some longer period
- Migrate to SAP Integration Suite / Cloud Integration
- Migrate to another platform like Boomi or Mulesoft
- Build your own platform
Let’s talk a little about the different options.
1) Stay on SAP PI/PO for now
This is by far the easiest option. It does not require you to perform any changes in your landscape. You can just continue to operate your integration as you always have.
It is not a platform that will be developed much more, though you are getting 3 yearly updates. And you would anyway not expect big changes that will require you to make modifications.
With mainstream maintenance ending in 2027 and extended maintenance in 2030, it is not a long-term solution. You will need 1-2 years to perform the migration if you have a large system. And before that, you will need to find the platform you want to work with.
Tip: If you have a large landscape, check our DevOps Option for SAP PI/PO it can make it easier to operate the platform.
2) Migrate to SAP Integration Suite / Cloud Integration
This is a good option for you and will give you some good ways to future-proof your SAP Integration.
If you migrate from SAP PI/PO to Cloud Integration (CPI) there are the following benefits.
- Reuse of artifacts like Message Mappings and mapping skills. This is probably the biggest reason because rewriting message mappings is a humongous task.
- Knowledge about how the SAP Integration community works
- Easy to reuse Pre-delivered content for integrations that makes all your SAP Integration easier and SAP to SAP Integration is included in the license.
Tip: If you are going down a migration path, do consider the Figaf Migration Tool.
We hosted a webinar and these were the responses to the question:
And I think this is probably one of the bigger reasons. You have a lot of SAP-Centric integration and content that is easy to use.
As I see it, Cloud Integration (CPI) has some downsides:
- Exactly once (In Order) that we have been so used to in a PI world is one of the features I find is missing. I know you can use JMS but it adds some complexity into your process.
- On-premise communication. You can use cloud connector and that is probably a good solution in most cases, if you have few messages. If it is a large percentage of your integration it could add extra latency. SAP has since released Edge Integration Cell, which lets you run integrations in your own landscape and addresses this.
- Testing, governance and transports. This part of Cloud Integration can be improved quite a bit, but we have you covered there.
SAP’s and Forrester’s take
SAP together with Forrester Consulting created a report on the benefits of using SAPs Integration Suite and the payback time. They find a big ROI on using SAP’s iPaaS.
Check out the report to get an idea of why the platform is better.
I would probably argue the DevOps part of the tool could be improved by using the Figaf Tool. Given the report finds savings of 700,000 USD, the Figaf Tool should be a no-brainer because it will make it much easier to deliver the integration.
3) Migrate to another platform like Boomi or Mulesoft
There are other providers of iPaaS that could give you some better platforms for some cases. I have not developed in the platforms, so I cannot give you recommendations if they are better or not. There are a lot of developers out there that have worked on more platforms. They would be good partners to look into to get more honest feedback about which platform works better for you.
They do have areas that make them more compelling for some companies but it all depends on your use cases. As I understand from a pricing perspective, it is comparable pricing.
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for iPaaS also gives their view of the platforms.
You can fairly easily teach your team how to use the other platform. But do consider how your team wants to handle the transition to ensure you keep knowledge of your team. You don’t want everybody that knows your integration to disappear.
10 years ago I was part of a migration from Business Connector to SAP PI for a large Danish Company with about 300-400 interfaces. We were 3 external consultants that worked for 2-3 years on the migration because we had to rewrite all mappings and understand what was going on. Migration from PI to some other platform will be time-consuming.
4) Build your own
There are a lot of options to build your own integration platform. You can use the hyperscalers and projects like Apache Camel and Apache Kafka or some Serverless function. They give a good way to manage the integration flows and mappings.
The downside is you need a team to build and support the platform for the next 10 years. And there is going to be a difference between developing the platform and developing new integration. It will require you to train people in both areas. Whereas it is easier just to get an SAP Cloud Integration or Mulesoft consultant without much training.
My idea
I do think the SAP Cloud Integration is a good option for your migration project if you are an SAP-centric business.
Overall I do think SAP has created a good platform that can support enterprise-scale integrations.
As I see it, there should be some really compelling reasons to choose one of the other platforms for my future integration.
What is your idea?
Disclaimer: I have made tools for SAP Integration to simplify the development and the migration so I’m biased.
