The conference is now over and it is time to head home.
There is a lot to cover at such a conference. I’ll try to keep it only to what relates to SAP Integration.
I also had a good talk with David Morin on camera around what a lot of the topics below. See it here. There is probably a good overlap.
Integration Suite
There were 3 good sessions on from customers about their journey to Integration Suite. It is always interesting to hear that it is possible to achieve the goals. It is interesting to hear and see that other people can be successful at some of their projects.
Two of them talked about testing as something that caused problems. If they had just used a tool like Figaf to handle the testing then it would have been much easier.
There were also some questions about file transfers. Let me just stop the discussion there. If you have a few interfaces with Files go use Integration Suite for it. If you have many interfaces relying on file transfer you are better of using some other tool.
It was interesting to see how many people that where around the Integration Suite booth. There were a lot of questions on the topic.
Integration Strategy paper
It was not in the announcement from SAP but they did release a good document around their integration strategy. You can download it here and I recorded a video where I shared my view on this strategy.
It is a good tradition to keep this roundup and understand what is going to be released. SAP Integration is more than just Integration Suite. It is about how all the applications are integrated at a local level and consideration about the business processes across the platform. That is the reason you are buying SAP S/4 HANA.
It also covers some of the behind the scenes of integrations between the SAP cloud based applications and then we are moving back in to a coherent suite from SAP that covers all areas.
Migration to Integration Suite
The message was clear start with your migration journey. You can get SAP partners to give you a free assessment of your landscape. There were 2 sessions on the migration and both were pretty full.
SAP did talk about their Assessment and migration tooling. And the partnership they have where Figaf and INT4 provide a testing tool for free for the project. This also go into the keynote on Tuesday evening was I told.
AI
The AI use cases on Integration Suite were interesting. I don’t know what the roadmap is for such scenarios. Or it was just experimentation to evaluate the idea. And if it will be something that can create 80% finished iFlows.
As with AI, a big question is training of it. SAP have many iFlows deployed by customers. Many pre delivered content other customer build. There could be some legal aspect of using customers iFlows for training. The other problem is about the qualify. There are some good integration developers that are creating solid integrations. But there are a huge number of bad integrations you don’t want to have replicated.
Then I don’t know if SAP can generate iFlows like Figaf can or it is just some simple templates they have used.
In 2-4 years it will probably be the way a lot is developed on but there are many items in the roadmap that I think are more critical for this to work.
What is missing?
There were no roadmap sessions on what was the latest with the different apps including Integration Suite. I know it is not TechEd and it is more architects that would be joining this event.
I think the Pipeline concept should have been talked about much easier to implement now and it does solve real business problems. We are currently working with a large SAP PI customer on and their migration journey to with pipelines and it seems like the best option for a lot of Async scenarios.
For the migration I would wish that SAP was sharing that we also have a tool that can simplify the migration journey even more for customers. We do solve quite a bit of the challenges that exist with the free tool reducing the need to manual changes.
I would probably also have liked a customers stories about migration.
There was some of this there possibly and I just missed it.
Conference
It was nice to be back at a real large conference and see a lot of people again.
I did get to connect and talk with several partners about migration and how Figaf could help them in their journey.
Moreover, then there was the occasional dumping into people and hearing their ideas and thoughts on the event and SAP’s directory.
There was a lot of money being spent on things and events around the conference. From booth/sponsorships to events. The question is where this money is going to be earned from. It seems only to be the SAP Customers that can pay for this.
Disney World
I had a blast at the Disney world tour. I got to try 9 rides (all except one Muppet Vision) watch a little of the Maroon 5 convert. It was a perfect to run (walk fast) and grab some finger food between rides.
There was only one of the rides where there was 20 minute wait rest was almost just walk all the way into the ride.
It was not the most trill-seeking ride but really fun.
I got to meet one of my childhood heroes.
Closing
I’m really looking forward to the next conference. It was interesting to be back and see a lot was the same and something had been improved.