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Migrating Seeburger to SAP B2B Add-on the fast way

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We have lately seen a large interest in the Seeburger to B2B Migration because SAP PI/PO customers are seeing as a way to bring down cost and optimize. There is a number of factors that allow users to achieve this

  • The new solution from SAP has a lot of advantages making it a lot more flexible and supports the newest schemas. It includes all EDIFACT, X12, Tradacom and EANCOM messages that you want to be using, so you don’t need to pay for each message.
  • It is also simpler to transport since they don’t require the use of the BIC to make the one to one mappings
  • It contains all the same adapters with some new features
  • The price of the solution is also included in your standard SAP PI price so you don’t need extra licenses to make sure you can communicate with EDI for your partners. So you can save money on the maintenance of the Seeburger solution.
  • You have the option to use the Trading Partner Management solution making it a lot easier to maintain many partners and the information from them.

When facing the migration there are some challenges that you must figure out how to solve.

  1. Schemas are different so everything needs to be remapped
  2. Test nothing happens with the output messages.
  3. Budget and planing

1) Schema changes update from Seeburger

One of the issues is the schema structure between the Seeburger and the SAP PI B2B Add-on is different on some different levels. The root element is different but there is also some different naming of groups and fields. In the Swing tool you have the option to remap some fields, but then you need to take manually account of all the fields in all mappings. And if it is not done consistently then you can end up with problems.

I always want to optimize as much manual labor as possible as that is what we are doing with our Seebuger Migration Tool. Simply select the message mapping and the new target XSD and it will convert it for you.

We currently have the free introduction package that contains 10 mappings for free. It is normally 100 USD pr mapping. So it is a really good way of getting started with the migration. That way you can prepare your self for the migration project and understand the complexity and what you otherwise need to move.

In the video below you can see how to get started, requesting licenses that you get to select 10 off for free. Then run the migration. Running the migration for a message mapping takes a few seconds.

Get the free migration tool

 

2) Testing the migration

For any migration, it makes sense to test that nothing vital has changed. It is really crucial for EDI because the importance for the business, you cannot afford to be down for a period of time.

Even if the mappings are validated there is still a lot of components that you need to ensure is not messing up the flow. We recommend using the Figaf IRT SAP PI/PO test tool. You can use it for free for up to 10 Interfaces, so you can use it to validate the migration tool work. The Figaf Testing tool is build to make it really easy to fetch test messages from your production system, and then be able to use them on your development system for testing with. If there is any difference you know there could be something wrong. IRT has support comparing XML, EDIFACT, X12 and other formats.

If you purchase the migration tool for your full conversion we can find a good offer on the test tool.

 

3) Budget and planning

It is pretty difficult to get any budget for a migration project. In most cases, you will halt development for a period of time to perform the migration. It is more fun to spend the money o new development that helps the business. The biggest reasons for a Seeburger to B2B add-on from a financial perspective is that you can avoid the maintenance of the Seeburger application and use the license you already have. The support and maintenance of the new system may also be faster but it will not likely be something that will make it selling criteria.

I have created some blog post that covers more details on how to perform migrations in and make it easiest. They are focused on general migration but it will be the same concepts that are required for the other migration.

 

Latest Figaf IRT tool and Roadmap

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Updated 2018-06-03

With the newest release of Figaf IRT tool, we have been adding a lot of new functionality.

In this presentation, you will see how to test SAP PI/PO and SAP Cloud Integration.

  • The testing of SAP PI/PO is stable for collecting and getting test messages. It is fast to record messages for testing and running them is also fast.
  • Testing SAP Cloud Platform Integration is possible
  • Development Supporting is now in the system that allows you to create tickets and assign any object version to it.
  • Change Tracking now have a deep comparison of Repository Objects so you can see what is changed with a message mapping and contains a link so you can see the affected ICO, that should be tested.
  • Support tool to monitor errors in the SAP PI CMBA and setup triggers for it.

In the current roadmap, we have the ability to fetch test data on SAP PI/PO without installing a module. And to perform object change and the support on Cloud Integration.

Everything has been build into one application that allows users to develop faster and have better tracking of what will happen.

You can start a free trial of the IRT tool by going to https://figaf.com/irt

If you have any questions please reach out to us.

 

 

Migrate from Seeburger to SAP PI B2B Addon webinar

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Yesterday I hosted a webinar where we covered how to migrate from Seeburger on SAP PI to B2B Addon on SAP PO.

In the webinar, I covered some of the biggest challenges with migration.

  • How to create a business case for it. This is one of the challenges that I cannot help that much with, the main reason would be to the Seeburger Licensing. I’m unclear what it would mean.
  • How to convert the mappings. The message structures have changed, so you will need to update the schemas. It is not much but you need to do it correctly to ensure nothing is changed.
  • How to get rid of the seeburger User-Defined functions. The B2B Add-on have some different approaches to variables and counters, you probably need to upgrade the mappings to ensure that it works smoothly.
  • How to ensure everything is tested correctly. You don’t want to coordinate a migration with your partners more than necessary. So you just want to move the mappings and then ensure you have tested enough in the process.

I have two products that work to improve such a migration

Seeburger Migration Tool to migrate your mappings from the old format to the new. https://figaf.com/SMT

Figaf SAP PI testing tool IRT  https://figaf.com/IRT

To learn more have a look at the webinar replay.

Or have a look at the slides from the presentation

 

IRT 2.1 released for SAP PI/PO including Change Tracking and Manual Upload

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Proud of the team to deliver the IRT 2.1 release today for SAP PI. We have now added some features to make it easier to testing SAP PI/PO.

Testing normally requires a lot of manual work it is also the case when you want to test SAP PI/PO. I wanted to make it faster and easier for users to perform testing because I hate testing but it is one thing that you must ensure is performed.

View the video below hear about the different functions and learn what they mean to you. Or read the overview under the video.

 

The main things for users are the following:

  • CTT (Change Tracking Too) is a tool that allows you to see how made which changes to directory objects/trading partner management objects and assign it to an issue/ticket number. So you get a better visibility to when something has been changed. This will be something we will expand to the repository to automatic test what has been changed.
  • Manual Test upload allows you to create a zip file with payloads that you can use to upload your test cases. This is really useful if you have migration from dual to a single stack or from another tool to PI.
  • Audit log to see how made changes to objects and see what is going on on the system.
  • Transfering from 1.4/1.5 for existing customers
  • Included a global splitter configuration if you are testing the EDISeperator file.
  • Help is now provided at https://figaf.com/help/irt/

You can learn more about IRT and download IRT for free for your SAP PI/PO system here.

7 steps to a SAP PI to PO migration

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Some time ago I created a webinar about SAP PI to PO migrations. I wanted to use the content and share it because it is quite useful for everybody working on a migration. I can see that it is some of the questions that I got on my latest webinar was also about the process. I do hope that this gives a better understanding of what is happening.

As with all things, there are 7 steps to make a good SAP Migration. So if you are in the process this is the steps that I would recommend that you take. It is assumed that you will migrate to a new system because it will make it easier to migrate a single interface at the time. If things does not work you will always have a backup plan.

The 7 steps are the following:

  1. Goals
  2. Current integrations
  3. Pattern mappings
  4. Resource consumption
  5. Migration phases
  6. Development
  7. Testing

The process should be very iterative because you learn a lot in the process that you can use to migrate other interfaces. I the current integration you are going to map out all your existing interfaces together with what types of pattern they are using. This information will then be used in the migration phase and how it is going you may get input on how the next interfaces can be migrated.

You can view this in two different ways. Either you can watch my Screen recording video of it.

Or view the slides here and download them if you want to be using them.

I have also created a longer article about some of the SAPs you need to consider more in details in the blog SAP XI/PI to PO migration.  It is not the same and the two have a lot in common.