Integration Architecture For Enterprise Agility Powered By SAP BTP

Introduction

While working with customers on different solutioning and implementation projects, one of the most important area zeroes down to – Integration.

As the enterprises, grow in size and scale, many custom applications and processes are created which are required to be connected to maintain consistency and data integrity.

In this blog, I have come up with a integration architecture leveraging SAP BTP services which will help to make an enterprise connect the dots and function intelligently and seamlessly. In this article, I am focusing on a use case where the customer’s ERP is either on premise or on private cloud. Ofcourse, this is based on my experience and can differ based on scenarios, but I think it at least will give you a starting point.

I will break down this blog into 2 parts

1. Design thinking – Integration Architecture
2. Explore BTP services used in the Integration Architecture

Let’s dive into the details.

1. Design thinking – Integration Architecture

Integration Architecture

2. Explore BTP services used in the Integration Architecture

In this section, I will go through some of the important cloud services available on SAP BTP which are shown in the above integration architecture.

1. SAP Integration Suite

   • Cloud Integration
   • API Management
   • Open Connectors

2. Event Driven Architecture

   • Event Mesh
   • Advanced Event Mesh

3. Connectivity

   • Cloud Connector

The intent here is to give a starting point and then help you navigate to the details of each topic.

1. SAP Integration Suite is an iPaaS – Integration Platform as a Service. It offers a suite of cloud services enabling organizations and development teams to create production grade integration flows. This helps to connect heterogenous systems, interfaces, services, cloud based or on premise applications and data. SAP Integration Suite provides lot of great capabilities but in this blog, I will be covering few of them as mentioned below
   1. Cloud Integration (CI) – Cloud integration capability provides a working environment and a development studio where you can discover existing integration flows provided by SAP and also design new integration flows based on business requirements. It also the place where you can monitor the integrations and manage the tenant.
   2. API Management – API management gives you ability to wrap your integration flows, ODATA services or open connectors instances to the external world. You can also configure certificates, API keys. Using API management you can monetize your APIs.
   3. Open Connectors – SAP Open Connectors is a suite of 150+ connectors for integration with non SAP applications. For example – TWILIO, STRIPE etc.
2. Event Driven Architecture – As number of software applications grow, organization must develop a communication strategy without overhead on the systems and the underlying infrastructure. As systems evolve, point to point communication can become bottleneck in many scenarios. Decoupled/Asynchronous communication helps to improve the performance and scale the software landscape. SAP BTP provides services which will help you start with your journey of Event Driven Architecture.
   1. Event Mesh – SAP Event Mesh capability has been available for quite some time on SAP BTP and suffices to notably lower performance thresholds than SAP Advanced Event Mesh. The maximum message size is 1 MB for all messaging protocols.The maximum storage space for all messages in all the queues per subaccount is 10 GB. SAP Event mesh is deployed centrally and does not offer distributed deployment option.
   2. Advanced Event Mesh – It provides a complete event streaming, management and monitoring platform designed with higher performance threshold in mind. The maximum message size is 30 MB for all messaging protocols.The maximum storage space for all messages in all the queues per subaccount is 1TB. This is highly attractive solution for high volume real time business processes. On top of it, it has a ability to deploy event brokers at the edge of the business network which is close to the source of events. Both the event meshes may coexist based on use case. SAP Event mesh can subscribe to events published from SAP Advanced event mesh.
3. Connectivity – SAP BTP provides a connectivity service through cloud connector. Cloud connector is an application that can be installed on customer’s operating system which creates a secure tunnel between SAP BTP and customers on premise or private cloud landscape.

Conclusion

As I always say Enterprise Architecture is full of constraints. Every customer landscape is different, processes are different.

But with the help of SAP BTP Integration capabilities you can navigate through the constraints effectively.

This is just a glimpse of wide set of capabilities offered by SAP Integration Suite. Stay curious! Keep learning!

To get more updates about this topic, please follow the below pages

Feel free to “like“, “Share“, “Add a Comment” and to get more updates about my next blogs follow me – Avinash Vaidya