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030 – What is your SAP Integration Migration

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In this last episode of the Integration Podcast, I’m talking about something that will probably affect you next year. I know a lot of companies are planning migration projects. Therefore does it make sense to talk about it here, so you can get my views on the topic.

I’m covering my views on

  • Dual stack to Single stack migration
  • Should you upgrade if you have a single stack 7.31/7.4 system to 7.5 and what you will get
  • Third Party to SAP PI/PO
  • Using of Cloud Integration Content
  • Seeburger migration
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I created a video while recording the podcast.

Migration Planning

At Figaf we are working on improving the IRT tool, so you can use it to gain an understanding of your SAP Integration. So you can see how many times a given message mapping, Java or XSL mapping has been executed. I think it will make it a lot easier to understand who big your integration effort will be. It should also be able to recognize which Message Mappings is using the Seeburger Message format.

Once you have a plan and an overview it is easier to start estimating the number of resources and developers you need for the project. Can you do it with your existing developers or do you need more consultants. It also depends on the number of hours you need to spend on the migration.

 

Business Case for a migration

Nobody cares about you running your Migration Project, and the business would probably prefer you did not do it. Because you will not be able to deliver new integration for a period of time. The big cust will though be if you don’t do it and are stuck on an unsupported version of the SAP PI system. Also, it will be more difficult to make new development and if you have to create ccBPMs that need to be converted at some point in the future to a bigger cost.

If they are going to be involved because of the testing, it may be an idea to get the Figaf IRT application to perform business test so the business doesn’t need to spend time on it.

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029 – SAP Integration with Adam Kiwon

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In this podcast, I have a conversation with Adam Kiwon. Adam is a part of WhitePaper InterfaceDesign. He is posting some of his products and idea at https://www.integration-excellence.com. Adam and his team have created different CPI Adapters, content, and product for making SAP PI/PO better.  

We do cover quite a bit of different areas regarding integration, it was pretty educational for me to be a part of the conversation.

  • Migration strategies when it makes sense. And we talk a little about upgrading single stack 7.31 system and migration to single stack
  • Creating CPI adapters and how they did it
  • How to create CPI content as a partner and the CPI marketplace
  • How Adam sees the need for tools to improve CPI/PI where he has different interface monitoring systems
  • Why Adam had proposed to use the Figaf Seeburger tools for migrating to the B2B Add-on on a project
  • We talked about some of the training they where working on for the CPI.

 

028 – CPI SuccessFactor and Cloud Integration Patterns

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I had a chance to meet  at #SITCPH two weeks ago. Vadim is an Integration Architect at ARM.  We got to talk a lot on integration and what was going one. I have been looking a lot on Vadim blogs on sap.com like the SAP PI adapter logging or the dark side of Groovy Scripting.

I talked with Vadim Klimov about how new tools have an influence on the way we work with cloud integration and how flows for different scenarios can help us understand the integration with SuccessFactors using SAP CPI and a prem PI. I’m currently involved in a project where we are using OData V2 to access SuccessFactors data. There are some challenges involved with it. We need some workaround to be able to see information about people starting in the future. In The Integration Center in SuccessFactors, their are many options, when you are looking for filed-based integration. The interface is web-based and allows business users to easily create files. Vadim is using the CPI and PI to move the file to their own landscape.

We also talked about how they do error handling in CPI and what makes sense in that perspective. The process works differently than in PI, so you must understand how it works best there.  At Figaf we are improving the capabilities to monitor, test and support your CPI systems, so you can get notifications about what is going on.

We also cover Groovy development, as I would like to understand Vadim thinking on the area.

It was a very interesting conversation which I hope, you will enjoy.

 

 

 

027 – The future of SAP Integration

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Tuesday, November 13. 2018, I just hosted a webinar about the key takeaways from SAP Teched and how to implement things based on it. It thinks it was one of my own webinars with most viewers (40). So it is an important topic. I think I missed the Gartner quote that 50% of the development budget will be about integration or something in that line.

When we were starting to see some cloud applications I did not see so many integrations. Lately, I have seen quite a number of a project involving some cloud application. I had seen that SAP would be able to provide some of the content as pre-delivered, but there are going to be so much more than you will need to develop. I just got an email from an SAP customer that they got a tsunami of cloud integration, so it is other areas as well.

Understand where you are going

On the webinar, I do cover how you can understand your own integrations and try to plan what integration you should be doing. I recommend that you take a look at the Integration Solution Advisor – Methodology. It has been updated and I have talked with quite a few architects using it and it gave them a good understanding of what they should be doing.

Roadmap

Then I cover the current state of the SAP PI roadmap, which will affect your existing integration. I do see the CPI on your SAP PI system as a good option to run some of your content. You probably want to start a migration if you are on a dual stack system, I have some resources on how you can do an SAP PI migration project. If you have Seeburger and want to migrate to B2B Add-on I created a webinar on how you can automate the migration. I also recorded a podcast on how a customer did a migration of Seeburger to B2B Add-on.

After you have been going thru your ISA-M you will have some integration patterns that you need new tools for. I’m covering SAP Cloud offerings for integration and their full iPaaS product. I think it would be wise to use the SAP tools first to see if they suit your needs and if not then you can find a better vendor for the solution. SAP will be adding new functions to the Cloud Offering to address the customers needs.

Operations

There is a need to make more integration at a faster pace. And you are probably not able to get more people on your team. So it is about making them as effective as possible. At Figaf we have created solutions to enable the development process to be a little easier from development, documentation, testing and supporting. You can check our tool Figaf IRT that can support the full lifecycle. I think it will help you improve your development of new features, so you will be more flexible and develop things faster.

Next week I’m hosting a webinar where I’ll cover how you can use the Figaf IRT tool to optimize your SAP PI and CPI development process.

Signup for webinar on Speeding up integration

 

View the presentation

You can watch the full video here.

 

 

026 – Migrating to SAP B2B Add-On

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Today I discuss B2B migration with Kishore Enumula.  Kishore works with the Salling Group (Dansk Supermarket Group) one of the biggest retailers in Denmark. He has just been leading a migration from Seeburger BIC to B2B Add-on from SAP. I see that many consumers are moving away from Seeburger and starting to use SAP B2B Add-on.  Salling Group decided to migrate because they were their database had limited future support. They had no choice but to stop using the Seeburger tools. They had around 60-70 different message mapping they needed to migrate.  The entire process took about six months to complete.

Salling had 2000 partners listed in the Trading Partner Management (TPM) tool. They used the API to re-create all the partners because it would have been too difficult to manually enter all that information.  There were some performance problems and they needed to improve the CPA object cache to have all the partners defined. TPM also gave a good visibility to how was the active partners.

They created completely new mappings to the new structure, which gave the option to remove some of the old bad habits and use the new B2B functions.

In this podcast we also discuss:

  • Reasons why migration
  • Project time span and planning 
  • They build a tool for EDI team to manage the partners.
  • TPM performance was good once they enhanced the cache
  • Longtime archiving of EDI Messages. 

Figaf notes on the project

If you are considering a migration project do listen to the podcast and get the takeaways from it.

We have two offerings that will help in the process.

  • Seeburger migration tool. This will take the Seeburger Mapping and convert the structure of B2B Add-on. This will allow you to save many hours on the structure conversions. Read more on how it works on your SAP PI/PO system.
  • The other is Figaf IRT a test tool that makes it easier to set up tests and run them. It supports EDIFACT/X12 comparison and the B2B Splitter. It have a lot of features and can be used for more than just the b2b migration. So it supports the full development lifecycle of SAP PI. Check it out at https://figaf.com/IRT.

024 – SAP Integration and API

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In this show I’m thrilled to have Harsh Jegadeesan, who is a product manager from SAP. He is responsible to for quite a few of the integration product as SAP and has a strong presence in SAP progress to API. It was a really interesting conversation where we covered a lot about what was going on with integration at SAPTeched and SAP in general.

This is the first time I do a live interview and in a bit noisy setting, but it should be possible to hear what we are talking about.

We do cover quite a few interesting things on the show.

  • Using API as a way to remove the complexity of your landscape, as the bedsheet you use to throw over your bed to cover the mesh.
  • Why is the API different than the Enterprise SOA. One of the differences Harsh mentioned was that E-SOA was a waterfall approach whereas the API is a lot more agile. SAP is using the same API for UI so they will do a better job understanding them.
  • We talk about API and how to implement them in a customer landscape and how SAP is thinking about API.
  • Open connectors: One interesting point I took away from it was that it was more a hub model. So you could have to multiply ie. CRM system and then you would just all the Open Connector with one standard interface, then Open Connector would ensure it is delivered to the correct CRM system if organizations use different settings.
  • We talk about the Cloud Integration Suite and where it fits into the customer’s journey.

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021 – IFG Integration day with program

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A few months ago I shared a little about the IFG survey and the big event that we have planned for SAP Integration. A two day about what is happening with all SAP Integration. It is arranged by the Swedish SAP user group SAPSA taking place 5 to 6 November in Stockholm. In this episode I’m talking with Pontus Borgstrom Integration Architect at SKF and board member of SAPSA.

One of the reasons that I think it will be cool is there is quite a number of presentations from partners and SAP customers about their projects. I think this is where you will learn what is going on in the market and your pears is doing. SAP will also be presenting a lot of what they have been doing and their roadmaps. There will also be plenty of time for networking get to talk with fellow integration developer or architects to hear what they are doing.

There will also be some hands-on sessions (with some cloud systems) or demos that show something of what is going on with the integration.

It is an event focused on SAP Integration, so if you are interested in integration this is the event to go to.

You can register at the link below. If you are a part of your user group the price is just 100 EUR per day.

 

IFG Integration Days 2018

I do hope to see you there. I’ll be presenting some sessions on how to speed up your development sessions.

020 – Status of Enterprise Integration SAPPHIRENOW 2018 recap

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The cool thing about SAPPHIRENOW, which is SAP’s biggest event focusing on the business value of  SAP software. From an integration standpoint, there was a lot of interesting perspectives. So I created a webinar where I was covering some of the big change happening and what I believed people should start considering when working with SAP Integration.

Integration is going to be a lot more complicated over the next period of time, so you need to figure out how to position your SAP PI/PO system vs the Cloud Integration system.

For SAP to be successful they must enable customers integration. So there was a big focus on integration. Some of the topics covered in this podcast are S4 Integration, API management, SAP Cloud Platform, Open Connector, SAP Cloud Integration, prepackaged content.

You can also watch the slides here

Or watch the video

 

Check out our testing tool to improve your development speed at http://figaf.com/IRT

015 – Workflow in SAP Cloud Platform with DJ Adams

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I’m excited to welcome DJ Adams to The Integration Podcast this week.  DJ has been working with SAP software for more than 30 years.  He was an SAP Mentor for many years but has since retired to become an SAP Mentor alumnus.  DJ has shared a lot on the SAP Cloud Platform Workflow.  He has also written a series of blog posts on the subject where he is using the platform to find which beers he needs to drink next.  With my background on the SAP PI systems and BPMs there now is a gradually transitioning to the cloud so DJ’s experience is hugely valuable for my work.

DJ first started working on R/2 on IBM mainframes in the 1980’s and has been working with SAP software ever since.  He has been fascinated by the cloud platform and has worked with systems outside of the SAP world including Google App Engine.  He never worked much with PI but the workflow service is very closely related to SAP BPM.

Getting started with Workflow is really easy.  It’s available as a trial account on the Cloud Platform.  Users can easily enable it along with the Portal Service and the full stack Web IDE.  You need to define your workflow definitions.  You need nothing other than a web browser to access those services.

The workflow service is about orchestrating services and tasks across applications but also across systems, organizations, and individuals.  There is a service task building block that effectively gives you the ability to make HTTP calls.  You also have script tasks that will let you mess around with the context of the data of the workflow instance.  There is also a mail task.  Then there is the most important step type in a workflow definition which is the user task.  Those let you send tasks to a user to let them be able to interact with that workflow instance.

You don’t need to code very much in the UI when you’re first getting started.  But if you are going to do any meaningful workflows you will need to do some coding to create user task interfaces for the SAP Fiori My Inbox app, which is a master-detail style app. The user task components you build are injected into the component container in the My Inbox app when tasks are selected for processing.  You need to know some SAPUI5 in order to do that, but the team plans to release a forms-based facility to create user task interfaces in the future.

 

 

 

 

13 – The how-to guide to SAP Cloud Connector with Morten Wittrock

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I’m really pleased to welcome, for the first time, one of my old colleagues in the SAP world onto the show. We’ve covered a lot of ground over the last 12 episodes but today I want to discuss the SAP Cloud Connector. To that end I’m joined by Morten Wittrock an SAP technologist based from KMD in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Morten and I started working together back in 2005. His focus has gradually shifted towards SAP Cloud Platform so he is the perfect person to talk about the Cloud Connector.

Morten is one of the top experts on the Cloud Connector. He’s literally written the book on the subject titled Cloud Connector for SAP Cloud Platform: How-to Guide. Cloud Connector exists to solve a problem created when a company combines their on-site SAP system with the Cloud Platform. Accessing the Cloud Platform from the on-site system is not a problem. But the reverse is more difficult. The on-site system sits behind several firewalls and is not supposed to be accessible from the internet.

You can win Morten’s book, share the podcast with Hashtag #Integrationpodcast on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, then I’ll draw two winners of the limited edition of the Cloud Connector book in paper format.  

The benefit of Cloud Connector is that you don’t have to allow any incoming traffic. The software is installed in the DMZ between your innermost and outermost firewalls. Cloud connector will open a TLS encrypted tunnel to the SAP Cloud Platform. From that point on whenever the Cloud Platform needs to access the on-site system, it will utilize that tunnel.

Cloud Platform continues to add new features. The most recent 2.11 has increased the number of APIs dramatically. There is also created a proof-of-concept command line tool for Cloud Connector which uses some of the functionality of the APIs.

Morten will be hosting an SAP Inside Track event Saturday May 5th, 2018. The event is full of cutting edge presentations on all things SAP. Tickets are still available

Morten really likes Cloud Connector. It’s a very useful tool despite being only a small part of the SAP system.