SAP Integration Suite Explained

Arguably, a business is the sum of its connections- whether it be business partners, customers, colleagues and various other stakeholders. The advent of AI and cloud has resulted in a huge increase of data coming and going from these sources and beyond simultaneously. Thus, the need for integration capabilities has never been so crucial for keeping up with and exceeding the pace of business.

To drive success, you need all your systems, applications and data working in perfect harmony, seamlessly sharing information- regardless of if they are SAP or not. This is the primary function of SAP Integration Suite — to unify disparate systems, streamline processes to unlock the potential of enterprise data.

This guide has been crafted by our in-house experts to answer your questions about Platform as a Service (PaaS). It explores why the topic has captured the attention of CIOs and highlights its growing necessity.

What is SAP Integration Suite?

SAP Integration Suite is a cloud-first integration platform that enables seamless connectivity between SAP and non-SAP systems, services, applications, events and data- both on-premise and in the cloud. Tailored to meet the evolving demands of modern enterprises, it provides a suite of tools, technologies, and pre-built integration content to simplify the process of connecting applications, data, and business processes.

Think of SAP Integration Suite as the glue that binds your IT landscape, facilitating real-time data exchange, automation and API-driven innovation. Whether integrating legacy systems with cutting-edge applications or bridging the gap between internal and external stakeholders, the suite empowers businesses to create robust, scalable, and dynamic digital workflows that helps carry a business forward.

What are capabilities of SAP Integration Suite?

What sets SAP Integration Suite apart is its ability to simplify integrations whilst offering the flexibility to adapt to any business changes. With capabilities that cater to both current demands and future growth, it’s designed to be the backbone of seamless digital connectivity. These capabilities include:

1. Build End-to-End Integration Scenarios:
   Design, discover, and manage integration scenarios with Cloud Integration to connect applications, data, and processes seamlessly across your business.
2. Manage APIs with Confidence:
   With API Management and Graph, you can discover, govern, secure, and publish APIs to developers while ensuring compliance with best-practice security policies. This facilitates secure data exchange and fosters collaboration across ecosystems.
3. Harness Event-Driven Architecture:
   Easily publish and consume business events to create real-time, event-driven integrations that enhance responsiveness and streamline application connectivity.
4. Extend Connectivity Beyond SAP:
   Through Open Connectors, integrate non-SAP cloud applications directly into your scenarios, broadening your connectivity options and simplifying complex multi-cloud environments.
5. Implement Smarter Interfaces and Mappings:
   Integration Advisor leverages machine learning and crowdsourcing to simplify the design of interfaces and mappings, enabling faster and more intelligent integrations.
6. Streamline Trading Partner Management:
   Efficiently manage and operate business-to-business scenarios with Trading Partner Management, ensuring smooth and reliable interactions with external stakeholders.
7. Access SAP Business Suite Data Effortlessly:
   Utilise OData Provisioning to tap into critical business data from the SAP Business Suite, enabling real-time insights and decision-making.
8. Define and Govern Integration Strategies:
   With Integration Assessment powered by ISA-M, you can define, document, and govern your integration strategy, ensuring alignment with business goals and best practices.
9. Simplify Migration Assessments:
   Migration Assessment helps estimate the effort required to migrate SAP Process Orchestration scenarios, providing clarity and direction for your transition to modern integration platforms.
10. Run Hybrid Integration Landscapes:
    Seamlessly manage APIs and integration scenarios within your private landscapes, offering flexibility and control for hybrid IT environments.
11. Enable Data Space Collaboration:
    Through Data Space Integration, you can exchange, maintain, and consume assets within defined data spaces, fostering collaboration and data sharing across teams.

What additional capability does SAP Integration Suite offer for non-SAP applications?

SAP Integration Suite extends its capabilities to non-SAP applications through Open Connectors, which enable seamless connectivity with a wide range of third-party cloud applications. This integration simplifies the process of connecting non-SAP systems to your existing SAP landscape, enhancing data flow across diverse environments while significantly reducing the need for complex custom development.

Why are businesses choosing SAP Integration Suite?

Modern enterprise architecture is reliant on a complex network of data, systems and applications to operate seamlessly. Therefore, Integrations are no longer a luxury— they’re essential. Without a unified approach to connecting data and processes, enterprises risk inefficiencies, silos, and with an inability to properly innovate. SAP Integration Suite stands empowers businesses to unlock new possibilities, optimise operations, and create a foundation for continuous growth via keeping the data, systems and apps flowing properly, connecting across an organisation, and outside of it, seamlessly.

Here are five of the most common reasons that have made Integration Suite essential to SAP strategy:

1. Customise the Integration Process
   Every business is unique and SAP Integration Suite empowers organisations to tailor their integration processes accordingly. So, regardless of complexity, all processes work in unison. It adapts to various ecosystems and enhances interactions between customers, employees, partners, etc. The adaptability speeds up integration but also allows businesses to leverage both SAP and non-SAP data, ensuring seamless connectivity, wherever it comes from.
2. Accelerate Innovation
   Integration Suite provides the tools to reuse existing processes, data, and applications for building new solutions. For example, combining APIs, pre-built integrations and reusable components, businesses can create innovative workflows and applications without having to start from scratch. This approach is productive productive but also enhances the experience for both employees and end-users.
3. Simplify Complex Business Processes
   Modern IT environments are a mix of SAP and non-SAP. Ensuring seamless data accessibility across the organisation is no small feat. SAP Integration Suite gets around this by being a platform designed to integrate diverse systems and solutions. It transforms intricate business processes into streamlined workflows, enabling companies to improve operational efficiency while reducing the burden on IT teams.
4. Create End-to-End Integration Scenarios
   Businesses can design and implement complete, end-to-end integration scenarios using Cloud Integration within Integration Suite. This capability ensures that every step of a business process, from start to finish, is seamlessly connected, driving better alignment and operational effectiveness.
5. Manage Business Events in Real-Time
   With event-driven architecture, SAP Integration Suite helps companies design, publish, and consume events. This enables systems to communicate and respond to changes in real time, creating a more dynamic and responsive IT environment.

How to use SAP Integration Suite

Using SAP Integration Suite depends on your specific integration goals and the type of processes you want to connect. Whether you’re designing end-to-end integration scenarios, managing APIs, handling events, or connecting SAP and non-SAP systems, the platform provides flexible tools to suit your needs. That said, a good place to star is identifying your integration requirements—such as cloud-to-cloud, hybrid, or application-to-application—and leverage. Audit which integrations can be removed/replaced and which can be upgraded totally.

Here are 5 tips to manage SAP Integration Suite, once integrations are set up:

1. Monitor and Optimise Regularly:
   Use the platform’s monitoring tools to track integration performance, identify inefficiencies, and make adjustments to keep workflows running smoothly.
2. Update APIs and Security Policies:
   Regularly review APIs and integration configurations to ensure they remain secure, compliant, and aligned with current business needs.
3. Leverage Alerts and Notifications:
   Set up alerts for critical integration scenarios to detect and resolve issues quickly, minimising potential disruptions.
4. Test Changes in Sandbox Environments:
   Always test updates or new integration scenarios in a controlled environment to avoid unexpected downtime or errors in production. We recommend at-least a 2-tier landscape (Development and Production).
5. Document and Govern Integration Processes:
   Maintain clear documentation of integration workflows and use governance tools like Integration Assessment to ensure consistency and scalability.

How to access SAP Integration Suite?

Accessing SAP Integration Suite is straightforward, but it requires an active SAP account and subscription to the service. Here’s how to get started:

1. Sign Up or Log In to SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP):
   If you don’t already have an SAP account, create one by visiting the SAP website. Once you have an account, log in to SAP BTP, which serves as the foundation for accessing SAP Integration Suite.
2. Navigate to SAP Integration Suite in BTP:
   Once logged in to SAP BTP, you can easily locate SAP Integration Suite from the dashboard or service catalogue.
3. Subscribe to SAP Integration Suite:
   Depending on your organisation’s needs, you may need to subscribe to specific SAP Integration Suite offerings or services. SAP offers flexible subscription plans based on usage.
4. Access Integration Suite Tools:
   Once you’ve subscribed, you’ll be able to access the suite’s full set of tools—such as Cloud Integration, API Management, and Integration Advisor—through the SAP BTP cockpit.
5. Use the SAP Integration Suite Console:
   From the console, you can manage integration scenarios, monitor performance, and configure new integrations using a user-friendly interface.

How much does SAP Integration Suite cost?

The cost of SAP Integration Suite depends on several factors, including the specific subscription plan, the scale of usage, and the services included. SAP typically offers flexible pricing based on consumption, which means costs can vary depending on the number of integration scenarios, API calls, and data volume processed. Pricing is generally structured around a pay-as-you-go model, with options for both small businesses and large enterprises. For exact pricing, it’s best to contact SAP directly or work with an SAP partner, like ourselves, to get a customised quote based on your business needs and the specific services you plan to use.

Integration Suite vs SAP PO

While both SAP Integration Suite and SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PO) serve as integration solutions for SAP environments, they differ in several key aspects:

1. Cloud-Native vs. On-Premise:

• SAP Integration Suite is a cloud-native platform designed to support modern integration needs across hybrid, multi-cloud, and on-premise landscapes. It offers scalability, flexibility, and real-time integration capabilities.
• SAP PO is largely an on-premise solution that focuses on integrating SAP systems with each other and with non-SAP systems. It is suitable for businesses with legacy infrastructures but may require additional effort for cloud integration.

2. Flexibility and Scope:

• SAP Integration Suite provides a comprehensive set of cloud-based tools such as API management, cloud integration, Event Mesh, and Open Connectors. It supports both SAP and non-SAP systems, making it ideal for modern, multi-cloud environments.
• SAP PO is more focused on traditional process integration, offering tools for managing business-to-business scenarios, process orchestration, and connecting SAP systems. It’s well-suited for organisations already invested in SAP’s on-premise technologies.

3. Integration Approach:

• SAP Integration Suite supports event-driven and API-based integrations, allowing for more flexible, real-time data flows and dynamic process automation across systems.
• SAP PO uses a more traditional, message-based approach to integration, focusing on business process management and data transformations.

4. Ease of Use and Innovation:

• SAP Integration Suite includes features like pre-built connectors, AI-driven integration advisor, and tools to accelerate innovation. It allows faster deployment and more streamlined development processes, with an emphasis on a user-friendly interface.
• SAP PO can be more complex to configure and maintain, particularly for companies that need to integrate non-SAP applications or migrate to the cloud. It requires more specialised knowledge of process orchestration.

5. Cost and Scalability:

• SAP Integration Suite is offered on a subscription-based pricing model, which scales according to consumption, offering flexibility for growing businesses and changing needs.
• SAP PO typically involves upfront licensing and infrastructure costs, with a higher focus on maintaining an on-premise integration environment.

SAP PO is no longer a long-term option for businesses, as SAP has announced that mainstream maintenance will be phased out by 2027. While SAP PO has been a solid choice for companies with established on-premise infrastructures needing stable, process-focused integrations, it’s increasingly clear that SAP Integration Suite is the stand-out choice moving forward.

Regardless of your business’s current infrastructure, cloud strategy, or integration needs, moving to SAP Integration Suite ensures long-term support, innovation, and a more sustainable future for your integration landscape.

Migration to SAP Integration Suite

SAP is officially ending support for SAP PO in 2027, making the move inevitable rather than a luxury. The clock is ticking, and businesses need to act sooner rather than later to ensure they don’t find themselves scrambling as the deadline approaches.

That might seem a long time away making it an easy job to be thrown to the back of the queue, but now is the time to start planning for this change. Explore why migrating is essential, why the sooner the better, the numerous benefits it brings and the risks your organisation faces if you delay with this guide.