On Cloud around the world! Thoughts of a pundit straight from Walldorf

Int4 Team

2020-07-01

Let me introduce my guest

I’m sure I don’t have to introduce today’s guest to anyone familiar with SAP Cloud Platform Integration. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Udo Paltzer, who is a Product Manager for SAP’s integration platform technology with a focus on process integration and API based integration. Udo has 20 years of experience in the integration domain, including Cloud and on-premise integration technology. As a product manager, Udo supports customers in their Cloud integration journey and aligns customer requirements towards SAP’s integration platform technology with SAP engineering. Furthermore, Udo is also a speaker during industry events as well as customer & partner workshops.

About the future of the On-premise installation, support for SAP PO till 2030, and positioning CPI regarding to KYMA – Udo Paltzer is interviewed by Jarosław JZ Ziółkowski.

Reading time: 5 minutes

1. I often hear that you are a very busy man. Thus, let me ask, how often do you travel to customers, events – promoting SAP integration solutions?

Very often! Frankly speaking, in the regular time – when there was no COVID-19 pandemic, I used to do it even every week. However, keep in mind that customers also visit us frequently at SAP headquarters in Walldorf. Each meeting is an excellent opportunity for workshops as well as CodeJam sessions. I’m involved in events like TechEd or SAPPHIRE too, so I have tons of opportunities to meet with my customers and partners. In recent days, due to the ongoing pandemic, we have transferred all these activities to the virtual world. We make webinars, add videos on Youtube and so on. I hope, however, that soon everything will return to normal and we will be able to meet everyone face to face again.

2. What is the most exciting part of those trips to you? But please be frank, it could even be flying only if you like it.

Flying is exhilarating for me, that is true, but I also often travel by train. So what part of the trips is most exciting for me? I can safely say that the main part of each trip – called the meeting. That’s when we have the opportunity to get to know our clients’ businesses better, to identify the challenges they face and finally find the best solutions for them. That’s what drives me to work and doesn’t even allow for a moment’s boredom.

3. Tell me a little bit more about these challenges.

You know, it’s an individual matter. It seems that one of the “challenges” can be defined by a broad understanding of SAP integration technology as well as our portfolio in that matter. It’s a vast subject, so not everyone knows which solutions can and should be combined with the other one to achieve the desired effect in a customer’s Landscape.

4. During the first interview, I asked Pontus “Cloud or Hybrid – which approach will win in the short and long term?”. What is your opinion on this?

I can say – both of them. Why? It’s simple. Each user has different requirements, approaches, needs. For some, data security is fundamental (Banks, military organizations, government agencies), others have many data in their On-Premise installations and don’t see the need to move it to a Cloud solution to integrate the Landscape. I’m always happy to help to understand the impact of introducing Cloud systems to on-premise landscapes. The crucial point is that hybrid is a combination of Cloud and On-Premise components in one Landscape, while business processes span around both components. What’s worthy of mentioning, we keep on supporting all deployment options, and it is entirely up to the customers to decide which deployment option suits them better.

5. Some people say that cloud solutions can become the most common solution. Do you think that in a few years – the On-premise installation will be used seldom? Can cloud solutions displace them?

From my point of view – it’s going to be a mixed approach. As I mentioned earlier, not everyone will be able and willing to move to the Cloud, for example, for security reasons. Based on my experience, as well as observing what’s happening on the market, I’d be saying that in a few years, most things will be happening in Hybrid solutions.

6. Let’s put aside the future for a moment, I have to ask about the present. Why are customers safe to use SAP PO for the next decade?

That’s confirmed information that SAP PO in version 7.5 will be supported until the end of 2030. Thus, it is almost a decade. Moreover, within this time, the process of switching to the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite will not be complicated; we even plan to provide migration tools from SAP Process Orchestration to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite. I’d like to recommend the following three actions to do it smoothly.

Upgrade the latest version of SAP NetWeaver 7.5 with lower versions reaching the end of maintenance at the close of 2020, upgrade to the long term supported release of SAP NetWeaver, which is 7.5.
Create new agile integrations with SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite. Future-proof your Hybrid integration strategy by developing new agile integrations – including Cloud and Hybrid process integration needs (A2A, B2B, B2G), data integration, API-based integrations as well as event-driven, extensible integrations – using SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite.
Move existing integration scenarios to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite with following the best practices to safely and securely move existing scenarios to SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite from existing solutions, such as:

Move all Cloud-to-Cloud and Ground-to-Cloud integration scenarios by default to the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite

Move your pass-through integration scenarios to API Management within the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite applying security policies, traffic policies and access controls to your APIs

Leverage the flexible design time and runtime of the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite to migrate your integration-centric scenarios modeled with ccBPM (cross-component BPM) in SAP Process Integration dual-stack to the Cloud integration runtime inside SAP Process Orchestration

7. Last but not least, under one of the previous interviews somebody asked ‘how CPI is positioning regarding KYMA’. I have the feeling that you are the best person to respond to this query.

The SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite is a versatile and enterprise-grade integration platform as a service offered by SAP. The SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite offers end-to-end process excellence, and with this integration, platform customers can integrate people, processes, data and devices in hybrid landscapes. I. e. the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite offers an open and holistic integration platform to Integrate anything (people, things, processes and data), anywhere (on-premise/Cloud, edge) and build connected experiences for customers, partners and suppliers. And to make it more concrete, SAP Cloud Platform Integration as part of the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite supports integration scenarios such as application-to-application (A2A) integration, integration of business partners (B2B) and integration of government agencies (B2G). SAP Cloud Platform Integration covers typical capabilities like:

Integration logic, such as message correlation, compression, decompression, security (encryption, decryption, signing, validation of signed messages), split, merge, etc.
Mapping of data structures between sender format and receiver format based on a variety of data formats
Routing of messages – including content-based routing and routing to multiple receivers
Connectivity via various communication protocols, such as HTTP, SOAP, OData, REST, AMQP, SFTP, RFC, IDoc, AS2, AS4, Mail etc.
Process Integration with 3rd party systems (160+ Open connectors) to simplify, harmonize and accelerate the integration with non SAP applications

On the other side, Kyma provides the possibility to add business logic and extend an existing solution. Typical examples for business logic include aggregations, validations, customer or region or industry-specific business logic. Further information about the positioning between SAP Cloud Platform Integration and Kyma can be found in the following blog.

Note from the author: If you want to learn more about CPI, especially “How to connect to Enterprise Messaging from CPI” – Check out my buddy Andrzej’s video.

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