Customers are accelerating their move to the cloud to keep pace with changing circumstances — be it to reduce their carbon footprint, increase their productivity, or react more flexibly to the needs of their customers.
Over years and decades, companies have implemented streamlined business processes in their value chains using the features of on-premise Âé¶¹Ô´´ systems to adapt the standard functionality to their needs. However, within the growing heterogeneous landscapes of Âé¶¹Ô´´ and non-Âé¶¹Ô´´ systems, these customizations became more complex and expensive to maintain. Additionally, most of the customers use hybrid landscapesÌýwith a mix of cloud and on-premise systems to run their businesses.
With the move to Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA, customers have the chance to standardize their business processes. This has two benefits: Customers can avoid modifications in their Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA systems to the absolute minimum, and they can implement process extensions or integrations to other Âé¶¹Ô´´, partner, or third-party systems using Âé¶¹Ô´´ Cloud Platform Extension Suite and Âé¶¹Ô´´ Cloud Platform Integration Suite. This is true for both Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA Cloud and Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA on premise.
What Are the Advantages of Using Âé¶¹Ô´´ Cloud Platform Integration Suite?
As an integral part of ,Ìý allows simplifying integration for both Âé¶¹Ô´´ as well as third-party scenarios. This versatile, fully managed, multi-cloud suite was recently rated by Gartner as a .
Âé¶¹Ô´´ Cloud Platform Integration Suite offers a modular set of integration services covering all needs of cloud and hybrid landscapes:
- Application-to-application process integrations across value chains, such as lead-to-cash, recruit-to-retire, source-to-pay, and design-to-operate
- Business-t0-business (B2B) integrations to integrate with suppliers across the digital ecosystem, including e-government (business-to-government or B2G) integrations to support digital compliance
- API-driven integrations, including full API life-cycle management and omni-channel access
- Event-driven integrations to support sense-and-respond scenarios based on business events
- Data integration and pipelines to support artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data lake or data warehousing scenarios with Âé¶¹Ô´´ Data Intelligence
- Master dataÌýintegrations viaÌýÌýthat provide master data synchronization enabled by the Âé¶¹Ô´´ One Domain Model
Âé¶¹Ô´´ Cloud Platform Integration Suite is complemented by a rich set ofÌý, available on Âé¶¹Ô´´ API Business Hub, both for cloud-to-cloud as well as for hybrid integration scenarios.
The latest additions include for core business objects, with more than 290 APIs, including 61 event objects that enable customers to build integrations with third-party solutions and to build apps and extensions on Âé¶¹Ô´´ Cloud Platform.
Running Hybrid Scenarios in the Integrated Intelligent Suite
After releasingÌý this year, customers asked if Âé¶¹Ô´´ also offers out-of-the-box integrations for hybrid Âé¶¹Ô´´ landscapes. We are currently working on these. The good news is that customers can already benefit from some of the existing integrations between Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA and other Âé¶¹Ô´´ cloud solutions and extend their processes to the Âé¶¹Ô´´ cloud portfolio.
Within the hire-to-retire business process, for example, the following scenarios with the Âé¶¹Ô´´ Cloud Platform Integration can be enabled:
- Customers that want to transition their human capital management (HCM) system to the cloud while still leveraging investments into employee data administration on premise and that need to replicate ÌýandÌýÌýdata from Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA to Âé¶¹Ô´´ SuccessFactors Employee Central can use theÌý.
- Âé¶¹Ô´´ SuccessFactors Employee Central is used as the system of record holding the employee data and reporting lines of all employees. But existing processes, such as payroll, time management, or custom human resources (HR) processes still run in an on-premise Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA system landscape.
- WithÌý, we use a new way of simplifying Âé¶¹Ô´´-to-Âé¶¹Ô´´ integrations. Âé¶¹Ô´´ applications can synchronize business objects with common attributes and use common semantics, for example a workforce person (employee, contingent/external worker) or a cost center. The models and additional information can also be found on .
- A first hybrid use case will soon be available. The on-premise release 2020 of Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA is ready for master-data integration with Âé¶¹Ô´´ SuccessFactors as leading human capital management (HCM) system to Âé¶¹Ô´´ S/4HANA. Using the aligned Âé¶¹Ô´´ One Domain Model ÌýviaÌýÌýwill soon be available for cloud and on-premise customers
Âé¶¹Ô´´â€™s Integration Strategy Moving Forward
Âé¶¹Ô´´ will continue to invest in the Âé¶¹Ô´´-to-Âé¶¹Ô´´Ìýout-of-the-box integrationsÌýfor hybrid scenarios along the integrated intelligent suite. Our goal is to provide customers with the capabilities they need to help ensure an open and holistic integrationÌýwith partner and third-party solutions.
With this rich set of integration capabilities that Âé¶¹Ô´´â€™s Business Technology Platform provides as part of its integration strategy, customers can accelerate their journey to digitize their value chain.
To learn more, check out the Ìýand theÌý.
Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of Âé¶¹Ô´´ SE.
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