Make SAP HANA integration easy with Anypoint Platform

SAP HANA, released in 2010 as a new business data platform, is a fundamentally different architecture to the classic relational database. Running in-memory, where data is stored in columns instead of rows, allows for faster, near-to-real-time data retrieval and analytics capabilities.

SAP S/4HANA, a suite of ERP software, runs on top of that SAP HANA in-memory database. SAP S/4HANA lifts many of the technical constraints that historically shaped SAP application design and has become the workhorse of the enterprise landscape. It simplifies the application, data and functional architecture which underpins its business functionality, enabling the ERP system to operate at the high speed needed to support 24x7 digital operations. This new vision for SAP ERP allows businesses to begin to consolidate siloed capabilities, providing a trusted, single source of truth.

Senior IT decision makers undergoing the mandatory SAP S/4HANA update may see this as an opportunity to make broader changes – such as adopting the public cloud – that may make their businesses more agile and innovative.

However, this migration will not be easy, and businesses need to continue to deliver value while the transformation occurs. To navigate this transformation, businesses need many capabilities from their integration solution – the SAP S/4HANA update can be accelerated and optimized with a more flexible platform. Given large enterprises have complex, interwoven connectivity needs, ensuring agility and flexibility requires multiple API-led connectivity building blocks. An SAP HANA integration underpinned by an API-led architecture enables this iterative journey, and will deliver value in and of itself – the wider landscape is shielded from changes relating to individual applications as they evolve or are replaced. In addition, API-led architecture supports the delivery of new digital services as they are needed across the landscape.

MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform offers the flexibility, ease, and tools that businesses are looking for to make SAP integration with other systems in the enterprise a simplified process. Anypoint Platform enables users to continue operating on legacy SAP middleware for SAP systems while supporting innovative use cases that require APIs and hybrid deployment on-premises and in the cloud.

For SAP integration scenarios, Anypoint Platform includes SAP-certified connectors to new and legacy SAP systems: Concur, SuccessFactors, ERP CC, Business Objects, Hybris, R3, S/4HANA, as well as existing integrations built in SAP PI/PO. Anypoint Platform users can easily build APIs to make legacy middleware and systems work with cloud-native applications and have access to 26 templates to speed up developer work, including Salesforce to SAP and Workday to SAP. This ensures SAP HANA users can maximize the value of legacy SAP investment throughout the modernization process.

MuleSoft is simpler to learn with one platform, combining APIs, integrations, and monitoring for both on-premises and cloud, as opposed to learning many products and making them work together. This reduces training, staffing, and other development costs and increases the speed at which the organization can deliver applications that capitalize on changing business needs.

MuleSoft also has a large ecosystem of non-SAP connectors, examples, and templates out of the box, accelerating integrations to non-SAP systems. Businesses want best of breed software, which increasingly comes from different vendors, therefore increasing the need for an integration solution that excels at connecting a highly diverse set of systems – MuleSoft delivers faster in a world where most integrations are SAP to non-SAP.

Using APIs as brokers between backend SAP HANA systems and frontend experiences allows for the migration of backend systems to the cloud by running old and new systems in parallel during the transition, reducing the risk of downtime and ultimately building an architecture that simplifies migration to the cloud.

MuleSoft users can build an integration once and deploy it anywhere, granting flexibility in the SAP integration. Many integration solutions may impede the migration to, or even mere experimentation with, the cloud because they require different runtimes; MuleSoft, on the other hand, has one runtime for on-premises, in the cloud, APIs, or integrations.

Compared to other alternatives, Anypoint Platform enables organizations to quickly deliver SAP integration projects to address immediate business opportunities while laying the foundation for future projects, making it the best choice for SAP integration.

To learn more about SAP integration solutions, check out the whitepaper Best practices for SAP application integration projects.