To deliver cohesive business operations and to better satisfy business needs, integration is essential for exchanging data and content between systems and applications. There are many different integration services offered with the HANA Cloud Platform. So many times, I received questions as when to use which tool. This blog explains the different integration services available today with SAP HANA Cloud Platform and when to use which technology and what are typical use cases for the individual integration service.
As far as integration is concerned, this blog post will cover 5 main use cases.
- Orchestrate Processes Across Cloud and On Premises Apps
- Digital Omni channel Access
- Internet of Things
- Event Processing
- Data Integration, Data Access, and Data Quality
Let’s start with each use case and which technologies to be used under that use case.
I. Orchestrate Processes Across Cloud and On Premises Apps:
In this use case, you want to integrate and orchestrate processes and data across on premise and cloud systems (sometimes referred to as a hybrid landscape). For this application, you can use following technologies:
- SAP HANA Cloud Platform, cloud connector:
Features an on-premise agent, SSL VPN, destination configuration & security key management in HCP Cockpit.
- When to use cloud connector:
- For point to point connectivity and programmatic integration
- Need for connectivity with cloud applications from on-premises systems, but no mediation required, such as mapping, routing, connectivity, security
- Need to replicate the data from on-premises database or BI tools to SAP HANA database running in cloud
- Typical use cases:
- If there is an application running on HCP and it needs to access some data from on-premises backend system, then there is no need to open the port on firewall. Some examples include:
- Web shop application running in the cloud that integrates with an on-premises business suite for triggering sales orders.
- Analysis and monitoring application in the cloud that analyzes real-time data on HANA and triggers alerts or maintenance requests in a connected on-premises CRM system when certain events happen.
- Employee or manager self-service applications which shall be accessible on mobile devices and outside of the company Intranet and integrate with on-premises ERP systems.
2. SAP HANA Cloud Platform, integration service (Formerly known as HANA Cloud Integration, HCI)
- When to use HANA Cloud Integration:
- Need for on-demand to on-demand and on-premises to on-demand integration
- Need of compliance scenarios, such as e-invoicing and payroll, to integrate with legal authorities
- Would like to graphically model integration flows
- When you have more than a handful of systems to integration and you would like to have a central managed tool for integrations, rather than having to hand code applications when connections change.
- When you do not have or want to use an on-premises based integration middleware such as SAP Process Orchestration
- When you do not want to invest into an on-Premise middleware and bear the costs associated with it (system set up, maintenance etc.) (perhaps combine with last bullet)
- Need to process individual messages during integration
- Need for integration with 3rd party technologies
- Typical use cases:
- Consider a Business-to-Government scenario wherein you want to exchange eDocuments with government system for legal and tax compliance. In this case, you can use pre-packaged integration content that will cover both the processes within the Business Suite and the integration with the local authorities
- Suppose the customer wants to build hybrid solution to manage entire sales cycles from account, contacts management to activity, leads and opportunities management etc and also want to extend the mobile reach to access client data at their fingertips. For this use case, they can integrate cloud for sales with the on-premises system using HCI.
- Note: can be used with SAP HANA Cloud Platform, cloud connector to establish on-premises connectivity.
II. Digital Omni channel Access
Digital transformation demands that businesses provide multiple channels to customers, partners, and employees such as web, mobile, and via APIs. SAP HANA Cloud Platform, API management can help you securely deliver and scale access to your corporate data and services.
- SAP HANA Cloud Platform, API management:
- When to use API Management:
- Need to expose digital assets as APIs across multiple channels to customer, partners and external world so that developers can build apps on top of that
- Need for security and throttling mechanisms for exposed APIs
- Need for performance monitoring and real time analytics of API usage
- Typical use cases:
- Consider an example of a supermarket that wants to provide digital access to its services via mobile app so that customers can order groceries on the go using the app. For that, they need to expose some APIs in a secure way. Also supermarkets can integrate with services provided by 3rd party warehouses and delivery services by consuming the APIs. If supermarkets want to analyze the API usage and make some business decisions based on that, then for all these applications, they can use API Management.
- Another example is delivery services. If they want to expose APIs for providing self-services for end users such as allowing users to calculate shipping costs for a product, auto-generating shipping label upon sale to take it to the local receiver to drop-off etc., then they can use API Management here.
III. Internet of Things:
Internet of Things touches almost every industry. Starting from R&D, Logistics to service operations, we get IoT relevant data from everywhere and based on that data, we can enhance business processes. For this use case, we can use SAP HANA Cloud Platform, Internet of Things service.
- SAP HANA Cloud Platform, Internet of Things service
- When to use IoT services:
- Need to securely onboard and configure the devices remotely
- Need to send/receive messages to/from the devices
- Collect sensor data and store it in the HCP persistence layer
- Need support for various transport protocols and message formats
- Typical use cases:
- Consider the scenario of predictive maintenance. In a manufacturing factory, if you want to monitor the equipment in real-time and predict by when a key component of the machine might cause an unplanned machine downtime, you can use IoT services. Remote service engineer supervises these machines. He can verify the machine condition with a real-time machine monitoring dashboard on which the values of the monitored sensors are showed. And he can get real time insights, e.g. whether the machine is in operation, whether sensor values surpass the upper and lower limits, or what is the trend of the sensor values.
- Another use case is from the warehouse company. The warehouse worker uses an app on his smart device. Using IoT services, the app sends order information to the forklift. The forklift autonomously transforms into the necessary configuration needed for the transport such as location, quantity, type, weight or size of the materials to be moved. It goes to the location and lifts/drops off the load. Also usage of forklifts is recorded. e.g. Company A used forklift 1 for 25 minutess and it lifted 500 pounds of load today etc. So using this info, customers can be charged precisely, no charge for idle time and forklift can be used to its max capacity.
IV. Event Processing
If you need to consume high-volume, high-velocity event streams for scenarios such as fraud detection or sensor data as fast as the data arrives, and then capture useful information to enable you to respond immediately, as things happen the technology to use is ‘SAP HANA Cloud Platform, smart data streaming’.
- SAP HANA Cloud Platform, smart data streaming:
- When to use smart data streaming:
- Need to incorporate real-time event steam processing and complex event processing based on analysis of streaming data
- Collect event data streaming in from any number of live sources
- Filter and transform the data before capturing high-value data in the SAP HANA database
- Actively monitor incoming data for real-time situation detection, generating alerts/notifications or immediate response
- Continuously compute and publish operational statistics, KPI's and indices, streaming data to live operational dashboards
- Typical use cases:
- Consider the scenario in Oil and gas industry. Energy regulations requires the production of daily operational activities reports and perform analysis on monthly reports. And they needed to filter that data and do real time analytics on that data. Using SDS, they can collect data streaming coming from sensors and this data is combined with data from other systems such as accounting, financial systems etc. as well as use historical data in SAP HANA and perform analytics on this data.
- Another use case is from the public sector. If there is an earthquake, and immediately following an earthquake, it is necessary to identify which bridges are unsafe. In order to do this, Bridges can be equipped with thousands of optical vibration sensors. Using SDS, you can collect data from these sensors, and then analyze data to detect abnormal vibration indicating that bridge might be unsafe and you can send alerts. So you can perform real time analytics to raise warning ahead of time and prevent potential damage.
V. Data Integration, Data Access, and Data Quality:
Sometimes it requires to perform real time replication of data. And this data is huge and you don’t need all the data, so you want to filter out some data. In such applications, you can use following technologies:
- SAP HANA Cloud Platform, smart data integration:
- When to use smart data integration:
- Virtualization- Need to query tables from external systems but don’t persist the results in HANA
- Need to copy existing tables (structure & data) from an external system into HANA-You can have initial load with option for real time replication if the source system supports it
- Integration/ETL – extract data from an external system, transform it using a wide variety of transformations (e.g. filter, join, union, case, pivot, history preserve, etc…), and persist it in HANA or in an external system
- Typical use cases:
- Consider the use case where business users of various industries and countries were maintaining website content globally in different ways and using a variety of different tools. In order to save IT costs, it is required to provide the business users a single platform which enables them to maintain and publish marketing content supporting the entire maintenance process (data maintenance, publications and approvals). Main need is to replicate data and make it available in real time from various sources. It can be achieved using SDI
- Consider another scenario where you need to get data in real time from ERP to HANA. Transactional tables that are very large in nature (~100MM+ records) require special filtering and some other transformations to get only required data. This can be resolved using SDI.
2. SAP HANA Cloud Platform, remote data sync service
- When to use remote data sync service:
- Need to synchronize huge numbers of remote databases into a consolidated SAP HANA database in the cloud
- Need to perform batch data transfer when network connectivity is intermittent
- Typical use cases:
- Consider the scenario where sensors are connected in a coal mine. And you want to synchronize data collected from these sensors. But the problem is, internet connectivity is intermittent in that mine. So in order to synchronize data, you can use Remote data sync service.
- AP Agile Data Preparation is a self-service data preparation application providing data discovery, integration, and transformation capabilities. Quickly transform your data into actionable, easily consumable information. Built for all types of users – the software can help you drive more successful analytics, data migration, and master data management (MDM) initiatives. Simplify how you access and discover the shape of data and become far more productive and agile than you ever dreamed.
Thus is an overall brief introduction of all integration technologies available under HANA Cloud Platform.
You can learn more about these technologies using the following resources:
- HANA Cloud Connector-Brief guide for beginners
- Get started with HANA Cloud Integration
- HANA Cloud Integration Help
- SAP API Management: Deep dive
- Exposing Digital API’s using HCP Trial - API Management Service
- Try out the SAP HANA Cloud Platform Internet of Things (IoT) services
- IoT services-User documentation
- Smart data streaming: Overview
- Remote data sync service: User documentation
To learn more about SAP HANA Cloud Platform, check out the following resources:
SAP HANA Cloud Platform Developer Center SCN page
SAP HANA Cloud Platform SCN Page
SAP HANA Cloud Platform Podcast Series
You can also reach out to us via Twitter (@saphcp)