Integration for SAP:
EAI and ETL Tools – Like Using a Chainsaw to Open a Letter
EAI tools were designed to create elaborate frameworks for integrating dozens to hundreds of applications. Companies have found they are a good approach for addressing complex, business process initiatives such as BPM (business process management), BAM (business activity monitoring) and an enterprise backbone. ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) tools support massive volume transactions and very complex data manipulations, such as you might find in big data warehousing solutions. Both of these approaches require heavy lifting by many skilled programmers, long delivery times, and high budgets.
Interestingly, most integration projects do NOT have the characteristics described above. Most integration projects do not involve huge data warehouses, nor do they need to integrate the hundreds of stand-alone applications for which EAI was designed. Most companies find that they have many projects where they need to integrate fewer than 10 applications with SAP solutions. Using EAI tools for these kinds of integrations is like using a chainsaw to open a letter – too much overhead and time required for the task, which prevents positive payback.
Custom Coding – Like Having to Build Your Car before Driving It
The default for any company facing an integration project between SAP solutions and salesforce.com, or any other application, is to write the data transformation and workflow mapping code from scratch using ABAP™, Java-based languages, or some other scripting language. However, writing custom code creates at least five serious problems for IT managers. Monopolizes specialist skills. By writing ABAP custom code for straight-forward application integration projects, companies must commit their scarce programmers, and therefore lose the ability to create new value-added applications and functions that will support their core business.
Custom code is not reusable. Integration code usually cannot be reused because variables and calls are idiosyncratic to the underlying project.
Custom code does not provide visibility into integration transactions. Custom coding tends to focus on data transformation and workflow mapping, rather than on important integration monitoring features. Without such monitoring capability, managers are left in the dark about why certain orchestrations or data fail to get properly executed, nor are they warned ahead of time about such integration failures. Custom code is rarely scalable and flexible, it’s “brittle”. Integration code that is written for a specific, “one off” purpose, is very difficult to scale up as the business grows because program designs do not typically account for future changes.
Custom code is expensive. Most companies do not have adequate testing and version control systems in place, which leads to expensive maintenance later on.
IDC, an IT industry researcher, found that “for every $1 spent on integration software, companies spend $5.30 - $7.20 on people”. So for most companies the custom coding approach creates problems that are difficult to manage. An IT appliance, in general, performs a specific function, with all of the required programming installed on a stand-alone, self-contained hardware platform. The device is called an “appliance” because it has the same self-contained / dedicated function characteristic as most household appliances. Typically, IT appliances look like any other rack-mounted box – but dedicated to one important task. IT appliances on the market successfully perform a number of common functions such as encryption, firewall, VPN, network attached storage, VOIP, etc.
Appliances dedicated to application integration are relatively new to the market, yet have already proven to be an excellent solution to common application integration projects.
The Business Value of Integration Appliances
SAP owners who use appliances for their integration projects report four major business benefits, when compared to custom coding or EAI tools.
1. Fast Delivery. Implementation is measured in days, not months as with custom coding and EAI approaches. A typical integration project with SAP solutions takes less than 30 days. One SAP to salesforce.com project using an appliance approach took just 15 days. Another SAP to salesforce.com project with a different company took just 10 days.
2. Low TCO. Appliances tend to be impressively cost effective. Vendors offer subscription rates, which – combined with short and simple implementation cycles – leads to total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of up to 80% over custom coding and EAI approaches. In a sample of 10 integration projects using the appliance approach, customers saved between 40% and 80% in TCO over custom coding.
