Blog Series – Use SAP Cloud Platform, API Management to expose SAP Process Orchestration/Process Integration (SAP PO/PI) interfaces as Open APIs in the cloud

Welcome to our 5-part blog series on using SAP Cloud Platform, API Management with SAP Process Orchestration/Process Integration.

In this part 1 blog, I will explain the motivations, advantages, and benefits of using SAP Cloud Platform, API Management to expose SAP Process Orchestration/Process Integration interfaces as open APIs. I will also present a high-level architecture on how to use these solutions together.

You can see the other parts of the blow series below:

Part 2: Exposing OData interfaces as APIs
Part 3: Exposing SOAP interfaces as APIs
Part 4: Exposing REST interfaces as APIs
Part 5: Using API Management policies to secure, protect and scale open APIs

Motivation

SAP Process Orchestration is the middleware of choice for SAP customers to build A2A and B2B interfaces. In this digital age, more and more customers are opening up interfaces for digital interactions as open APIs. Open APIs are used to integrate with partners and with other supply chain business networks and marketplaces. APIs are becoming the digital building blocks for integrations, especially in the B2B world.

@Chris Aron talks about the Importance of APIs to the B2B Enterprise here.

Challenges

From a technology perspective, the big questions while opening up interfaces are:

1. How can I open up my interfaces built with SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PO/PI) in a secure, scalable manner as APIs?
2. How can we engage with outside integrators and developers and help them to easily use these documented APIs?
3. How can we ensure that the interfaces exposed as APIs are performant enough to support new age digital transactions?
4. How can we monitor these interfaces/APIs to ensure that our partners, supply chain business networks are connected to us always?

The questions can be easily addressed by combining SAP Cloud Platform, API Management with SAP Process Orchestration/Process Integration.

Solution and Benefits

API Management enables the following for SAP Process Orchestration Interfaces:

1. Security and Anonymous Access: Allow to expose Interfaces as APIs with support for OAuth. Isolation of PI/PO on-premise, behind the DMZ exposed through API Management on the cloud helps in better security setup.
2. Traffic Management: Support quotas and spike arrests to ensure that heavy traffic loads don’t occur on the PI/PO systems.
3. Caching and performance: API Management can cache responses and reduce the load on the PI/PO systems and improve the response times
4. Developer Engagement: API Management offers a developer portal to allow developers to sign up and request for access to the APIs.
5. Monitoring and Analytics: API Management Analytics helps deep runtime monitoring and analytics to ensure that the interfaces/APIs are available always.

High-Level Architecture

The exhibit 1, below shows the high-level architecture of how SAP API Management and SAP Process Orchestration can be used together.

In the remainder of the blog series, my colleague @Shilpa Vij will explain step-by-step on how SAP Cloud Platform, API Management can be combined with SAP Process Orchestration/Process Integration (SAP PO/PI) to expose REST, OData and SOAP interfaces as secure, highly performant open APIs on the cloud.

Thanks for stopping by! If you have a question or comment leave them below.

Shilpa and Harsh