The Power of &: Combining SAP® and SAP Ariba® Solutions

SAP Cloud Platform enables SAP Ariba to redefine integration for buyers and suppliers

As a product owner of Cloud Integration in SAP Ariba my goal is to provide our customers and suppliers a simple and fast way to integrate their systems to Ariba Network and Ariba Applications.

In today’s world, integration has become a challenge for many reasons: the transition from on-premise to cloud solutions, the coexistence of multiple software solutions from different vendors for different business areas, diverse cloud infrastructures, hybrid architectures, organizations’ willingness to adopt new technology fast, and the prevalence of acquisitions and reorganizations. As a result, companies need better ways to integrate new solutions into their existing infrastructure and create a unified experience for end users.

To help our customers meet these challenges, SAP Ariba decided to create a new integration solution – one that helps both buyers and suppliers integrate their back-end systems to Ariba® Network and SAP® Ariba applications in a unified way.

The SAP “Run Simple” operating principle and the SAP Ariba goal to have 5 million suppliers + US$5 trillion in commerce on Ariba Network by 2020 also helped to inspire our redefined integration approach. For example, even if only 2% of these 5 million suppliers decide to integrate, 100,000 integrations will need to occur in the next three years, making scalability essential. That calls for a simple solution suppliers can easily use by themselves to integrate quickly.

By offering integration as a service (IaaS) and launching the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway enabled by SAP Cloud Platform Integration, we’re answering all these needs. The SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway is built on three main characteristics: simplicity, self-service, and speed.

Simplicity: The SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway offers a streamlined, wizard-based integration setup with step-by-step guidance to help users complete the process. To make it even simpler, they can use single sign-on to access the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway directly from Ariba Network, or use their Ariba Network credentials to log in to Cloud Integration Gateway.

SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Process Flow

Self-Service: A wide variety of features makes it easy for users to manage integration on their own. For example, in addition to wizard-based setup and a highly intuitive user interface (UI), the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway provides a built-in self-testing framework that lets users test the integration with a rich repository of test cases. Once testing is completed, they can switch to production mode to go live and start transacting from the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway itself. The result: a true self-service process from start to finish.

Speed: With the speed and ease provided by wizard-based configuration, prepackaged mapping content, and self-testing framework components, users can complete standard integration setup on the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway in as little as few hours – dramatically reducing the time, effort, and cost previously required to integrate.

SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway building blocks

The SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway is built on top of SAP Cloud Platform Integration (formerly known as SAP HANA Cloud Integration), a true multi-tenant secured platform hosted in the SAP data center. The SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway consists of two major components:

1. Cloud Integration Gateway Portal (Built on SAP Cloud Platform)
2. SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI)

End users interact with the integration portal UI for configuration, testing, and monitoring. All runtime execution happens in SAP Cloud Platform Integration. The integration portal is built on SAP UI5, and communication to SAP Cloud Platform Integration is based on application programming interfaces (APIs).

Building Blocks of the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway

Solution availability and additional information

The SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway has been available for Ariba Network suppliers since January 2017. We already have several suppliers live in production, and many are currently testing the solution. Integration for buyers is now available in a Limited Availability release as of March 2018.

We will continue to update you about new developments with the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway through regular blogs.