3 tips for successful transition to SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway

As the Solution Manager – Integration for SAP Ariba, my goal is help Customers learn, understand and help them simplify their integration experience with SAP Ariba cloud solutions.

With this post I would like to provide some visibility to our existing SAP Ariba cloud customers integrating their SAP ERP and/or S/4 HANA back-end system with SAP Ariba provided pre-packaged integration. Its most likely that you might already be using SAP Ariba provided CI solution or SAP provided Business suite AddOn or may be even have your own integration solution setup.

With this post, let’s look at details about migration from SAP Ariba provided CI Solution to SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway. But first some tips which will help you carve our migration strategy.

SAP Ariba provided CI Solution,

<update April-2019>End of life of CI-9 (including SP 1 and SP2) is now Dec-31, 2021; our recommendation is that customers should begin migration to SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway now. SAP Ariba will continue to provide standard support assistance until the EOL (end of life) of CI-9 (including SP1 and SP2). Also, please note that any new SAP Ariba Cloud solution functionality which needs integration with SAP ERP and/or S/4HANA is only going to be available on SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway since CI solutions are already on maintenance starting Jan-2019.

The good news is that we are providing Migration guide/tool at the time of GA of SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway to help you migrate from SAP Ariba CI solution. Also, you can contact SAP Ariba Delivery services or engage with your SAP Partners who can provide comprehensive services to help you with migration.

There’s another good news of you – CI solution and SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway can co-exist. This means that our customers can migrate at their own pace without disrupting the business. Well the primary reason is that the CI used /ARBA/namespace and SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway AddOn now uses a new ARBCIG_ namespace.

Now lets look at some technical details. So here’s how the integration states via SAP Ariba CI solution look like today and what it will look with SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway.

Now pertaining to what exactly goes into a migration effort. Lets take a case of CI Adapter with SAP ERP.

I hope below 3 tips help you to have an bird’s eye view of the effort involved

	Install and set up SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Download the components for SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway. Set up the SAP Cloud Connector. Configure the required SAP Ariba solutions on the SAP ERP system. Set up the global settings to connect to the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway on the SAP ERP system. Create and set up projects on SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Test the connection to the SAP Ariba solution. Configure the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway to use a middleware (optional)
	Migrate components to SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Perform all the prerequisites for migration, refer to guide Run the report to migrate information from the /ARBA/ database table to the new ARBCIG database table Run the report to migrate the logic of designated transactions from SAP ERP to SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Run the report to migrate Business Add-in (BAdI) information from SAP ERP to SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Perform the post-migration tasks Configure the transactions of SAP Ariba solutions
	Configure the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway Configuring general settings for transaction documents for the required SAP Ariba solutions on the SAP ERP system. Import master data for the required SAP Ariba solutions on the SAP ERP system. Configure transactions documents for the required SAP Ariba solutions on the SAP ERP system. Set up cross references for the required SAP Ariba solutions on SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway. Test document transactions for the required SAP Ariba solutions on SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway. Publish a project on SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway. Manage customization for different transactions on the SAP ERP system. Monitor and manage errors for different transactions on the SAP ERP system.