SuccessFactors Integration Tools: Migrating EC-ERP Productized Integrations from Dell Boomi to SAP Cloud Platform Integration

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Introduction

Customers who previously integrated EC & SAP ERP HCM with Dell Boomi Middleware look to move into the SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI) and its productized integrations to be aligned with the overall SAP integration strategy. This blog and relevant IDP discusses the available migration paths and considerations for a smooth transition.

Dell Boomi and SAP Cloud Platform (Integration Services) are both cloud middleware platforms owned and operated by Dell and SAP respectively.  Customers who have been using SuccessFactors prior to SAP’s acquisition were offered Dell Boomi as the only cloud middleware platform. Since SAP acquired SuccessFactors, additionally CPI is also offered as the cloud middleware platform which supports SuccessFactors integrations.  Productized integrations are released on both Dell Boomi and CPI.  Though SAP releases productized integrations on CPI, not just for SuccessFactors but for other cloud products such as SAP Concur, SAP Ariba etc. SAP recommends CPI as preferred cloud middleware platform not just for SuccessFactors integration but for all scenarios involving cloud integrations. Any new set of productized integrations will be released only on CPI going forward.

In order to provide more insight and to state a clear scenario-based recommendation, we released an “Implementation Design Principle” (IDP) covering the subject. You can access it as a customer here, and as an implementation partner here. Important excerpts from the document can be read below.

Basics

Dell Boomi Setup 

Dell Boomi provides a cloud-based integration platform. It supports two deployment models: an in-the-cloud deployment model that is used when all the integration endpoints are cloud-based and an on-premise deployment model that is used when any of the integration endpoints are within a corporate network. SAP SuccessFactors has set up their own private Atom Cloud. Whenever a customer deploys an integration process then it is deployed onto the atom cloud which resides in the SuccessFactors data centers. Though customers can also deploy local atoms in order to integrate their on-premise systems (which are behind customer firewall) to be managed via Dell Boomi Atomsphere platform.  Basic high-level architecture using Boomi Atom Cloud is shown below:



 

SAP Cloud Platform Integration Setup

SAP Cloud Platform Integration comes under the broader SAP iPass offering which is known as SAP Cloud Platform.  CPI is a service available on the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP), which is an enterprise grade platform to build, extend, and integrate your applications. SAP Cloud Platform among integration has many other services such as mobile, SSO, webIDE, workflow, portal, machine learning, IOT to name a few. SCP is the default platform of choice for extending your core SAP business processes.  and besides this these services are interoperable, therefore supporting customers build a state of art intelligent enterprise suite. Every customer has their own runtime environment and these environments may exist on the same sever but they run on separate VMs (virtual machines) and any communication between them is via APIs. Basic high-level architecture using CPI is shown below:



 

Setup Comparisons

Listed below are some setup comparisons between SAP Cloud Platform Integration and Dell Boomi.  Please note there can be several differences, mentioned below are the only ones which are assumed to be beneficial to the reader of this document.

• SAP CPI is an SAP own middleware offering therefore, customer interact with SAP directly around this topic and incase of Dell Boomi, SAP acts as a reseller of subscriptions incase customers opt for Dell Boomi as a middleware.


• Due to the difference in the architecture as briefly explained above, customer will be required to make updates to their system architecture when they switch from Dell Boomi to CPI. For example:
  
  
  
  • IP address range for Dell Boomi data center and CPI are different, therefore the firewall ports if any needs to be updated upon migration.
  
  
  • Server and Client certificates in the on-premise ERP system will also need updated during migration.
  
  
  • Any custom integrations which have been built using SuccessFactors SMTP server for sending emails needs to be changed to a publicly available SMTP server, as SuccessFactors does not allow external access to SMTP server.
  
  
  • Any locally installed atom needs to be removed and instead SAP Cloud connector can be used to connect all the on-premise systems with CPI without opening any specific firewall ports. Note:  The usage of SAP Cloud Connector (SCC) and Dell Boomi Local Atom may sound complementary in the statement above but architecturally and the way both of them operate is different.  Refer to the SAP Cloud connector documentation for more details.
    
    
    
    • SCC is a component running in customers on premise landscape being used as reverse proxy for inbound calls from the cloud i.e. the CPI runtime environment. The middleware process will stay in the cloud (difference to Boomi) and the calls will be routed securely via SCC running in on premise landscape of customer. Outbound calls (on-premise to cloud) will go directly from ERP to CPI tenant and not via SCC.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Solution Design

The relevant IDP describes each of the productized integrations (EC - ERP) that have been delivered on Dell Boomi or CPI and the steps required to switch from Dell Boomi to CPI.

The solutions described in the IDP are created as cloud solutions. Therefore, the SAP Cloud Platform Integration processes are not available as content for SAP PI/PO (Process Integration / Process Orchestration), to be able to react on changes and requirements that come with new features in the involved systems.

Please refer the IDP titled "SuccessFactors Integration Tools: Migrating EC-ERP Productized Integrations from Dell Boomi to SAP Cloud Platform Integration" for further details.

 

We encourage you to read this and other IDPs and bring your comments and ideas / feedback to us either by commenting on this blog or by contacting us at SAPSuccessFactorsIDPDoc@sap.com

We are planning to continuously publish more documents addressing relevant topics, hence it is worth to drop by regularly and bookmark the links!