In the blog post SAP One Domain Model – the lingua franca of the integrated intelligent suite you got a basic understanding of SAP One Domain Model and how it is related to the SAP Cloud Integration Strategy. You can learn more details by reading the blog post from my colleague Juergen Heymann about SAP’s One Domain Model and Domain Driven Design.

The following blog explains how SAP Master Data Integration (for better readability I’ll use term MDI from here on) will share and synchronize master data between connected applications using SAP One Domain Model.

SAP Master Data Integration service

With MDI the SAP Integration Suite – SAP´s Hybrid Integration Platform has a new capability helping customers to share and synchronize business objects across SAP’s integrated Intelligent Suite.

MDI consolidates standalone offerings announced at past SAP TechEd’s: SAP Master Data for Business Partners and SAP Master Data for Products.

The service uses SAP One Domain Model as the exchange format to achieve a consistent view of master data across end-to-end business processes in the integrated Intelligent Suite.

Figure 1 – Evolution of Master Data Integration

MDI provides reliable real-time replication in a hub-and-spoke approach. This allows every business application to have its own copy of the relevant master data.

How does it work?

Customers need a sub-account under their global account on SAP Cloud Platform to create an entitlement for MDI. So far this is an offline process which will be automated soon.
[update Nov 2020: this has been automated, so no offline process is needed anymore]

Whenever a master data record undergoes change, the involved business application informs the MDI service. If the event is processed successfully, the connected business applications will be informed about the change immediately, with the customer having control of:

• Data distribution (e.g. bank data change shared with payroll system)
• Primary data source (e.g. only S/4HANA system can change cost center data)

Non-disruptive

Customers can continue to use existing integrations in their heterogenous landscapes. So there is no need to migrate over to MDI for existing integrations unless you want to onboard new SAP solutions into your landscape.

Out-of-the-box integration

Relevant master data objects  that have been delivered with SAP One Domain Model will be adopted by MDI and the respective SAP solutions will step by step build out of the box integrations for those business objects.

How SAP Master Data Integration is used

The capabilities of MDI can be used in various customer scenarios within the integrated Intelligent Suite. It allows adapting the business objects used in the Intelligent Suite to the specific needs of customers.

The most important customer scenarios are:

• Integration of 3^rd party solution business objects with the integrated Intelligent Suite
• Development of Apps/Extensions that extend the business objects with customer specific attributes
• Master Data Management

Figure 2 – SAP One Domain Model – the lingua franca of the integrated Intelligent Suite

Free for SAP to SAP integration within the Intelligent Suite scenarios

SAP customers will get MDI as part of the integrated Intelligent Suite. Meaning that the data synchronization between all SAP cloud solutions that are connected to MDI is provided at no additional cost.

3^rd party support

SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI) will support SAP One Domain Model and works with MDI for 3^rd party integration scenarios within the Intelligent Suite.

This will make it possible to extend the reach of SAP’s integrated Intelligent Suite to 3^rd party solutions and their business objects by using CPI.

Developing Apps/Extensions

By using the assets of e.g. SAP Extension Suite or SAP Graph, customers will be able to enrich their SAP landscapes with their own business objects.

MDI will provide these SAP products with a consistent view on the aligned business objects of the Intelligent Suite. This makes it easier for developers to develop suite-centric apps and extensions that access the suite instead of specific SAP solutions within their landscape

Master Data Management

While master data integration is about the distribution of master data based on SAP One Domain Model for a harmonized view across all applications, master data management is about ensuring high quality, trusted master data across the enterprise provided by SAP Master Data Governance.

SAP Master Data Governance will integrate MDI to address master data management use cases such as consolidation (de-duplication and best-record calculation), data quality management, and central governance.

Update Oct 23, 2020: My colleague Markus Ganser explained more in detail the difference between SAP Master Data Governance and SAP Master Data Integration.

Availability

SAP Master Data Integration is generally available to customers since end of 2020.

What comes next?

SAP Master Data Integration will continuously increase the number of supported business objects delivered by SAP One Domain Model (e.g. like a cost center) to cover the end-to-end business scenarios as outlined in the SAP Integration Strategy.

Also, the capabilities of Master Data Integration will be integrated step-by-step into the SAP Integration Suite and other SAP solutions to cover the most important customer scenarios.

We are looking forward to your questions and for providing you with more detailed information around SAP Master Data Integration.

Update Oct 11, 2020: You can now explore the SAP One Domain Model in the API Business Hub.