Given the rising importance of the cloud, most companies will need to rethink their middleware strategy – and decide if and when to migrate to a cloud integration platform.

For SAP customers, this will likely involve evaluating a migration from SAP PI/PO – the preferred middleware choice of 12,500+ companies across industries for on-premise integrations – to SAP Cloud Integration Platform (SAP CPI), an intelligent hybrid integration solution built using open-source and cloud-native technologies.

HCLTech has helped solve many customer integration challenges. In our conversations with them, we’ve realized that there is not only a lack of knowledge around the benefits of migrating to SAP CPI – but companies are also often unaware of the potential cost, time, and skills challenges involved in undertaking what is, in reality, a highly complex technical project.

The good news is that tools are available to automate and accelerate migrations – which we will cover in this blog.

The case for migrating from SAP Process Integration/Process Orchestration (PI/PO) to Cloud Platform Integration (CPI)

As most readers know, SAP PI/PO is an on-premise middleware solution used extensively for different A2A and B2B integration scenarios due to its robust functionality, user-friendly interface, and developer community support. However, with the move to a cloud-first product strategy, SAP has introduced the logical successor to SAP PI/PO. SAP CPI helps seamlessly connect on-premise and cloud-based SAP applications to other SAP and third-party apps using prepackaged integration content and a rich set of adapters and APIs. By uniting disparate data and systems across your IT landscape, SAP CPI enables you to streamline your business processes, deliver connected digital experiences and enhance integration efficiency.

There are excellent reasons why SAP CPI should be part of your organization’s broader cloud strategy. Below, we’ve outlined some of the key reasons why you should consider migrating from SAP PI/PO to CPI:

• Rapid integration with prepackaged integration content: SAP CPI helps you set up cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on-premise integrations quickly and cost-effectively using 2600+ pre-built integration scenarios, 2500+ ready-to-use APIs, and 200+ connectors available in the SAP API Business Hub. Such prepackaged integration content is unavailable in SAP PI/PO, making it less effective than SAP CPI for rapid integration scenarios.
• Real-time integration: Unlike SAP PI/PO, SAP CPI supports real-time integrations across distributed application landscapes through features like SAP Event Mesh and SAP API Management.
• Massive cost savings: SAP CPI is a cloud-based platform, and hence it is easier to monitor, maintain, and deploy compared to on-premise SAP PI/PO. With SAP CPI, you don’t need to worry about recurring hardware refresh cycles and hefty maintenance renewal charges associated with on-premise middleware.
• Flexible pricing: SAP CPI offers flexible pricing models, such as Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement (CPEA) and Pay as You Go (PAYG), to customers depending on their business needs. Unlike SAP PI/PO, you can quickly get started with SAP CPI with minimal upfront costs and zero long-term financial commitments.
• A solid digital foundation for an intelligent enterprise: According to SAP, businesses adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud and RISE with SAP solutions to accelerate their journey to an intelligent enterprise should also shift to SAP CPI. This is because SAP CPI serves as the underlying integration technology for all SAP LoB applications.
• End of support for SAP traditional middleware: SAP announced standard maintenance support for SAP PO 7.5 until 2027, whereas the support for SAP PI/ PO 7.4 and older versions will remain unchanged. Hence, customers using SAP PI/PO 7.5 should migrate to SAP CPI since it is more flexible and cost-effective than its predecessor.

Business challenges while migrating from SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI

While it’s undoubtedly true that SAP CPI enables businesses to innovate faster and stay future-ready by offering a modern and agile integration environment, migration is not without its challenges. These include:

• Extended implementation time: The absence of quality migration automation tools in the market makes it difficult for companies to ensure a speedy and secure transition from SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI. Estimating the budget and resources needed for the SAP CPI migration project is also challenging without a reliable automation tool.
• High costs: SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI migration is a complex process involving multiple steps, such as migration assessment, planning, and implementation. Businesses require dedicated integration developers to analyze their existing PI/PO integration landscape, define migration steps, and test migrated content (message mappings, interfaces, etc.). Manually implementing these steps is costlier and time-intensive for companies.
• Technical migration complexity: SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI migration requires integration developers to migrate all the existing integration scenarios or interfaces from SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI. These integration scenarios are created using different integration artifacts, such as adapters and message mappings, in the SAP PI/PO. The unavailability of some of these integration artifacts or assets in SAP CPI forces developers to create integration scenarios from scratch. Some examples include:
  • Adapter incompatibility: Many SAP PI/PO adapters, such as CIDX, RNIF, and File, are unavailable in SAP CPI. Further, all the custom adapter modules of SAP PI/PO require a redesign in SAP CPI since it doesn’t support the concept of custom adapter modules.
  • Mapping restrictions: Some mapping functions, such as parameterized values, of SAP PI/PO require a redesign in SAP CPI since they can’t be reused.
• Poor testing: Migrating from SAP traditional middleware to CPI requires proper testing of SAP service interfaces. Businesses often rely on their functional consultants to test migrated interfaces. However, coordinating with multiple technical experts for migration testing is often tedious and error-prone for companies.

Migration from traditional SAP middleware to SAP CPI can help companies modernize their integration landscape and become more agile, innovative, and future-ready.

How HCLTech simplifies SAP CPI Migration

Most of the challenges associated with migration to SAP CPI can be solved using a dedicated migration accelerator tool. This is why HCLTech has introduced a tool called C3Pi to enable speedy, secure, and seamless transitions from SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI.

Built using SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (iRPA), this comprehensive tool helps companies automate and streamline the entire SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI migration process, from migration assessment and planning to implementation and testing. It helps companies reduce migration time and efforts by up to 80% and realize significant productivity gains and cost savings during the migration project.

Some key features of the HCLTech C3Pi tool include the following:

• Migration assessment: C3Pi helps you evaluate your existing SAP PI/PO integration landscape, including interfaces, adapters, and message mappings. Based on the analysis, the tool helps identify the interfaces or integration scenarios that can be migrated from SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI.
• Migration status reporting: C3Pi helps track the migration status of each interface through real-time logs. These logs also provide error details in case of migration failure so you can perform rapid corrective action.
• Migrating testing and validation: After migrating the interfaces from SAP PI/PO to SAP CPI, the C3Pi tool allows you to test the migrated interfaces to ensure everything works correctly in the new integration environment.

Our C3Pi migration accelerator tool helps companies realize faster time to value as it offers the following:

• Up to 50% reduction in migration costs
• Reduced errors with an automated migration process
• Accurate cost estimation based on existing migration scenarios
• Simplified and easy-to-manage migration process

In a nutshell, migration from traditional SAP middleware to SAP CPI can help companies modernize their integration landscape and become more agile, innovative, and future-ready. Without the use of an automated tool, the SAP CPI migration journey will be, by its very nature, complicated and time intensive. At HCLTech, we help companies seamlessly transition to CPI by offering strategic guidance, support, and tools throughout the migration journey. To learn more about our SAP solutions and services, visit this page.