Why Middleware Is Only a Partial Solution for Leveraging SAP Business Logic

Middleware can help your business solve a wide range of IT problems, but when it comes to leveraging SAP business logic, middleware won’t get it done. 

Key Takeaways:

• Businesses can use middleware to connect IT systems with distinct interfaces and promote information access and sharing among employees.
• There are times when middleware is ineffective on its own, particularly when it comes to leveraging SAP business logic.
• Using middleware and/or custom integration solutions to leverage SAP business logic can be time-consuming, cost-intensive, and difficult.
• The enosix platform does not require any middleware. It lets businesses seamlessly and securely connect SAP data and business logic across their IT systems.

Your business may use middleware as a part of its integration strategy. Middleware can help your company connect disparate systems and ensure they can work together to help your business stay on track.

This can be a good option if your business uses IT systems with distinct interfaces. Middleware lets you link these systems and use a common interface to manage data sources and applications between them. That way, employees across your business can use the same interface to engage and share information across various systems.

Although middleware can be beneficial in the short term, it’s a limited solution that can become problematic when you need to share real-time information. Middleware integration often is not fast enough to support things like today’s B2B eCommerce systems, cost-price-quote (CPQ) apps in supplier-dependent industries (like manufacturing), and dealer self-service portals — all of which require you to see inventory availability, supply chain accessibility, and shipping information (like ATP).

Ultimately, the more you rely on middleware to link intricate systems, the more complicated connecting these systems becomes and the more sluggish the data transfer gets, which leads to inaccuracy at the point of sale. It can also become expensive and time-consuming to manage and maintain middleware integrations because you need to keep another system updated and hope your enterprise platforms continue to support that middleware. If a problem arises with any of these integrations, it can be difficult to identify and address before it hampers business productivity.

Is middleware the best option for leveraging SAP business logic?

If your business wants to access SAP business logic as faithfully and quickly as possible in other systems — for example, to enable accurate CPQ integration with Salesforce — it pays to forgo middleware solutions altogether. In addition to being costly and challenging to implement, middleware requires heavy customization, and is almost never plug-and-play.

Let’s not forget about the way middleware solutions are built either. These software packages are based on synchronization in lieu of real-time integration. Thus, they cannot support real-time connectivity of SAP business logic. This means your front-end systems may struggle to access and share real-time data.

Middleware solutions are not portable either. If your company is transitioning or planning to move from SAP ECC to S/4HANA, your developers will have to build new solutions from the ground up.

Middleware alternatives that are better for leveraging SAP business logic 

Your business won’t have to settle exclusively for middleware if it wants to leverage SAP business logic. Another option may be to build a custom solution that uses a bi-directional object library in ABAP. This solution can blend SAP data and business logic into an API that works in both ECC and S/4HANA.

Furthermore, a custom solution typically uses a unique communication framework that works around the limitations of SAP’s NetWeaver Gateway. The framework helps ensure information can be updated and shared across your business systems. It enables employees to maintain secure and seamless access to this information, too.

At first glance, there is a lot to like about building a custom solution to leverage SAP business logic. Yet, like any custom solution, the cost and time required to produce this solution can be exorbitant.

You may need to invest thousands of dollars to get a custom solution to leverage SAP business logic that matches your expectations. Meanwhile, the development process for this solution may take many months to complete. You’ll also need to hire developers who possess extensive knowledge of SAP. If even a single error occurs during development and goes unaddressed, the issue can have far-flung effects on your ability to leverage SAP business logic quickly and accurately.

If you look beyond middleware and custom solutions for leveraging SAP business logic, you may find an option that serves you well now and in the future: the enosix platform. enosix won’t necessarily replace any middleware or custom solutions your business already uses for integrations. Instead, our platform simplifies the process of transitioning SAP business logic and data to Salesforce or other front-end systems (and SAP S/4HANA if you have not yet made the transition from ECC).

The enosix platform sits inside your SAP system. It uses your existing SAP business logic, without the need to reproduce it repeatedly in middleware or front-end applications.

Moreover, the enosix interface simplifies development work. We offer a library of ABAP Rapid Integration Objects (RIOs) that perform common transformations based on appropriate BAPIs and exits to apply the business logic you already have in SAP. These APIs can be consumed via any front-end via REST API or through our SDK for Salesforce integrations.

We also provide front-end applications for the most common Salesforce use cases. These pre-built applications include components for retrieving information and business logic you need out of SAP to enable Commerce, CPQ, and other essential Salesforce operations that are often hamstrung by the lack of real-time SAP collaboration.

Want to leverage SAP business logic in your front-end systems? Get started with enosix

The enosix platform lets you leverage SAP business logic faster and more affordably than middleware or custom integration solutions. We encourage you to learn more about our platform and how you can use it to leverage SAP business logic in combination with your current middleware and custom solutions or on its own.

Our team can provide additional details about using our platform to leverage SAP business logic. Contact us today to learn more.