In today's digital landscape, enterprises rely on a wide variety of applications running across different environments — from on-premise systems to cloud-based solutions. SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI), now part of SAP Integration Suite, provides a robust, scalable, and flexible integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) to connect these heterogeneous environments seamlessly. Understanding its architecture is key to building effective and sustainable integration solutions.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of SAP Cloud Platform Integration and explains its core components and how they work together to enable efficient and secure integrations.
SAP Cloud Platform Integration is a cloud-based middleware offered by SAP to facilitate the integration of cloud and on-premise applications. It allows businesses to create and manage integration flows using pre-built adapters and integration content while leveraging the scalability and flexibility of the cloud.
It is part of the SAP Integration Suite, SAP’s enterprise integration platform that supports a wide array of integration scenarios including application-to-application (A2A), business-to-business (B2B), and API-based integrations.
The architecture of SAP CPI is designed to deliver modular, secure, and extensible integration capabilities. The main components include:
At the core of the platform is the integration runtime — a cloud-based engine that executes the integration flows (iFlows). These iFlows define how data should be routed, transformed, and processed between systems.
The Integration Flow Designer, accessible via the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) Cockpit, is used to model and configure iFlows. It offers:
This layer supports communication with various systems using:
Security is a foundational aspect of the CPI architecture. The platform supports:
To ensure operational transparency, SAP CPI offers comprehensive monitoring tools:
SAP provides pre-packaged integration content for common use cases, available via SAP API Business Hub. These packages accelerate implementation and reduce development effort.
SAP CPI runs natively on SAP BTP, ensuring automatic scalability and high availability. It follows a multi-tenant architecture, enabling isolation and security across customer instances.
Integration flows are deployed to runtime nodes in different geographic regions to ensure performance, redundancy, and data locality compliance.
SAP CPI supports a wide range of enterprise integration patterns:
Some common scenarios where SAP Cloud Platform Integration is effectively used include:
SAP Cloud Platform Integration provides a powerful, secure, and flexible framework for managing diverse integration needs across cloud and on-premise environments. Understanding its architecture is crucial for designing scalable and maintainable integration solutions.
With its wide range of adapters, strong security features, and support for enterprise integration patterns, CPI is an essential tool in the modern SAP landscape.