As enterprises accelerate their digital transformation journeys, SAP Cloud Platform (now SAP Business Technology Platform, BTP) has become the backbone for extending SAP landscapes into the cloud. Integrating SAP on-premise systems with cloud-native applications and services unlocks agility, innovation, and business process optimization. Central to this integration is SAP Gateway — the enabling technology that exposes SAP business data and processes through OData services.
This article explores how to integrate SAP Gateway with SAP Cloud Platform effectively, highlighting architecture considerations, integration patterns, and best practices to create seamless hybrid landscapes.
SAP Gateway provides RESTful OData services that expose SAP backend data and functions in a standardized way. SAP Cloud Platform offers cloud services, including application runtimes, APIs, workflow automation, and analytics. Integration between these two layers enables:
SAP Cloud Platform applications — built with SAPUI5, Fiori elements, or other frameworks — can consume OData services exposed by SAP Gateway. This enables modern UI apps with real-time access to SAP backend data without heavy middleware.
SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite (formerly CPI) can act as a mediation and orchestration layer. It can expose SAP Gateway services as managed APIs, adding capabilities such as security policies, traffic control, and analytics.
Cloud applications and SAP Gateway can be linked via event mechanisms (e.g., SAP Event Mesh), allowing reactive and decoupled communication.
To protect on-premise SAP Gateway services, SAP Cloud Connector is used as a secure tunnel between SAP Cloud Platform and the on-premise network. It enforces access control and enables seamless routing of requests to backend services.
SAP Cloud Platform supports various authentication mechanisms such as OAuth2, SAML, and X.509 certificates. When integrated with SAP Gateway, these are mapped to SAP user authentication methods ensuring secure, seamless single sign-on (SSO).
OData services are registered in SAP Cloud Platform as destinations, encapsulating connection details to the SAP Gateway system. These destinations simplify the consumption of OData services in cloud apps by abstracting connectivity specifics.
$select and $expand query options to reduce payload sizes.$top and $skip to handle large datasets.Imagine a scenario where a company wants to provide its employees a mobile-enabled Fiori app running on SAP Cloud Platform that accesses purchase order data from SAP ERP.
This integration enables rapid innovation and seamless user experience without compromising SAP ERP’s data integrity or security.
Integrating SAP Gateway with SAP Cloud Platform unlocks powerful hybrid scenarios, bridging robust on-premise SAP systems with agile cloud applications. By following best practices around secure connectivity, optimized service design, and strong authentication, organizations can leverage the full potential of SAP’s ecosystem to drive digital innovation.