The brand new Edge Integration Cell just arrived!

[Dimitri]

For a long time, SAP talked about the Neuron Edge or the Hybrid Integration Runtime. But when you read this, SAP officially launched the brand new Edge Integration Cell, EIC in short. Just today!

Let me introduce you to SAP’s next-generation, lightweight Integration Technology powering multi-cloud, hybrid and pervasive deployments. Read all about it in this blog and watch out for more blogs, taking you on a deep dive into this new technology.

Let’s start with the very beginning explaining what the EIC is all about, how it can help you and what the typical use cases are. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, let me give you the complete high level architecture:

EIC is an optional extension of SAP Integration Suite that comes with a hybrid deployment model. It enables you to

• Design your integration content in the cloud


• Deploy and run your integration content in an on-prem environment (bypassing traffic through the cloud)

Running an integration scenario in an on-prem environment is also referred to as ground-to-ground integration.

As you can see, the EIC is piece of software that runs on-prem, but is obviously linked to your Integration Suite tenant. That brings me to the first use case: a migration path for SAP Process Integration customers. SAP Process Integration is used by many customers for ground-to-ground integration scenarios. EIC allows these customers to benefit from the newest innovations that come with SAP Integration Suite, with the option to deploy and run their scenarios exclusively in their on-prem environment.

A second use case is obviously security or compliance. In many enterprises, sensitive data must be managed and controlled inside the enterprise's firewall. Managing sensitive data in, or passing it through, the cloud can imply a security risk that is too high for these enterprises. In addition, there are also legal and technical reasons, for example that certain adapters or protocols can't be exposed in the cloud.

Besides facilitating a migration from SAP PO and the security of sensitive data, the EIC is also an on-prem API Gateway and will accommodate an event bridge to SAP Event Mesh or non-SAP event brokers. But more of that in a later phase.

Looking at the EIC from an technical Integration Suite perspective, you can observe 2 different runtimes where an integration flow can be deployed.

From a monitoring perspective, obviously, you can do the same.

If you now think more globally, you will understand how easy it is to facilitate ground-to-ground integration around the world, having multiple EIC instances running in a distributed approach. Stepping away from a central ESB. The future is now!

Now you know a bit more about the EIC, let’s take a deep dive, featuring these blogs:

• Edge Integration Cell – look and feel


• Edge Integration Cell – setup highlights

 

[saurabhkumbhare]

Thank you Dimitri.

Cannot wait for this blog series.

A humble suggestion though - Can you change the word "on-premise" to "on-premises" as we need to educate our lovely SAP fraternity with this.

This is also in line with the Microsoft and AWS documentations. Thankfully ChatGPT too agrees.

Source (ChatGPT) -> The correct term is on-premises. It refers to something that is located on the site of a building or business ¹. On the other hand, on-premise is a grammatical error that has become widespread. It means “on point” or “based on an assumption” ¹. Some people use on-premise as a hyphenated modifier before a noun, but this is still incorrect 

 

Thanks

Saurabh Kumbhare

[Dimitri]

Hi saurabhakumbhare

Thanks for reaching out and thanks for the suggestion.

For a Dutch speaking guy like me, "on-premises" sounds a bit strange, although it is correct.
I looked around a bit and found that "on-prem" is a valid and official alternative. In my head, that sounds a lot better 😊 Thanks for the suggestion! Always open to learn.

Kind regards,
Dimitri

[marco_pallotta]

Very interesting indeed! Looking forward to the blog series also.

 

[saurabhkumbhare]

Love the Dutch.

Yes, on-prem sounds good.

Keep up the good work Dimitri.

[amarseli001]

Hi Dimitri Sannen,

Thanks for sharing detailed blog.

If you don’t mind, do you have pricing model of Integration Edge cell when I talk to SAP they said even though we host runtime node of edge cell in our own On prem Or IAAS Azure still once we deploy an iflow in EDGE CELL RUNTIME ONPREM NODE via cloud connector all messages executes in our on prem but still monitoring reports in cloud which is good for central monitoring or even we are fine to monitoring local node if they give option but my question is SAP is still counting 10 lakh mesages premium license count of premium license bucket only which is not good. Correct me if am wrong and if you have actual pricing model because if am investing onprem for my own runtime node why restriction of 10 lakh mags bucket per month and each msg size of 256 kb means overall 0.3125 TB in case of my current Neo CPI its 1TB SIZE per month. As a customer what is advantage of onprem node keeping other benefits aside and focusing on cost?

it should be as per cores or size of TBs where customers should scaleup as per business 

[Dimitri]

Hi amarseli001

Exact pricing information will be distributed to SAP partners via the November pricing update.

About SAP BTP usage analytics, please wait until the SAP TechEd event or right after. There will be some announcements. If you missed it, let me know and I will share.

Kind regards,
Dimitri

[amarseli001]

Thanks for the swift response. Kindly share post teched as i didn’t get opportunity for attending teched as we are busy with s4 hana migration workshops.

Am trying my leadership to push for Edge Cell as we have hybrid use cases, onprem to onprem internal and onprem to external and cloud to cloud as well. I can only see if there is flexibility in pricing by SAP otherwise cloud cpi license + run time node investment is additional cost.

i will wait for pricing. Features wise is there any gap or differences please let us know with your experiences?

[S0019300750]

Hello Dimitri,

We finally have answer to all those questioning why traffic should go to cloud for ground to ground integrations 🙂 We were waiting for long time for this.

Loved the name: Edge Integration Cell. Looking forward to future blogs on how to deploy this, what all are its capabilities, how to manage transports, automated monitoring and how this gets integrated with BTP Integration Suite for logs/monitoring.

Clarification- What is Integration cell (green box) in top part of diagram - Are you referring to Cloud Integration capability in BTP Integration Suite? Or is this new component which will help read logs from EIC and bring those to BTP IS?

Regards,

Vinod Patil

[Raj_Its_RK]

Thank you dsannen!

It is very interesting and looking forward to the blog series!

As highlighted EIC is majorly for ground to ground integrations, with this note do you have any idea on below points

1. Can we deploy only cloud integration flows to the Edge Integration cell or also API's created in API management and Queues from event mesh?
2. If an Artifact has 3 receivers, in that 2 receivers are on-Prem and 1 is in cloud. So is this case can be deployed in EIC or Cloud Integration? If it is in EIC, How it will manage the flows

Kind Regards,

Raj

[menona]

Thank you @dsannen

With reference to comment - Running an integration scenario in an on-prem environment is also referred to as ground-to-ground integration.

Question : With ground-to-ground integration are these considered as messages in  BTP Integration Suite Message pricing ?

[Dimitri]

Hi,

As mentioned during TechEd, only 50% of the messages that are processed by the Edge Integration Cell are chargeable (excluding unmodified standard content for SAP-to-SAP software).

Kind regards,
Dimitri

[menona]

Thank you

[menona]

For File Based Interfaces ( AL11) both inbound and Outbound using SAP Programs are considered as messages and chargeable in SAP Integration Suite ? 

Example below.

Inbound - Upload a file from application server file directory into SAP using SAP Program.

Outbound - Generate a file using SAP Program and save the file to a folder in application server.

[Dimitri]

I assume, yes.

Unmodified standard content means a standard integration package in the Integration Suite.
Now, you are talking about flat files. That is something different.

[jgsankar2000]

Hi,

Question: After deploying and running it within our on-premises environment, the data exchange is still stored in the cloud?

Thanks