When it comes to integrating SAP with the rest of your business systems, it’s easy to feel boxed in. The official playbook points to SAP’s own tools: tight, proprietary, and often inflexibly priced. But despite what SAP might suggest to the contrary, you’ve got options. A LOT of them.
While SAP systems tend to exert a strong gravitational pull that draws everything from APIs to event flows into their orbit, that doesn’t mean your entire integration portfolio has to reside within SAP’s own integration tools. In fact, some of the most agile, cost-effective integrations we’ve seen come from cloud-native platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). These solutions are fast to deploy, modular by design, and don’t require a PhD in SAP to operate.
In this article, we’ll take a fresh look at:
The current state of SAP’s enterprise integration offerings
How those tools compare with cloud-native alternatives provided by cloud hyperscalers like Microsoft and Amazon
Why these alternatives help you break out of the SAP integration bubble to unlock faster results, better scalability, and significantly lower costs
Let’s dive in.
SAP's Enterprise Integration Journey
SAP has come a long way in the world of enterprise integration. It’s been over two decades since SAP first entered the integration space with SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP XI), a product that reflected the enterprise IT landscape of the early 2000s. Back then, the focus was squarely on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and SOAP-based web services, and SAP XI was built accordingly. It was built on a Java/J2EE-based enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture (think hub-and-spoke) designed to serve as the central nervous system for business process orchestration within the enterprise.
Over time, SAP XI evolved into SAP Process Integration (PI) and eventually SAP Process Orchestration (PO). These platforms offered more tooling (e.g., workflow and some light rules management), tighter integration with ABAP systems, and broader protocol support, but they remained rooted in a design philosophy centered around heavyweight XML payloads, static configurations, and tightly coupled interfaces. This was fine when most of the integration was between SAP Business Suite systems or 3rd-party/homegrown systems (i.e., application-to-application, or A2A-style integration), these tools became increasingly more difficult to work with as the industry started to shift towards RESTful architectures and the cloud.
Figure 1: Timeline Showing the Evolution of SAP's Suite of Integration Products
The introduction of the SAP Cloud Platform back in 2012 gave SAP an opportunity to reimagine its integration approach for the cloud era. One year later, SAP introduced SAP Cloud Platform Integration (SAP CPI), a modern EiPaaS offering built on Java and open-source frameworks like Apache Camel. Compared to its predecessors, the Integration Suite offered greater flexibility, improved extensibility, and a more developer-friendly experience.
SAP CPI, now known as the SAP Integration Suite, marked a broader shift from SAP towards modern integration paradigms. Where SAP PI/PO emphasized XML and SOAP, the Integration Suite embraces REST, OData, and a growing library of connectors designed for today’s SaaS-heavy environments. This shift is making it easier to consume external APIs and integrate with systems that aren’t part of the traditional SAP ecosystem.
Still, the journey is far from complete. Many SAP customers continue to run large-scale, mission-critical integration workloads on-premises using PI/PO. Suffice it to say that these platforms are really starting to show their age and their rigidity can become a real bottleneck as organizations look to modernize their architecture and connect with a more dynamic ecosystem of third-party applications and services.
SAP Integration Suite: Strengths & Weaknesses
When it comes to integrating with SAP systems, few platforms can rival SAP’s own integration tools. This isn't a big surprise; nobody speaks SAP better than SAP themselves. From pre-built interfaces/mappings and IDoc support to deep knowledge of SAP’s internal protocols and data models, SAP has historically had a strong edge in enabling seamless integration across its ecosystem.
That advantage was particularly evident in earlier platforms like SAP PI/PO, which offered solid integration capabilities and tight coupling with the ABAP stack. However, as SAP’s integration strategy has evolved, that tight integration began to loosen. SAP PI/PO started shifting away from ABAP-centric development, and the newer SAP Integration Suite (formerly SAP CPI) dropped ABAP support altogether in favor of a more cloud-native, Java-based runtime.
To its credit, SAP Integration Suite brings a number of improvements to the table. It’s more modular and scalable, offers open-source underpinnings like Apache Camel, and provides a much larger library of pre-built integration content and connectors than what was available in the PI/PO days. It also aligns better with modern architectural patterns like REST and OData services.
But the shift to the cloud has also created some new challenges when it comes to learning. Skills in ABAP don’t translate well to SAP Integration Suite, where the development experience relies heavily on JavaScript, Groovy scripting, and XML/XSLT transformations. This can present a steep learning curve for SAP development teams. Indeed, according to Stack Overflow's annual developer survey, only 3.3% of all respondents reported experience working with Groovy. Ouch baby, very ouch.
Figure 2: Building Value Mappings with SAP Integration Suite and Groovy
And while SAP Integration Suite certainly offers more connectors than its on-prem predecessors, it still falls short in flexibility. This is particularly true as it relates to working with the ever-growing variety of third-party SaaS APIs. In many cases, building integrations with popular external platforms (like Salesforce, ServiceNow, or Workday) can feel clunky or incomplete compared to what’s possible with more developer-friendly alternatives like Azure Logic Apps or AWS AppFlow.
Breaking Out of the SAP Bubble
For years, SAP integration has mostly consisted of A2A (application-to-application) style integration flows between SAP Business Suite systems, 3rd-party or home-grown business systems, and maybe a little splash of EDI or SaaS integration here and there. However, as enterprise environments grow more diverse and complex, the demands and expectations around integration have significantly increased:
(Expanded) SaaS Integration: According to a recent study, the average mid-to-large-sized enterprise runs north of 300 SaaS applications. These apps/services create new integration challenges since they exist outside the corporate firewall and utilize more modern technical and security protocols.
Non-Traditional Interfaces: We're also seeing an increase in demand for integration with non-traditional systems and services such as Microsoft 365/Teams, document services like DocuSign, or even AI reasoning services. These services often deal with semi-structured or unstructured data, creating a whole new set of challenges. Plus, with REST APIs, vendors have a LOT of leeway to define their APIs however they like.
Agentic AI: Finally, with the rise of agentic AI, there's more and more demand to build up a repository of A2X (or application-to-cross-application) interfaces. In these scenarios, the consumer might not be a traditional system at all. It could be a person interacting through a chatbot, a workflow running inside a productivity app, or even an autonomous agent coordinating activities across multiple platforms.
Even though the SAP Integration Suite comes with a respectable set of around 200 connectors, it’s still largely optimized for A2A and SAP-centric integration scenarios. Although we can write custom code to fill in the technical gaps, it's much more easier to pull this off with a more general-purpose integration service like Azure Integration Services where we have more than 1,500 prebuilt connectors across virtually every major enterprise and productivity platform at our disposal (see Figure 3). This massive connector library makes it dramatically easier to extend the reach of your SAP systems, whether you're working with a legacy ECC deployment or a modern S/4HANA implementation.
Figure 3: Selected Connector Types Supported by Azure Logic Apps
If we're going to be successful in supporting these new integration scenarios and breaking out of the SAP bubble, we need access to a flexible integration platform that can be used to develop all these types of scenarios and promotes reuse of integration artifacts.
Tale of the Tape: SAP vs. Cloud Players like Microsoft & AWS
When it comes to enterprise integration, SAP’s Integration Suite was built using a hybrid approach, blending traditional enterprise service bus (ESB) principles with newer EiPaaS (Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service) capabilities. While this model provides a structured, familiar experience for SAP-centric organizations, it still carries forward much of the complexity and rigidity associated with legacy on-premises middleware.
In contrast, cloud-native platforms from Microsoft and Amazon take a service-oriented approach that’s purpose-built for today’s distributed, API-driven architectures. Solutions like Azure Integration Services (including Logic Apps, API Management, and Service Bus) and AWS AppFlow, Step Functions, and EventBridge provide integration teams with a highly modular, composable set of building blocks.
Let's take a closer look at what this means for SAP integration developers.
Benefits of a Cloud-Native Approach
What makes the cloud-native integration model so compelling is its developer-first design and operational agility—two things that are often harder to come by in more traditional enterprise platforms like SAP Integration Suite.
One of the biggest advantages is access to low-code tooling. With platforms like Azure Logic Apps and AWS Step Functions, developers and IT teams can visually build and manage complex workflows using drag-and-drop interfaces. Although SAP Integration Suite also supports graphical tooling, the developer experience is laser-focused on development of integration flows based on A2A-style enterprise integration patterns. With these more general-purpose tools, it's much easier for developers from all backgrounds to jump in and get up to speed quickly. This accelerates delivery and reduces reliance on niche skill sets, making integration more accessible to a broader team.
Figure 4: Working with the Low Code Workflow Designer for Azure Logic Apps
Although the low-code designer tools can get you pretty far, Logic Apps and AppFlow both have built-in escape hatches to call out to pro-code tools where necessary. Here, Microsoft and Amazon went with a Bring Your Own Language (BYOL) model which lowers the barrier to entry even further. Developers can work in familiar languages like JavaScript, Python, PowerShell, or C# so there’s no need to learn platform-specific scripting languages like Groovy or get up to speed on Apache Camel just to build a flow.
These pro-code callouts also extend to adjacent cloud services, including AI capabilities like Azure OpenAI and AWS Bedrock. That means you can easily build workflows that not only connect systems but also analyze, reason, and respond. This levels up our ability to bring intelligence into integration or automation strategies.
Finally, cloud-native platforms embrace a service-oriented architecture that enables consumption-based pricing and elastic horizontal scaling. You only pay for what you use, and you can scale up or down on demand. This is huge for companies working with unpredictable workloads or event-driven processes. Compare this to SAP Integration Suite, which still leans on a more monolithic architecture that can be slower to scale and more rigid in terms of pricing and deployment.
Figure 5: Tale of the Tape: SAP Integration Suite vs. Cloud-Native Alternatives
By the Numbers: SAP vs. Cloud Integration Costs
One of the challenges with the monolithic design of SAP Integration Suite is that it locks you into the purchase of tenant accounts that aren't very easy to scale. To put this concept into perspective, let's explore a simple sizing exercise comparing SAP Integration Suite, Standard Edition vs. the cloud competition.
Cost Analysis
For our cost comparison analysis, we'll look at a medium-sized integration workload where we're (collectively) processing 10,000 messages (or interface runs) per month. In particular, we're talking about interfaces that integrate SAP with other non-SAP systems or services. This distinction is key since SAP doesn't impose any message-level charges on SAP-to-SAP integration flows — your only constraint is in terms of allocated compute resources within your tenant account.
If you go out to the SAP Store and shop around for SAP Integration Suite, the SAP Integration Suite, Standard Edition SKU fits this bill and retails for $57,900 USD per year (or $4,825 per month). With this plan, you can purchase additional blocks of messages for $75.96 per 10,000 message block.
With Logic Apps, we can utilize the Consumption plan to setup integration flows that can scale to process the same volume of messages for approximately $180 per month and it could actually be less if message traffic trails off during slow months.
The monthly cost with AWS AppFlow should be quite similar, although your mileage can vary a little more here depending on the complementary services you may require to securely connect to your on-premises SAP systems.
Key Takeaways
While the scenario we outlined above is legitimate, it would be very sloppy to say that these leading cloud alternatives are 25-27 times cheaper than SAP. Other factors to consider include:
How much pure SAP-to-SAP integration is in the mix?
How much tailwind does the pre-built integration content provided by SAP - which includes integration flows to connect SAP to 3rd-party systems - provide us?
Are we going to max out the resources included with an SAP Integration Suite tenant account?
In many instances, it may make sense to stick with SAP Integration Suite or perhaps explore a hybrid integration approach where SAP Integration Suite brokers the SAP-to-SAP traffic and a more general purpose platform manages the integration out on the edges.
Perhaps the most notable takeaway from this little thought exercise is that cloud providers like Azure and AWS can significantly lower the barrier to entry for some of these new-dimension integration scenarios. So, if your team has been on the fence about dipping a toe in say the agentic waters, something like Azure Logic Apps could really help you accelerate those plans at a highly affordable price point.
Closing Thoughts
Choosing the right SAP integration platform isn't just about native SAP features or familiarity; it's about finding the best fit for your current and future needs. SAP Integration Suite offers solid capabilities, particularly for SAP-to-SAP scenarios and organizations deeply invested in the SAP ecosystem. But as enterprise environments grow more diverse, there's real value in considering cloud-native alternatives that offer broader flexibility, lower entry barriers, and easier access to modern services like AI and event-driven automation.
Platforms like Azure Logic Apps and AWS AppFlow provide a different kind of integration experience—one that’s designed for scale, agility, and cross-application collaboration. They're not a replacement for SAP in every case, but they can be a smart complement, especially when you're looking to connect SAP with SaaS tools or build out new digital workflows. This is especially true for established Microsoft or AWS shops where there are established integration teams that are simply boxed out of SAP integration.
Regardless of where you are, we would highly recommend that you give these tools a look because they can really help you break out of the SAP integration bubble and eliminate those barriers that have existed forever between the front office and back office.
