SAP Integration StrategyRafal Weglarz2026-05-13T12:34:51+00:00

SAP Integration Platform Strategy — S5 Consulting

S5 Consulting · SAP Integration Strategy

Are you tired of SAP partners
that sell you platforms instead of
answers?

Is your PI/PO landscape on a 2027 deadline and nobody on your team has migrated one before? Did you sign RISE and now the BTP bill is growing faster than the value? Talk to S5. Fixed price. Named senior architect. We get you there in one piece.

Get a free discovery call How we engage

2027

SAP PI/PO end of
mainstream maintenance

€8k⁺

Per month on BTP IS
before building anything

Credible platform options —
none right for everyone

5^×

Faster integration delivery
with the right platform

Partner expertise across

00 — Why this matters now

Why is your last integration platform suddenly not enough?

Your architecture changed — did your platform?

Event-driven patterns multiply transaction counts by 5–50× vs classic batch. A single order now touches six systems. Your platform was not sized for this.

AI is generating API calls you never planned for

SAP Joule, Microsoft Copilot, and agentic AI generate API calls without a human clicking anything. Integration has become the meter on the network.

Has your CFO asked why integration costs keep climbing?

Per-message pricing was manageable for batch. It is lethal under event fan-out. BTP IS is the platform where assumed vs actual cost diverges most — amplified for RISE customers.

The decision window

2027

PI/PO end of mainstream maintenance. Migration takes 6–18 months. The time to start is now.

~€8k+/mo

BTP IS before you have built a single integration. Under event fan-out, this number grows fast.

7–10 yr

Integration platform commitment. Most programmes treat it as a sub-decision. That is the mistake.

01 — Where we enter

Do you recognise your situation in one of these?

Trigger 01 · ECC stayer · PI/PO signal

PI/PO is creaking, and we don't want to wait for the S/4HANA project to fix integration.

→ Integration Posture Review. 2 weeks. Fixed price.

Trigger 02 · RISE customer · BTP scope drift

We just signed RISE, and now everything wants to live on BTP. We need a second opinion.

→ Platform Architecture & Roadmap. Vendor-bias free. Named senior architect.

Trigger 03 · FinOps pressure · Event fan-out

Our integration cost is going the wrong way. Volumes are up, predictability is down.

→ Integration Posture Review with TCO modelling.

Trigger 04 · Azure + SAP · Cross-domain

We're Microsoft-aligned. How does that fit with our SAP-side roadmap?

→ Platform Architecture & Roadmap. Azure + SAP done properly.

02 — Your ERP state

Which of these sounds like your situation right now?

Four ERP states, four flavours of advice. Where you are shapes the integration conversation.

Staying on ECC

Evaluating, waiting, pacing carefully

The 2030 ECC cliff matters but is not next year. The trap is to defer integration along with the ERP question. PI/PO is creaking now.

S5 advice: Pick an ERP-state-agnostic platform now. Useful on ECC today, useful on S/4HANA tomorrow.

S/4HANA on-premise

Or customer-managed cloud (IaaS)

You chose maximum control. Your integration architecture should match — hybrid-capable, on-prem agents, no commercial surprises at scale.

S5 advice: BTP IS for SAP-internal flows. Frends or Azure for the rest. Hybrid runtime is non-negotiable.

RISE with SAP

S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition

BTP IS arrives pre-bundled and feels inevitable — but its pricing exposure is real. Most RISE customers who put everything on BTP IS are revisiting that by year two.

S5 advice: Use BTP IS where it earns its keep. Use a second platform for B2B, high-volume, and non-SAP flows.

Grow with SAP

S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition

Clean Core enforced, extensions on BTP, SAP-side integration is essentially BTP IS by design. The choice space is what to use for everything outside SAP.

S5 advice: Accept BTP IS for SAP-native flows. Define non-SAP architecture deliberately — Azure, Frends, or both.

03 — How we engage

Three ways to start — each one stands alone.

You can stop after any stage and use the output independently. No staircase pricing. Each engagement produces a standalone deliverable.

Entry · 2 weeks · Fixed price

Integration Posture Review

Do you need a roadmap, but every advisor is also trying to sell you the implementation?

We tell you where you are, what the pressure points are, and what your credible options are — before any vendor enters the room.

Output

Posture report + briefing

Audience

CIO, Chief Architect

Core · 6–8 weeks · Fixed price

Platform Architecture & Roadmap

Has your S/4HANA business case quietly turned into a migration project with no measurable outcome?

Unbiased platform roadmap — paid, vendor-bias free. Discovery, volume modelling, fit-mapping. Board-ready plan, not another 80-slide capability deck.

Output

Architecture + 18-month roadmap

Audience

CIO, CFO, Architecture Board

Delivery · From 8 weeks · Fixed scope

Pilot & Pattern Build

Are you about to build something that three of your competitors already rent for a monthly fee?

A bounded production-grade pilot on the recommended platform mix. Real volumes, real governance, real cost telemetry — before the multi-year programme starts.

Output

Live pilot + reusable patterns

Audience

Integration team + sponsors

04 — The diagnostic

Seven questions that reveal the right platform — before we name it.

Not platform-neutral — platform-revealing. We refuse to name a platform before we have honest answers to all seven.

What belongs inside the SAP domain?

SAP-native flows, Clean Core extensions, SAP-delivered content vs. everything else.

What belongs in the Azure platform?

Cross-domain APIs, data, AI, identity — without forcing every flow into custom Azure engineering.

Where would Frends make integration more manageable?

B2B, EDI, hybrid execution, long-running processes, operational visibility.

What does your integration profile look like in 3–5 years?

Event fan-out, AI-agent traffic, B2B volume — not last year's interface count plus 10%.

What is your real tolerance for variable cost models?

A finance question dressed up as a technology question. Often the deciding lever.

Where is your engineering talent?

SAP-centric, Microsoft-centric, .NET, polyglot. Forcing the wrong team onto the wrong platform is a daily tax.

What operating model can you actually run?

Integration strategy succeeds or fails in the operating model — not the tool selection.

The platform shortlist falls out of the answers.

Most programmes choose a platform first and retrofit the diagnostic. We refuse that order — it is the single most expensive mistake we see in SAP integration.

By forcing the questions ahead of the platform, we narrow the credible options before any vendor enters the room — which is when the customer has the most leverage.

Questions #5 and #7 are where the analysis usually breaks. Both are operating-model questions disguised as something else. Both are where consultancies without delivery experience produce thin advice.

05 — Architectural outcomes

What does the answer actually look like in practice?

Almost no enterprise SAP customer should expect one platform to do everything well. The diagnostic points to one of three concrete hybrid patterns — naming the pattern matters.

Pattern A

SAP IS + Azure

SAP ISSAP-native flows, Clean Core extensions

AzureCross-domain APIs, data, AI, customer-facing

Fits: SAP-heavy enterprises with serious Microsoft data and AI ambitions. High engineering maturity required to govern Azure directly.

Pattern B · Most Common

Frends + Azure + selective SAP IS

FrendsOrchestration, B2B, hybrid, operations

AzureData, AI, identity, events, cloud-native

SAP ISSAP-native, Clean Core (selective only)

Fits: The pattern more SAP customers should be looking at. Uses Azure fully without forcing every integration into custom engineering.

Pattern C

Frends + SAP IS (light)

FrendsWorkhorse — most of the integration estate

SAP ISOnly where SAP genuinely demands it

Fits: ECC customers replacing PI/PO and S/4HANA on-premise customers modernising without unnecessary BTP commercial exposure.

06 — The platforms

SAP says BTP. Microsoft says Azure. Where does Frends fit?

All three are credible. None is right for everyone. Here is where each one wins — and where it will cost you if you pick it for the wrong reasons.

SAP

BTP Integration Suite

CPI · API Management · Event Mesh · Open Connectors

Wins on

SAP-to-SAP and SAP-to-cloud flows
Pre-built S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur content
Natural home for Clean Core extensions
Effectively required for Grow with SAP

Hurts on

~€8k/month minimum before building anything
Pricing compounds fast under event-driven volume
CI/CD and observability trail hyperscaler iPaaS
For ECC stayers, not the obvious choice it is for RISE

Microsoft

Azure Integration Services

Logic Apps · Service Bus · Event Grid · APIM · Fabric

Wins on

Breadth, scalability, convergence with data and AI
Mature DevOps and observability tooling
Talent availability across the market
Right cross-domain platform with a Microsoft strategy

Hurts on

6–10 services, each with own SKU and governance model
Power is not the same as manageability — landscapes drift
Rarely the best tool for pure SAP-side flows
Requires strong engineering governance

Frends

Frends iPaaS

Hybrid agents · Visual orchestration · .NET escape hatch

Wins on

Predictable economics under real event-driven volumes
Native hybrid — closer to what on-prem and ECC need
5× faster integration delivery (Raisio: 1,000+ integrations)
Works standalone or alongside Azure

Hurts on

Smaller vendor than SAP or Microsoft
Connector library narrower for SAP than BTP IS
Not a platform-AI ecosystem in its own right

Frends in production —
reference customers

1,000⁺

integrations at Raisio
(S/4HANA)

000s

daily EDI messages
at Fazer

days to unify 6 ERPs
at Arvos

5^×

faster vs.
build-from-scratch

07 — Where you are coming from

Has your integration platform become a museum of half-finished iFlows?

We migrate to modern integration — Integration Suite or Frends — without freezing the business for a year. Fixed scope, sprint-based, senior people only.

From PI/PO

Is PI/PO on a 2027 deadline and nobody owns the migration plan?

The most common starting point. Most customers are tempted to lift-and-shift — almost always the wrong move. The migration is an architectural opportunity, not a technical migration project.

S5 approach: Treat PI/PO migration as the first move of the S/4 transition. Diagnose before prescribing.

From BizTalk

You are Microsoft-aligned. Do you want composability or manageability?

BizTalk customers are already in the Microsoft ecosystem. The real question is whether you want full Azure composability or a more focused, predictable integration layer.

S5 approach: Azure Logic Apps Standard is the natural path. Frends is the strongest alternative when predictable cost decides.

From MuleSoft

Did your last build-it-ourselves project end on time and on budget?

MuleSoft exits are nearly always cost-driven. Integration patterns transfer cleanly to Azure or Frends. The risk is over-engineering the replacement to justify the switch.

S5 approach: Patterns transfer cleanly. Use BTP IS only if estate is heavily SAP-centric and ERP state is RISE or Grow.

Frustrated with BTP IS

You bought RISE. The BTP bill is growing. Is it the tool or the implementation?

Typically a RISE customer who put everything on BTP IS in year one. Before switching, diagnose first — over half are wrong implementation, not wrong tool.

S5 approach: Diagnose first. If genuinely wrong tool, go hybrid — route high-volume to Frends or Azure, keep BTP IS for SAP-native.

Event format

Ask Me Anything — SAP Integration in 2026

A closed-room session for CIOs and enterprise architects who are in the middle of an integration platform decision. Not a webinar. Not a product demo. S5 runs it. Frends provides technical depth. You bring the questions.

We run these for groups of 10–15 decision makers from our existing and prospective client base. Online or at our offices in Oslo, Stockholm, or Wroclaw.

👥

10–15 participantsCIOs, enterprise architects, integration leads — no vendor sales teams

🎤

S5 as host and advisorFrends provides a technical expert and real reference cases (Raisio, Fazer, Arvos)

📍

Online or in-personOslo · Stockholm · Wroclaw — or Teams

What you walk away with

No slides to read later. No follow-up sales sequence. A two-hour honest conversation about platform decisions — with people in the same situation.

An unbiased view of how BTP IS, Azure, and Frends compare under your real volumes and constraints

Reference cases from live production environments — not vendor slide decks

Direct access to S5's integration architects and Frends' technical team

A clear sense of whether a formal engagement makes sense for your situation

No obligation, no follow-up pressure — we start by listening

Request an invitation

Are you tired of Big-4 proposals dressed up in vendor-incentive baggage?

Employee-ownedNo external shareholders. One incentive: get you to the right answer.

AAA-ratedNine years running. Pick the partner that will still be here when your transformation finishes.

No offshoringNordic delivery. S5 Labs Poland is a capability centre, not a cost play.

No SAP licence resaleWe do not earn from licences. Our only incentive is the right architecture for you.

We are partners with both SAP and Frends, and we work fluently across Microsoft Azure. We are open about that — because hiding it would be the wrong way to earn trust.

Those partnerships give our customers two things: the deepest insight into the real pros and cons of each platform — the things you only learn from inside a partner programme — and the certified delivery capability to actually implement what we recommend.

Frends also sits in our productised catalogue. If the architecture points to Frends — we deploy it, we integrate it, fixed-price. You operate it, or we run it for you. This is not a referral. It is a delivery.

We have walked away from engagements where the right answer was not the one we were positioned to deliver.

"Giving good advice is one thing. Being able to deliver on that advice — at quality, on budget, in your real environment — is the hard part. A recommendation that lands on a slide and needs a different firm to execute is not advice. It is a referral."

08 — Common questions

Questions we hear before every engagement.

We are employee-owned and do not resell SAP licences. No financial incentive to steer you toward BTP or any other platform. Our revenue comes from the quality of advice and delivery — not licence margin.

You probably should not replace BTP IS — you should complement it. BTP IS is strongest inside the SAP domain. Frends is strongest for B2B, EDI, hybrid execution, and high-volume flows where BTP IS pricing compounds fast. Most RISE customers end up with both.

A posture report and a briefing — typically 15–20 pages. Current integration estate against the seven decision questions, a realistic volume model for 3–5 years, a platform shortlist with TCO bands, and a clear recommendation. Standalone. CIO-presentable.

It is real. SAP has confirmed end of mainstream maintenance for PI/PO. The migration itself takes 6–18 months. Customers who wait until 2026 to start are already late. The question is not whether to migrate — it is what to migrate to.

No. BTP IS is bundled but not mandatory for all flows. For external B2B, EDI, non-SAP SaaS, and high-volume event-driven flows, pricing can compound significantly. Most RISE customers we work with end up using a second platform for the rest.

Each stage is standalone. You can stop after the Posture Review and use the output independently — including by taking it to another firm. Platform Architecture and Roadmap is 6–8 weeks, fixed price. Pilot and delivery follow only if the architecture calls for it.

The entry-level footprint is roughly €4,000–8,000 per month before building a single integration. Under event-driven volume, per-message pricing compounds fast. We have seen RISE customers triple their estimated BTP IS cost within 18 months.

Frends is a Finnish iPaaS platform with 6,000+ customers, strong SAP connector support, and predictable runtime pricing. We recommend it when the architecture calls for it — and we deploy it at fixed-price. Raisio runs 1,000+ integrations on Frends on S/4HANA. Fazer handles thousands of daily EDI messages through it.

No — it is exactly the right time. PI/PO end-of-life applies regardless of ERP state. Pick an ERP-state-agnostic platform now: useful on ECC today, useful on S/4HANA tomorrow. Waiting means deferring one of the most urgent parts of the problem.

Yes. We work across SAP Integration Suite, Azure Integration Services, and Frends — and have delivery capability across all three. A recommendation that needs a different firm to execute is not advice. It is a referral. We will not give you one.

Yes. Typically a RISE customer who put everything on BTP IS at go-live. The first step is diagnosis — over half are wrong implementation, not wrong tool. If the tool is genuinely wrong, we recommend a hybrid approach.

Two hours. No slides from us. We ask the seven diagnostic questions and listen. At the end, we tell you honestly which engagement fits — or whether it is too early. If the answer is "not yet," we will say so. No pitch, no follow-up pressure.

Why S5

Nordic SAP expertise.
No platform agenda.

We're an independent SAP consultancy. We don't resell licenses and we don't have a platform quota. The answer to which integration stack you should use comes from your situation — not from ours.

20+

Years of SAP delivery in Nordic markets

Offices — Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Wrocław

150+

SAP-certified consultants across the group

5×

Faster delivery with S5 Labs Poland engineering centre

SAP Recognised Expertise

Certified SAP partner with recognised expertise across S/4HANA, BTP, and Integration Suite. We operate inside the SAP ecosystem — not around it.

Platform-independent advice

We work with SAP Integration Suite, Azure Integration Services, and Frends. The platform recommendation follows the diagnostic — not the other way around.

Fixed-price entry points

The Integration Posture Review is scoped, priced, and time-boxed. You know what you're buying before you sign. No open-ended discovery phases.

S5 Labs — engineering without overhead

Our capability-first SAP engineering centre in Wrocław (1h 45min from Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen) delivers at pace. Senior ABAP, BTP, and integration engineers — no juniors on billable work.

Nordic track record

Twenty years of delivery across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark — manufacturing, food & beverage, energy, public sector. We know the compliance context and the procurement culture.

You own the result

We write clean, documented, cloud-ready code. Every engagement ends with a handover your internal team can maintain — or we run it for you on a fixed monthly fee.

Selected references — integration delivery

Raisio 1,000+ integrations consolidated

Arvos Group PI/PO → Frends in 21 days

Fazer EDI integration estate modernised

Aurobay Global powertrain manufacturer — S/4HANA integration

Full case studies available on request

09 — Start here

Ready for an honest answer on your integration strategy?

No capability deck. No vendor pitch. Seven questions and an honest answer on where you are and what your credible options are.

Free 2-hour discovery Seven questions. Honest answer. No slides from us. No follow-up pressure.

Integration Posture Review Report + platform shortlist · CIO-ready briefing · Fixed price

→

Platform Architecture & Roadmap 6–8 weeks · Target architecture + 18-month roadmap · Fixed price

Tell us where you are

We respond within one business day and suggest the right starting point.

Are you tired of SAP partnersthat sell you platforms instead ofanswers?

Why is your last integration platform suddenly not enough?

Do you recognise your situation in one of these?

Which of these sounds like your situation right now?

Three ways to start — each one stands alone.

Seven questions that reveal the right platform — before we name it.

The platform shortlist falls out of the answers.

What does the answer actually look like in practice?

SAP says BTP. Microsoft says Azure. Where does Frends fit?

Has your integration platform become a museum of half-finished iFlows?

Ask Me Anything — SAP Integration in 2026

What you walk away with

Are you tired of Big-4 proposals dressed up in vendor-incentive baggage?

Questions we hear before every engagement.

Nordic SAP expertise.No platform agenda.

Ready for an honest answer on your integration strategy?

Tell us where you are

Norway

Poland

Sweden

Are you tired of SAP partners
that sell you platforms instead of
answers?

Nordic SAP expertise.
No platform agenda.