AWS Lambda vs. SAP Integration Suite

Scenarios where AWS Lambda is well suited: 1. When we need to run a periodic task few times in a day or every hour, we may deploy it on AWS Lambda so it would not increase load on our server which is handling client requests and at the same time we don't have to pay for AWS Lambda when it is not running. So, overall we only pay for few function invocations. 2. When some compute intensive processing is to be done but the number of requests per unit of time fluctuates. For example, we had deployed an AWS Lambda for processing images into different sizes and storing them on AWS S3 once user uploads them. Now, this is something that may happen few times every hour on a particular day or may not happen even once on other days. To handle this kind of tasks AWS Lambda is a better choice as we don't have to pay for the idle time of the server and also we don't have to worry about scaling when the load is high. Scenarios where AWS Lambda is not appropriate to use: 1. When we expect a large request volume continuously on the server. 2. When we don't want latency even in case of concurrent requests.

Incentivized

The case of the SAP Integration Suite shows outstanding capability in handling huge data, and especially when handling corporate portfolio data with multiple owners. But we have noticed that in the cases of moving data from the older banking system, it is necessary to further refine the system. It does an excellent job of the current credit scoring.

• Lambda provides multiple methods for triggering functions, this includes AWS resources and services and external triggers like APIs and CLI calls.
• The compute provided my Lambda is largely hands off for operations teams. Once the function is deployed, the management overhead is minimal since there are no servers to maintain.
• Lambda's pricing can be very cost effective given that users are only charged for the time the function runs and associated costs like network or storage if those are used. A function that executes quickly and is not called often can cost next to nothing.

Incentivized

• Broad Connectivity: SAP Integration Suite excels in connecting diverse systems, including SAP and non-SAP applications, databases, and third-party services.
• Pre-built Integrations and Templates:The suite provides a library of pre-built integrations and templates for common business scenarios.
• User-Friendly Design Tools:
• API Management:

Incentivized

• Putting a significant portion of your codebase into AWS Lambda and taking advantage of the high level of integration with other AWS services comes with the risk of vendor lock-in.
• While the AWS Lambda environment is "not your problem," it's also not at your disposal to extend or modify, nor does it preserve state between function executions.
• AWS Lambda functions are subject to strict time limitations, and will be aborted if they exceed five minutes of execution time. This can be a problem for some longer-running tasks that are otherwise well-suited to serverless delivery.

Incentivized

• Provide more pre-built integrations to use within SuccessFactors or other modules instead of everything having to be custom built
• Support is unable to provide advice on custom builds so you often have to engage a 3rd party partner
• Works best when you have the functional and technical teams working together. Otherwise, the system is too technical for a functional user to create integration and a technical user not always understand the functional perspective

Incentivized

SAP Integration Suite is very helpful to us in many ways to manage purchase procedures, stocks, and data of vendors and suppliers. Also, it helps to manage data for service providers. SAP Integration Suite has the tool to conduct training and evaluation. Unique features like the cloud can provide access from any place and by any device is very helpful.

Incentivized

I give it a seven is usability because it's AWS. Their UI's are always clunkier than the competition and their documentation is rather cumbersome. There's SO MUCH to dig through and it's a gamble if you actually end up finding the corresponding info if it will actually help. Like I said before, going to google with a specific problem is likely a better route because AWS is quite ubiquitous and chances are you're not the first to encounter the problem. That being said, using SAM (Serverless application model) and it's SAM Local environment makes running local instances of your Lambdas in dev environments painless and quite fun. Using Nodejs + Lambda + SAM Local + VS Code debugger = AWESOME.

Incentivized

It's very easy to use and configure.

Incentivized

I have not needed support for AWS Lambda, since it is already using Python, which has resources all over the internet. AWS blog posts have information about how to install some libraries, which is necessary for some more complex operations, but this is available online and didn't require specific customer support for.

Incentivized

Support is hard to reach and takes a long time to get a response.

Incentivized

Work with an SAP implementation partner, if possible.

Incentivized

Azure Functions is another product that provides lambda functionality, but the documentation for some of Azure's products is quite hard to read. Additionally, AWS Lambda was one of the first cloud computing products on a large cloud service that implemented lambda functions, so they have had the most time to develop the product, increase the quality of service, and extend functionality to more languages. Amazon, by far, has the best service for Lambda that I know.

Incentivized

SAP Integration Suite was already part of our SAP stack, part of Business Technology Platform, with out-of-the-box integration with S/4 HANA transactional and ERP system that we are using as our main back-end. Thus, we are achieving significant Total Cost Optimization benefits or running both solutions on the same platform, hosted on Azure cloud.

Incentivized

• I was able to perform a lot of processing on data delivered from my website and little or no cost. This was a big plus to me.
• Programming AWS Lambda is quite easy once you understand the time limits to the functions.
• AWS Lambda has really good integration with the AWS S3 storage system. This a very good method of delivering data to be processed and a good place to pick it up after processing.

Incentivized

• In the long run will enable us to undeploy our on premise solution
• As long as integration suite doesn't support all capabilities PO has complete migration is hard
• Will probably be cheaper than our on premise solution when we are completely migrated

Incentivized