# What Is SAP Integration Suite? CPI, API Management, and BTP Explained (2026)

SAP Integration Suite is SAP's integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS), delivered on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). It bundles several capabilities you turn on as needed: Cloud Integration (formerly CPI) for integration flows, API Management for publishing and securing APIs, Open Connectors for pre-built third-party connectors, plus Integration Advisor, Trading Partner Management, and Event Mesh. You license it as one suite and activate the pieces your landscape actually uses.

SAP has renamed this product enough times that half the confusion about it is vocabulary, not technology. Process Integration became HANA Cloud Integration, which became Cloud Platform Integration (CPI), which is now the Cloud Integration capability inside SAP Integration Suite. The platform it runs on, once called SAP Cloud Platform, is now BTP. So when someone asks whether they need "CPI or Integration Suite or BTP," the honest answer is that they're asking about three layers of the same stack.

This guide names each capability, says what it does, and gives you a way to decide how much of the suite you actually need.

SAP Integration Suite is the managed iPaaS that connects SAP and non-SAP systems in the cloud. Instead of standing up on-premise middleware like SAP Process Orchestration, you subscribe to Integration Suite as a service on BTP and build your integrations there.

It covers the full range of integration styles a large SAP landscape needs: application-to-application flows, API publishing and governance, business-to-business document exchange with trading partners, and event-driven messaging. The point of bundling them is that most enterprises need more than one style, and running each on a separate tool means separate monitoring, separate skills, and separate bills.

Pro Tip

Integration Suite is one subscription with several capabilities inside it. You are not buying six products. You are turning on the ones your integrations require.

Cloud Integration is the capability most people mean when they say "CPI." It runs integration flows, called iFlows, that move and convert messages between a sender and a receiver using adapters, mapping steps, and content modifiers. If you need SAP S/4HANA to talk to Salesforce, or an SAP system to post data to a REST endpoint, Cloud Integration is where that logic lives.

It ships with a large library of pre-built integration content for common SAP-to-SAP and SAP-to-cloud scenarios, which shortens the build for standard flows. For the mechanics of how an iFlow is structured, our companion piece on SAP CPI and how iFlows work walks one end to end.

API Management is the capability for publishing, securing, and monitoring APIs. You wrap a backend service, SAP or non-SAP, in an API proxy, then apply policies for authentication, rate limiting, and payload conversion, and expose the result through a developer portal.

It exists because point-to-point calls multiply into an unmanageable mess as you add consumers. A managed API layer gives you one governed, reusable, monitored endpoint instead of a dozen hand-built callouts. The details of proxies and policies are in our guide to SAP API Management.

The remaining capabilities cover the less-common but high-value cases. Here is what each one does and when it earns its place.

Source: SAP Help Portal, Integration Suite capabilities, 2026. Connector counts and capability names follow SAP's current suite definition.

Most teams start with Cloud Integration and API Management, then add the others as a specific need shows up. You do not have to plan the whole suite on day one.

SAP Business Technology Platform is the foundation the suite runs on. BTP is SAP's platform layer for extensions, integration, data, and analytics, and Integration Suite is one service you subscribe to within it.

That relationship matters for provisioning, and it is the step teams most often underestimate. Before you build a single iFlow, someone has to set up a BTP subaccount, assign the Integration Suite entitlement, subscribe to the service, and activate the capabilities. Integration Suite runs in BTP's multi-cloud foundry environment, which means you can host it on hyperscaler infrastructure like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud depending on your region and setup. SAP publishes the exact entitlement and provisioning steps on the SAP Discovery Center, and it is worth following them literally the first time.

1. Subaccount and entitlement. Create the BTP subaccount and assign the Integration Suite entitlement to it.

2. Subscribe and activate. Subscribe to the Integration Suite service, then activate the specific capabilities you plan to use.

3. Roles and provisioning. Assign the right role collections so your integration developers can actually build, and provision the runtime.

Skipping past the BTP setup is how a "quick" Integration Suite project loses its first week to entitlements and permissions rather than integration logic.

Not every SAP shop needs all of Integration Suite. The decision comes down to how many integration styles you run and how much governance you need.

1. One integration style, low volume. If you only move data between two systems on a schedule, Cloud Integration alone covers you. You are effectively using the suite as cloud middleware.

2. Many API consumers. The moment several teams or partners consume your services, API Management stops being optional. Ungoverned APIs are the thing you regret at scale.

3. B2B at scale. If you exchange EDI documents with a roster of trading partners, Trading Partner Management and Integration Advisor pay for themselves in onboarding and mapping time.

4. Event-driven architecture. If you want systems to react to business events in near real time rather than poll, Event Mesh is the piece that makes that clean.

For a broader view of how Integration Suite compares to other iPaaS options and to native approaches, our native integration versus iPaaS comparison lays out the trade-offs, and the SAP integration guide maps where the suite fits among the classic SAP interfaces.

SAP Integration Suite is sold in tiers, and the tier you pick decides which capabilities you can even turn on. The Standard edition covers Cloud Integration and API Management, which is enough for most application-to-application and API work. The Premium edition adds the heavier capabilities like Trading Partner Management and the fuller B2B tooling. The exact packaging shifts as SAP repackages the suite, so confirm the current edition matrix on the SAP price list before you commit, rather than trusting a blog to be current on pricing.

The part that surprises finance is the metering. Integration Suite is not a flat per-seat license. Consumption is measured in units that track message volume and, for API Management, call volume, so a chatty integration that fires thousands of messages a day costs more to run than a nightly batch moving the same records. Before you design a high-frequency, low-payload flow, price the message count, because that number, not the developer headcount, is usually what moves the bill.

Pro Tip

Design decisions are cost decisions here. A real-time event stream and a nightly batch can move identical data and land on very different invoices because the suite meters messages, not records.

One reason to stay inside Integration Suite rather than hand-roll everything is the pre-built content. SAP ships integration packages for common scenarios, S/4HANA to SuccessFactors, S/4HANA to Ariba, and dozens more, that you import and configure instead of building from an empty iFlow.

You find and pull this content from the SAP Business Accelerator Hub, SAP's catalog of APIs, integration packages, and events. For a standard SAP-to-SAP flow, starting from a published package can turn a multi-week build into a configuration exercise. The caveat is that pre-built content assumes a fairly standard process, so the moment your requirement drifts from the template, you are back to editing the iFlow by hand. Treat the packages as a strong starting point, not a guarantee you will never open the mapping editor.

The obvious question for anyone who already runs MuleSoft or Boomi is whether Integration Suite replaces them. It can, but the decision is less about features and more about where your center of gravity sits.

Source: SAP Help Portal, Integration Suite, 2026, compared against MuleSoft and Boomi SAP connector documentation.

The honest read: if SAP is the heart of your landscape and your team lives in the SAP world, Integration Suite is the natural home because SAP maintains the deepest connectivity to its own products. If your integration center of gravity is Salesforce or a wide field of SaaS apps, a MuleSoft or Boomi may fit your team better even for SAP endpoints. Plenty of large shops run both and let each own the integrations closest to it.

If you still run SAP Process Integration or Process Orchestration on premise, a move to Integration Suite is likely on your roadmap, since SAP has set an end-of-mainstream-maintenance horizon for PI/PO and is steering customers to the cloud suite. This is a re-platforming, not a copy and paste.

1. Inventory your interfaces. List every PI/PO interface, its volume, and whether it is still used. Migrations are the best moment to retire dead interfaces instead of carrying them forward.

2. Assess with the migration tooling. SAP provides a Migration Assessment capability inside Integration Suite that inspects your PI/PO interfaces and flags how cleanly each maps to Cloud Integration.

3. Rebuild, do not lift and shift. Most interfaces get rebuilt as iFlows rather than mechanically converted, because the runtime and adapters differ. Standard patterns rebuild quickly; heavily customized mappings need real work.

4. Run in parallel, then cut over. Move interfaces in waves, run old and new side by side, and cut over once each wave is verified rather than flipping everything at once.

The teams that struggle are the ones that treat this as a technical port. The ones that succeed treat it as a chance to rationalize a decade of accumulated interfaces down to the ones that still matter.

What is SAP Integration Suite? SAP Integration Suite is SAP's cloud integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS), delivered on SAP Business Technology Platform. It bundles Cloud Integration (formerly CPI), API Management, Open Connectors, Integration Advisor, Trading Partner Management, and Event Mesh into one subscription, and you activate the capabilities your landscape needs.

Is SAP Integration Suite the same as CPI? No, but they are closely related. CPI, now called Cloud Integration, is one capability inside SAP Integration Suite. Cloud Integration runs the integration flows. Integration Suite is the larger bundle that also includes API Management, Open Connectors, and the B2B and event capabilities.

What is the difference between Integration Suite and BTP? BTP is the platform, and Integration Suite is a service that runs on it. SAP Business Technology Platform is SAP's foundation for extensions, integration, data, and analytics. Integration Suite is the integration service you subscribe to and provision within a BTP subaccount.

What capabilities are in SAP Integration Suite? Cloud Integration for integration flows, API Management for publishing and securing APIs, Open Connectors for pre-built third-party connectors, Integration Advisor for B2B message mapping, Trading Partner Management for EDI partner onboarding, and Event Mesh for event-driven messaging.

Do I need the whole suite or just one capability? Most teams need only a subset. If you move data between two systems, Cloud Integration alone is enough. Add API Management when multiple consumers use your services, Trading Partner Management and Integration Advisor for B2B at scale, and Event Mesh for event-driven designs.

How is SAP Integration Suite priced? It is sold in editions, with Standard covering Cloud Integration and API Management and Premium adding the heavier B2B capabilities. Consumption is metered by message and API call volume rather than by seat, so high-frequency integrations cost more to run than nightly batches moving the same data. Confirm the current edition and metering on SAP's price list, since the packaging changes.

Does SAP Integration Suite replace SAP PI/PO? Yes. Integration Suite is SAP's strategic successor to on-premise Process Integration and Process Orchestration, which have a defined maintenance end date. Moving is a re-platforming: you inventory existing interfaces, use SAP's migration assessment tooling, and rebuild interfaces as iFlows in waves rather than converting them mechanically.

About the author. Sunny Chauhan is the founder of appnigma.ai, where we build native Salesforce apps and integrations without glue code: direct, observable connections instead of a stack of hand-maintained callouts. He's a Salesforce-certified Platform Developer II who spent the better part of a decade building integrations and managed packages, including work at Zennify and Salesforce, before founding appnigma. Untangling which layer of a platform actually does the work, the way CPI, Cloud Integration, and BTP get tangled here, is most of what a real integration decision comes down to.

Which capability would you actually turn on first: Cloud Integration, API Management, or something further down the list? That choice usually tells you how complex your landscape really is.

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