For IT leaders and enterprise architects, the migration away from SAP PI/PO is a defining moment in your organization’s digital transformation. As you modernize your IT landscape, addressing the approaching end-of-mainstream maintenance in 2027 and the end-of-extended maintenance in 2030 for SAP PI/PO is critical. Organizations moving toward SAP Cloud ERP Private and SAP S/4HANA through RISE with SAP must address a significant architectural gap: the legacy on-premises middleware that SAP PI/PO has historically used to manage complex interfaces, routing and data management across your SAP systems cannot simply be replaced by a basic integration platform without significant operational risk.
As a leader in process integration, SAP Integration Suite is the premier choice for enterprises orchestrating complex business workflows across the cloud. During digital transformation initiatives, these integration solutions are indispensable for their ability to streamline end-to-end processes. However, while SAP focuses its excellence on high-level process logic, many organizations find that mission-critical ERP operations still require the specialized, deep managed file transfer (MFT) functionality that sits outside the scope of general-purpose integration.
The shift to RISE: Moving beyond legacy methods
Most SAP customers shifting their SAP investments to the cloud via RISE are moving from on-premises environments (many of which are highly customized) that rely on legacy application integration approaches, such as OS-level scripts, direct database writes and mounted network shares. However, in SAP Cloud ERP Private and SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud environments, direct server access is restricted (with few exceptions).
Adopting a “clean core” strategy fundamentally changes how your IT landscape handles data movement. Because RISE restricts the ability to manage files sourced from external systems at the server level, your integration platform must now act as the primary gateway for most file exchanges. To optimize your modern integration scenarios, you need a strategy that manages these strict connectivity rules without the runtime bottlenecks or performance lags common in standard cloud connectors. This requires scalability that standard synchronous integration flows often cannot provide for high-volume batch data. Failing to modernize your file transfer strategy alongside your ERP means your legacy application integration models will no longer translate to a cloud-first environment.
Critical MFT requirements beyond the scope of SAP Integration Suite
Relying exclusively on SAP Integration Suite to replace the high-volume file interfaces and integration scenarios currently handled by SAP PI/PO introduces technical roadblocks that directly impact the daily operations of business users.
File size and volume performance degradation
Large-scale data management is hindered by the fact that SAP’s own documentation acknowledges performance issues for files exceeding 40MB. For enterprises in industries like manufacturing or financial services that routinely share massive datasets that far exceed this amount, this limitation becomes a major hurdle. To optimize these transfers, IT teams are forced to adopt permanent, complex workarounds, such as manually splitting files into smaller fragments, leading to built-in inefficiencies and added complexity in forecasting, which are both detrimental to the modern enterprise transforming to the cloud.
No lift-and-shift B2B partner migration path
While SAP offers tooling to help semi-automate parts of this process, there is no direct lift-and-shift migration path for B2B integrations from an on-premises SAP PI/PO environment. Moving these integrations requires a manual re-implementation, necessitating entirely new licensing and the manual creation of all trading partner connectors and components. At Redwood Software, we have already witnessed several RISE transformations stall exactly at this stage. As for enterprises with hundreds of global partners, this translates to a massive resource drain that will stall the broader digital transformation.
Limited support for file sharing protocols
The integration platform currently lacks support for critical inbound protocol listeners, as well as no bi-directional OFTP2 connectivity. This lack of connectivity often forces a total re-architecture of established trading partner connections and processes, as this absent functionality creates insurmountable operational roadblocks that enterprise organizations must navigate — or risk losing the ability to communicate with their supply chain.
Compliance and audit gaps
SAP Integration Suite provides audit-ready logging, but it is restricted to a maximum 30-day retention period unless an external logging integration with Splunk is enabled. This inherent 30-day limit creates a significant compliance gap for data flowing from trading partners to SAP applications, as regulatory mandates such as SOX, PCI DSS and GDPR often require a lookback period of 12 months or greater. For regulated organizations, this means that a legal hold or a standard year-end audit could become an impossible task if the necessary file transfer history has already been purged from the system.
How MFT roadblocks a smooth transition to RISE
Redwood’s role as the sole workload automation and orchestration platform in the RISE with SAP reference architecture provides a unique window and perspective into the modern IT landscape and the hidden complexities of cloud migration. We have seen a recurring pattern with our customers undergoing RISE: SAP PI/PO logic does not “lift and shift” as easily as expected when planning, and these MFT roadblocks often go undetected until a project is mid-transformation.
Failing to account for these challenges and their associated workflows early in your RISE transformation project not only delays your project timeline, but it also forces IT leaders into two undesirable scenarios:
- Building fragile, custom workarounds: Teams spend months building and maintaining complex, custom fixes that are difficult to scale and hinder business process management and clean core standards required for SAP S/4HANA.
- Paying for temporary maintenance through 2030: Organizations can pay for extended maintenance support for SAP PI/PO, which adds cost without solving the underlying problem, merely delaying the inevitable transformation until the 2030 deadline arrives.
De-risk the impact MFT will have on your RISE transformation with JSCAPE by Redwood
As a long-standing partner to SAP, Redwood helps customers bridge the functionality gaps that SAP Integration Suite was never intended to address. By standardizing on JSCAPE by Redwood, you can eliminate the risks associated with the end of support for SAP PI/PO and ensure your cloud ERP transformation is complete — and compliant — with secure and reliable enterprise-grade MFT.
By integrating JSCAPE as a core software component into your architecture, you can:
- Automate file transfers of any size and get high-volume data management without performance degradation
- Optimize your runtime performance with high scalability and maintain a centralized integration directory for routing between different systems
- Support synchronous and asynchronous file movement, ensuring your integration flows handle all B2B protocols and server connectivity
- Provide business users with end-to-end logging for all SAP applications that far exceeds the maximum 30-day limit in SAP Integration Suite (and without requiring an external integration)
- Simplify your business process management and service advanced file sharing needs by using a robust MFT solution to connect on-premises legacy systems with your new RISE with SAP environment
- Manage end-to-end file transfer workflows to maintain visibility across your entire SAP ecosystem, from mainframe to cloud
Don’t get caught off guard and derail your RISE with SAP transformation strategy. JSCAPE bridges the critical functionality gaps around connectivity, compliance and file sharing that often stall RISE transformations, ensuring your file-based processes remain secure and reliable across your IT landscape. Talk to our experts today to ensure a seamless, risk-free transition to the cloud.