Lesson 2 of 5
Assessment
10 min
Listen to this lesson
You cannot plan a migration of interfaces you have not counted. The assessment produces one inventory with, for every interface, what it does, how it is built, how much it is used, who owns it, and how hard it will be to move. It is also where most programs find their first surprises: interfaces nobody owns, interfaces with no traffic for a year, and custom code nobody remembers writing.
Build the inventory from the system
Start from what is actually configured, not from a spreadsheet maintained by hand. In PO, the Integration Directory holds the configuration (integrated configurations, communication channels, and on dual-stack or older systems, classical scenarios), and the Enterprise Services Repository holds design objects (data types, message types, service interfaces, mappings). Add usage from message monitoring: message counts per interface over the last twelve months, peak days, and error rates. Then add what no system knows: the business owner, the partner contact, and the business criticality.
| Attribute | Source | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Sender, receiver, adapters, mappings | Integration Directory and ESR | Drives migration effort and tool support |
| Custom adapter modules, Java mappings, BPM processes | ESR and the PO Java stack | Usually manual work or redesign |
| Message volume, peaks and error rate | PO message monitoring, last 12 months | Zero traffic may mean retire; peaks drive performance tests |
| Business process and owner | Interviews with process owners | Who signs off equivalence and cutover |
| Partner and change lead time | Partner contacts and contracts | Partners may need weeks to change endpoints or certificates |
| Criticality | Process owner and impact analysis | Wave placement and depth of testing |
The attributes Contoso records for each of its 64 PO interfaces.
SAP's Migration Assessment
SAP Integration Suite includes a Migration Assessment capability built for this job. SAP's course describes it as estimating the technical effort of moving from PO to Integration Suite: you connect it to the PO system's Integration Directory and Enterprise Services Repository, it extracts the configuration, evaluates each integrated configuration, and reports a migration category and an effort estimate expressed as a T-shirt size. Each scenario is checked against a set of rules (adapters, mappings, modules and so on), and if any one rule comes out Evaluation required, the whole scenario is rated Evaluation required. SAP's course lists the PO releases the migration tooling supports (7.31 from SP28, 7.40 from SP23, 7.50 from SP06); check the current lists for both the assessment and the tool against your release.
| Category | SAP's description | What Contoso does next |
|---|---|---|
| Ready to migrate | Can be migrated with zero to minimal adjustments | Candidate for tool-based migration in an early wave |
| Adjustment required | Can be migrated with some adjustments | Estimate the adjustments; plan in a mid wave |
| Evaluation required | Not able to be migrated at the moment as is | Decide redesign, consolidate or retire; often a later wave |
Alongside it, Integration Assessment supports SAP's Integration Solution Advisory Methodology (ISA-M): architects define integration policies, business experts describe requirements, and developers get a proposed best-fit integration technology for each interface, with the decision documented. Use it when the question is not "can this be migrated?" but "should this still be a point-to-point flow at all?"
- ExtractMigration Assessment connected to XP1's Integration Directory and ESR; 64 integrated configurations read.
- EvaluateEach one categorized with an effort size; showstoppers and workarounds listed.
- EnrichUsage, owner, partner lead time and criticality added from monitoring and interviews.
- DecideTarget technology checked against ISA-M policies; approach chosen per interface.
- PlanInterfaces grouped into waves with test depth set by criticality.
What would you do?
Kenji argues the assessment is wasted effort: "Ready to migrate means the tool does it; just run the tool on everything." What should Theo point out?
- Build the inventory from the PO configuration, then add usage, owners, partners and criticality.
- Migration Assessment extracts from the Integration Directory and ESR and rates each integrated configuration.
- Categories: Ready to migrate, Adjustment required, Evaluation required, with a T-shirt-size effort.
- Integration Assessment (ISA-M) helps decide the right target technology per interface.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which PO components does Migration Assessment connect to?
2. How does Migration Assessment express the effort to migrate an integrated configuration?
3. Which assessment category means an interface cannot be migrated as is at the moment?
4. Which data point most often reveals an interface that could simply be retired?