Hire a senior Microsoft-side integration engineering firm that is fluent in SAP’s interface layer: a team that can consume SAP OData services published through SAP Gateway, call BAPIs and RFCs, exchange IDocs where asynchronous document flows demand it, and land that data in SharePoint, Dataverse, and the rest of your Microsoft line-of-business stack with error handling, monitoring, and an audit trail. i3solutions is that firm for US enterprises: senior US-based Microsoft integration engineers, a Microsoft Solutions Partner, delivering governed SAP-to-Microsoft integration across SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and Azure Integration Services, with delivery experience in regulated sectors including aerospace and defense manufacturing, financial services, and healthcare.
The wrong hire is easy to make here because the market splits into two camps that each know half the problem. SAP consultancies understand the ERP but treat SharePoint as a file share. Generalist Microsoft shops understand SharePoint but treat SAP as “an API we will figure out.” The integration lives exactly in the seam between them, and the seam is where projects fail. What follows is the evaluation framework we would use if we were sitting on your side of the table.
What the Right Partner Looks Like
Before any demo, ask a candidate firm to speak concretely to six things. A team that has actually shipped SAP-to-Microsoft integration will answer all six without reaching for a slide.
- Named SAP interface mechanisms. They should be able to explain when they would use OData services exposed through SAP Gateway, when a BAPI or RFC call is the right tool, and when IDocs are the better fit for asynchronous, high-volume document exchange. A firm that cannot name the interface layer has never touched it.
- A position on where the middleware lives. Microsoft-side (Azure Logic Apps, Azure API Management, Azure Service Bus) or SAP-side (SAP Integration Suite on BTP). Both are legitimate. A partner with no opinion has not run either in production.
- On-premises connectivity experience. Most US enterprises still run SAP ECC or S/4HANA on private infrastructure. The team should have configured Microsoft’s on-premises data gateway, or equivalent private connectivity into Azure, and should raise it before you do.
- Identity and access discipline. Integration traffic should run through Microsoft Entra ID app registrations with OAuth 2.0 and least-privilege scopes, not through a shared service account with a password in a spreadsheet. Ask how they handle credential rotation and who can see the secrets.
- SAP licensing awareness. Reads and writes that originate outside SAP’s own interfaces can fall under SAP’s digital access licensing rules. A competent partner flags this during design and tells you to review the pattern against your SAP agreement before go-live, not after an audit letter arrives.
- Governance artifacts, not promises. Interface specifications, error-handling and retry design, monitoring dashboards, and a documented decision record for every pattern choice. In a regulated environment these artifacts are the difference between an integration and an audit finding.
The Integration Patterns a Competent Team Will Propose
There is no single “SAP-SharePoint connector” that solves this. There is a set of proven patterns, and the right one depends on what the business actually needs the two systems to do together.
| Business requirement | Integration pattern |
|---|---|
| Show live SAP data (orders, invoices, materials) inside SharePoint or a Power App | SAP OData services published through SAP Gateway, consumed directly or surfaced as Dataverse virtual tables so the data appears in the Microsoft stack without being copied |
| Trigger SAP transactions from a Microsoft workflow (create a purchase requisition from a SharePoint approval) | Azure Logic Apps with the SAP connector, which can call BAPIs and RFCs and exchange IDocs, reaching on-premises systems through the on-premises data gateway |
| Store SAP documents (contracts, drawings, quality records) in SharePoint instead of expensive SAP content storage | Document offloading from SAP DMS or ArchiveLink scenarios into SharePoint document libraries via Microsoft Graph, keeping SAP metadata linked to the SharePoint copy |
| High-volume, asynchronous exchange with guaranteed delivery | IDoc or event-based flows through a message layer such as Azure Service Bus, with dead-letter handling and replay |
| Let business users build apps and automations over SAP data | Power Platform with Microsoft’s SAP connectivity, governed through environment strategy and a data loss prevention policy so citizen development does not become uncontrolled ERP access |
| Integration owned by the SAP team rather than the Microsoft team | SAP Integration Suite on BTP, which includes a Microsoft SharePoint receiver adapter for pushing content into SharePoint from SAP-side flows |
Microsoft publishes reference guidance for Power Platform and SAP integration, including the licensing prerequisites on both sides; a serious partner will walk you through it rather than around it. You do not need to memorize these patterns. Your shortlisted firms should already know them, and should be able to tell you which two or three apply to your landscape and why the others do not.
Microsoft-Side or SAP-Side Middleware: Someone Has to Own It
The most consequential architectural decision is not which connector to buy. It is which team owns the integration layer for the next decade. If your center of gravity is Microsoft (M365, Azure, Power Platform, an IT team fluent in Entra ID and DevOps pipelines), Azure Integration Services is usually the right home: Logic Apps for orchestration, API Management as the governed front door to SAP services, Service Bus for reliable messaging. If your integration competency lives with the SAP basis and development team, SAP Integration Suite on BTP keeps the flows where the skills are.
What does not work is splitting ownership down the middle, with each side assuming the other is monitoring the interface. We have been brought into more than one program where an integration “worked” for months while silently dropping records, because neither team owned the error queue. When you evaluate a partner, ask who they think should own the middleware in your specific organization. The answer tells you whether they are designing for your operating model or for their own comfort zone.
The Governance Layer Most Proposals Skip
For a regulated enterprise, the integration design is only half the engagement. The other half is proving, on paper, that it is controlled. That means Entra ID app registrations with scoped permissions instead of shared credentials. It means every interface having a named owner, a documented data contract, and monitoring that alerts a human when flows fail. It means segregation of duties carried across the boundary, so a user who cannot approve a payment in SAP cannot approve one through a Power App either. And it means the SAP digital access question is answered in writing before the first production transaction, because indirect usage of SAP data through third-party front ends is a licensing topic SAP itself audits.
None of this is exotic. It is ordinary engineering discipline applied to a boundary that usually has none, and it is the difference between an integration your auditors sign off on and one they write up.
How i3solutions Delivers SAP-to-Microsoft Integration
i3solutions is a US-based Microsoft engineering firm, and SAP connectivity is a core scenario within our Microsoft integration services and broader system integration and data management practices. Our engineers are senior, US-based, and work daily in the seam between the two stacks: SAP Gateway and OData service consumption, BAPI and RFC invocation, IDoc flows, Azure Logic Apps and the on-premises data gateway, Dataverse virtual tables, and SharePoint and Microsoft Graph on the receiving end. We have written previously about the architectural fundamentals in our guide to connecting SAP to your line-of-business applications.
Engagements start with a fixed-scope discovery: we inventory the SAP interfaces you actually have, the Microsoft landscape they must reach, and the governance constraints they must satisfy, then propose the two or three patterns that fit, with the licensing and ownership questions answered up front. Delivery is phased, each phase producing a working interface plus the artifacts (specifications, monitoring, decision records) that let the program survive audit scrutiny. We have applied this model in aerospace and defense manufacturing, financial services, and healthcare environments, where the integration has to be defensible, not just functional.
Frequently Asked Questions
What skills should an SAP-SharePoint integration team actually have?
Dual-stack fluency. On the SAP side: OData service consumption through SAP Gateway, BAPI and RFC invocation, and IDoc handling. On the Microsoft side: SharePoint and Microsoft Graph APIs, Azure Logic Apps and API Management, Dataverse, and Entra ID application security. A team missing either half will push the design toward whatever it knows, whether or not that fits your landscape.
Should the integration run through Azure or through SAP BTP?
Whichever side of your organization will own and operate it for the long term. Microsoft-centric IT teams are usually better served by Azure Integration Services (Logic Apps, API Management, Service Bus). Organizations whose integration competency sits with the SAP team may prefer SAP Integration Suite on BTP. Both are production-proven; unowned middleware is the only wrong answer.
Do we have to copy SAP data into SharePoint or Dataverse?
Often no. Dataverse virtual tables and direct OData consumption can surface SAP data in Microsoft experiences on demand, without replication, which keeps SAP as the system of record and simplifies compliance. Replication earns its complexity only for offline access, heavy reporting loads, or document offloading scenarios where content deliberately moves to SharePoint.
Does SAP licensing change how the integration should be designed?
Yes, materially. Access to SAP data and transactions through non-SAP front ends can fall under SAP’s digital access licensing model, and Microsoft’s own Power Platform guidance calls out licensing prerequisites on both sides. Have the design reviewed against your SAP agreement during architecture, not after deployment. This is a standard checkpoint in our discovery phase.
Can this work with on-premises SAP ECC, or only S/4HANA?
Both. ECC systems expose BAPIs, RFCs, and IDocs, and can publish OData through SAP Gateway; S/4HANA makes the OData surface richer and more current. On-premises systems connect to Microsoft cloud services through the on-premises data gateway or private Azure connectivity. An ECC landscape usually changes the pattern selection, not the feasibility.
Put Your Landscape in Front of an Engineer
If you are evaluating partners for an SAP-to-Microsoft integration program, the fastest way to separate the two camps is to put your actual landscape in front of them: which SAP release you run, where it lives, and what the business needs the two systems to do together. In one conversation you will learn which two or three of the patterns above fit your estate, where the licensing and ownership questions land, and whether the firm across the table has shipped this seam or only diagrammed it. Talk to a senior integration architect and bring the interface list, however rough it is.
