Services that enable system-wide communication are called adapters.

Adapters are responsible for converting data of different formats between the components in an CRM environment.

Inbound messages are converted by inbound adapters. Outbound messages are forwarded by a generic outbound adapter to a receiver-specific adapter.

Examples of adapters are the CRM Adapter between the CRM application and the CRM Middleware, the Adapter Framework for message exchange within the CRM Server as well as with one or more R/3 back-end systems, and the BW Adapter that provides the connection to SAP Business Information Warehouse systems.