Next week I will be happy to kick off the 4-part webinar series “SAP integration solutions for the digital age”. This webinar series aims to give SAP customers an understanding of how integration challenges that arise with the digital transformation can be mastered with the help of SAP’s integration solution portfolio.
During my 30 minute presentation on Oct 8th I will give an overview of how the different integration solutions offered by SAP differ from and complement each other – namely I will talk about SAP HANA Cloud Integration, SAP Process Orchestration, SAP Gateway and SAP API Management.
Click here for more details and to register for this session/the entire series. I look forward to meeting you and also answering questions you might have on SAP's integration strategy.
Update after the webinar
Thanks for all of you who took part in the webinar. Since I ran out of time and could not answer all your questions here is a quick recap of the questions and the answers. In case of additional questions do revert back to me at sindhu.gangadharan@sap.com
1) Is it a prerequisite to run SAP PO on HANA?
SAP Process Orchestration runs with release 7.40 optionally on SAP HANA, but it is not a pre-requisite; i. e. SAP Process Orchestration runs also on other data bases as per officially published PAM.
2) Can you comment on the usage of SAP HCI in the context of SFSF – EC?
SAP HCI is SAP's strategic integration platform for the integration of SAP cloud applications (e. g. SuccessFactors, Cloud for Customer, S/4 HANA, SAP Financial Services Network, ByD, Ariba etc.) with other cloud or on-premise applications. SAP successfully replaced Boomi with HCI for the integration of SuccessFactors applications; i. e. pre-packaged Integration Content based on HCI is available now also for the remaining integration scenarios with SuccessFactors Employee Central.
3) Are SAP Enterprise services still supported on PO? Also how does it scale to support HCI if we were to integrate with non SAP SaaS CRM's?
SAP Process Orchestration still supports SAP Enterprise Services.
SAP HCI is build on a scalable architecture with the focus on the integration also with non-SAP systems; for example SAP HCI offers an Adapter Development Kit (ADK) which allows partners and customers to build their own adapter for SAP HCI leveraging open source components and a build-in wizard within the ADK of SAP HCI providing a guided approach to develop adapters for SAP HCI.
4) What' the SAP recomenation for cloud to premise integration if SAP PO is currently playing an important role in the organization?
SAP will keep on investing in SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PRO) in order to allow the more than 7000 productive customers to leverage their invests in SAP PRO. In particular, with the SAP NetWeaver 7.50 release cloud integration content, that was built on SAP HCI, can be re-used also within SAP PRO landscapes. Furthermore, along the roadmap further shared capabilities between SAP HCI and SAP PRO are planned, e. g. a common adapters that can be deployed on SAP HCI as well as SAP PRO. That means customers with a strong SAP PRO strategy can keep using SAP PRO also for cloud integration scenarios
5) Can we reprocess the data using HCI?
Yes, messages, which are for example in status error, can be re-processed.
6) Can we see data segment in HCI?
Yes, payload monitoring is available for all pipeline steps within SAP HCI, i. e. user can view the payload after each step along the message processing. The viewing of the message payload is protected and requires special authorization.
7) talking of iPaaS - what is the current capability to integrate with other cloud to cloud vendors other than SAP? Do you offer connectors or will it connect via standard SOAP/REST API's?
SAP HCI offers a broad spectrum of adapters, such as HTTP(S), SOAP, OData, SFTP, Mail, IDoc, SuccessFactors (via OData, Rest and web service API). Furthermore SAP HCI offers an Adapter Development Kit (ADK) which allows partners and customers to build their own adapter for SAP HCI leveraging open source components and a build-in wizard within the ADK of SAP HCI providing a guided approach to develop adapters for SAP HCI.
😎 Can we correct the error data in HCI and re-process it?
This is planned along the roadmap of SAP HCI.
9) Is HCI used with Hybris also?
Yes, SAP HCI supports already as of today the integration with Hybris, e. g. through open standards; a tighter integration via pre-packaged integration content is planned along the roadmap for next year.
10) For supportig IoT there is no evidence of either HCI or SAP PO being ready from a capability. What is the plan on this?
SAP HCI as well as SAP HCI PRO can be leveraged in IoT scenarios already as of today, e. g. through all the various adapters that are available for both of these platforms and that allow connectivity to a big variety of backend systems. In order to broaden the IoT use cases for both SAP HCI as well as SAP PRO there are currently co-innovation projects running together with the partner Solace Systems, who provide hardware based and software based solutions for high speed massaging. The performance KPIs of Solace reach up to 450k messages per second. I. e. through the co-innovation with Solace Systems it is planned that the runtimes of SAP HCI as well as SAP PRO will be able to process a much higher number of messages than today in order to support a even broader range of IoT scenarios, for which often high speed messaging is required.
11) Too many varients around OData i.e. ABAP Gateway, Integration Gateway on SMP, Gateway on PO etc - What is the strategic solution for onpremise?
SAP Gateway as such is a product which enables the OData connectivity to SAP ERP backend applications. In order to enable OData connectivity also in other systems, components of SAP Gateway have already been built into different systems, such as SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PRO) and SAP HANA Cloud Platform (SAP HCP); also in the future further SAP systems will be provided with SAP Gateway components in order to enable these with OData connectivity. Regarding the strategic solution on-premise: SAP PRO is SAP's on-premise Integration Platform and provides key ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) capabilities, e. g. mapping, routing connectivity, security; i. e. for typical mediation scenarios on-premise SAP PRO is recommended.
12) How is HCI priced?
SAP HCI is available via various editions, such as the Standard Edition, Professional Edition, Application Edition, Developer Edition. In general SAP HCI is based on a monthly subscription fee, and included are a certain number of message volume per month and number of connected systems; on demand customers can request for additional licenses for more bandwith or a higher number of connected systems. Further information about the different SAP HCI editions can be found for example at http://scn.sap.com/community/hana-in-memory/blog/2014/09/25/sap-hana-cloud-integration-standard-and-... (SAP HCI Standard and SAP HCI Professiona Editions) and http://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middleware/blog/2015/01/14/hana-cloud-integration-for-applic... (SAP HCI Developer Edition).
13) PO is an integral part of NetWeaver, right?
Yes, SAP Process Orchestration is technically an integral part of SAP NetWeaver. Licensing wise SAP Process Orchestration can be also licensed independently of SAP NetWeaver.
14) how we integrate SAP hana and SAP PI
Yes, SAP Process Orchestration can integrate SAP HANA DB, e. g. directly via the JDBC adapter.
15) Is the intent to release the adapter sdk with apache camel software?
Yes, the Adapter Development Kit for SAP HCI is already released. Further information about the Adapter Development Kit for SAP HCI can be found in the SAP Standard Documentation at http://help.sap.com/cloudintegration -> SAP HCI for Process Integration -> Developing Adapters.
16) Can Partners offer their custom integration content on HCI
Yes, partners can offer their integration content on SAP HCI to their customers. Optionally partners can also certify their content at the SAP Integration & Certification Center. Along the roadmap of SAP HCI it is also planned to build up a partner ecosystem that allows partners to sell their integration content and connectivity options directly through the public SAP HCI content catalog.
17) How do you compare HCI vs PO for EC integration?
SAP HCI is SAP's strategic integration platform for the integration of SAP cloud applications (e. g. SuccessFactors, Cloud for Customer, S/4 HANA, SAP Financial Services Network, ByD, Ariba etc.) with other cloud or on-premise applications. SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PRO) is SAP's on-premise integration platform and especially suited for on-premise integration but also cloud integration scenarios. The most cloud integration content, including for SuccessFactors, is available for SAP HCI. However, with the SAP Process Orchestration 7.50 release it will be possible to run the cloud integration content also on SAP Process Orchestration. Therefore customers can choose between SAP PRO and SAP HCI. Customers who have more a cloud strategy could choose SAP HCI, while customers who have more an on-premise strategy with some cloud scenarios could choose SAP PRO.
18) Is there any free trail account for HCI? I am new to HCI but i am working on HCP SF Extnension.
Yes, there is a free trial program available for SAP HCI which provides access to an SAP HCI tenant for 30 days. Further information about the trail program of SAP HCI can be found at http://scn.sap.com/community/hana-in-memory/blog/2013/10/22/sap-hana-cloud-integration--test-and-lea....
19) How analytics is helpfull related to HCI
SAP HCI supports multiple use cases, such as process integration, data integration, user centric integration. The focus of the data integration capabilities are mainly on extract, transform and load (ETL). SAP HCI for data services is integrated with SAP Lumira Cloud, which is the analytics solution from SAP in the cloud.
20) I have few SAP user customers who opted of Mulesoft ESB Integration platform rather than SAP PI both for on premise & cloud due to pricing. Does the Pricing part is going to decrease in comming years to promote SAP PI for the SAP Users
For pricing related questions it is always best to reach out to the SAP account executive of your company.
21) Do we have BPM capabilties in HCI or is there a roadmap for it?
Yes, SAP HCI offers multiple "light-weight" orchestration capabilities, such as split, merge, aggregate, multicast etc. All these orchestration capabilities can be flexibly combined in integration scenarios using the flexible pipeline concept of SAP HCI. Full blown BPM capabilities are planned along to the roadmap of SAP HCI.
22) how will SAP help to accelerate adopting this integration?
SAP helps via many different channels to accelerate adopting SAP HCI, e. g. through continuous rollout at major SAP events (such TechEd), local SAP HCI info days and code jam sessions (further information can be found at http://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middleware/blog/2014/06/27/sap-info-days-on-sap-hana-cloud-i...), online training via openSAP (further information can be found at https://open.sap.com/courses/hybrid1), free SAP HCI trial program (further information can be found at http://scn.sap.com/community/hana-in-memory/blog/2013/10/22/sap-hana-cloud-integration--test-and-lea...), providing further customer success stories (one example is Owen Illinois, see http://www.news-sap.com/sap-hana-cloud-integration-technology-customer-owens-illinois-achieves-succe...) etc. SAP will also continue to provide more and more pre-packages integration content for further cloud applications from SAP, such as Ariba, Hybris, Concur and so on, in order to provide customers a jump start into more and more cloud integration scenarios.
