SAP PI - is it the end of the road?

[former_member187587]

I have bumped into the following gartner title (don't have license to get the articale)

SOALogix Acquisition Muddies the Waters on the Future of SAP NetWeaver PI

28 December 2009

Massimo Pezzini

Daniel Sholle

Jess Thompson

Thomas Otter

Benoit J. Lheureux

SAP's recent acquisition of SOALogix and limited visibility into the NetWeaver Process Integration road map have raised doubts about the product's strategic relevance for SAP. Until the product's future is clarified, users should focus PI only on tactical, short-term return-on-investment projects.

Does any one of the forum member can ellaborate \ clearify what this issue is all about?

You can purchase the article at:

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=1267315

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I have integrated SAP with other systems using BizTalk, WebMethods and websphere.

The statement that PI has no advantages over these when it comes to integrating SAP solutions is preposterous. None of these other products comes near PIu2019s SAP integration components - IDOC, rfc and abap proxy adapters (We had to give up on using IDOCs with WebMethods entirely on one project) . They have also failed to mention PI contentu2026 I would like to see an Amtrix ECC-SRM 7.0 integration.

u201CCompared with other middleware, NetWeaver PI has always been resource-hungry, Sholler said. To get the same level of performance, it needs to be run on a bigger level of infrastructure. Secondly, it only recently became a distributed ESB-like architecture with NetWeaver PI 7.1. Also, it typically takes six to seven more steps to do something with NetWeaver PI than with other middleware.

This statement is simply outrageous. In my IRL experience PI is one of the best performers amongst the middleware products with similar functionality. Also the statement about six to seven more steps to do something is ridiculousu2026 our integration development costs are always lower with PI than any other middleware.

It seems that mr Sholler believes that most things can be integrated with SOA in the near future, we are still struggling to get suppliers away from EDIFACT formats, but that is IRL and not in Gartneru2019s theoretical world.

I used to have respect for Gartner but here I have to quote Cicero: u201CQui Bonou201Du2026 oh and Mr. Sholler was previously a vice president in Frontecu2026

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It looks like nothing is going to happen soon. There was a rumour last year that SAP will buy Tibco. SAP PI i believe a long way from 2.0 to 7.1.1. Some of things i badly need in PI

a)Most recently SAP came with CE 7.2 with BPM(BPMN) on pure java stack. This has all the capabilities that BPEL in PI has except BPEL engine has ABAP(POOR DECISION) engine and CE has java engine. There is no native connectivity between these two systems which suggests SAP CE treats PI like any non sap system.This will be a huge selling point for both tools.

2)Very little flexibility in non bpm scenarios. If one compares with other tools like webmethods which has flow services PI doesnot get anywhere near that. The problem is stateless session bean for both mapping and adapter framework.PI should give some global container where some state can be persisted around diferent transactions.

3)Reusability:with 7.1 Function library concept has come but still is not good enough for entire software component versions.

4)Close and outofbox integration with SAP systems and with other standards like in SRM mapping of SRMXML to CXML.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Let me give you some more insights:

Before this article was published I had been in conference in vegas with Gartner and they said (same group who wrote this article) SAP is going to give OEM to a different vendor and this will happen in 2 weeks.Around the same time there was a article by hgumbel almost saying the thing what gartner has been trying to say. So i posted this question in sdn forum to UDO'S article (1st week dec) to which UDO replied that SAP does not respond to rumours.When the article came again things become very clear of gartner views. So there are 2 things:

1)Why Gartner is trying to do that?Is gartner has some probs with SAP?

2)Why SAP IS NOT replying officially to Gartner.Why there is no link.That is what Gartner have asked that don't make any contract till SAP makes its future clear.

SO it is very common sense there is something which is going on since SAP is not coming up a clear reply to gartner even after a month and this news is known to all SAP PI customers and they will definately have some impact based on this gartner article.

Again this is my persnal opinion.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Clarifying the Future of NetWeaver PI

http://www.feedingthesapecosystem.com/2010/02/clarifying-future-of-netweaver-pi.html

[former_member187587]

Thank you all for your response.

I guess the time has not yet come to start learning Oracle fusion...

[Former Member]

Udo Paltzer's comment :

"SAP acquired SOALogix as a special-purpose solution with application-specific content for the interoperability of SAP's Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) applications with other products for specialized, PPM-specific use cases. While there is some overlap with a portion of SAP NetWeaver PI, this acquisition is not relevant to the strategic direction of SAP NetWeaver PI."

Chris

[former_member187587]

Chris,

Can you provide a link to this quote.

[MichalKrawczyk]

Hi,

there is no link I believe - PI Mentors received it from Mark Finnern who received it from Udo

Regards,

Michal Krawczyk

[Shabarish_Nair]

Nimrod,

the statement was part of a communication that SAP Mentors have received.

So as per the statement it is clear that there is no direct implication.

[Former Member]

Hi.

Well I found this document on the web.

[With NetWeaver PI's future unclear, don't use it for strategic projects, Gartner says|http://searchsap.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid21_gci1378796,00.html?track=NL-137&ad=744300&asrc=EM_NLN_10650841&uid=8284201]

Regards.

[Former Member]

Gartner's analysis (I think) is based on a tenuous conclusion; that since SAP has acquired a company with a similiar product to PI, that therefore must mean PI is not SAP's product of choice.

SAP Has a long history of acquiring companies with technology that may or may not make it to market as an SAP Branded product. Gartner's other supporting arguements of SAP themselves not utilising PI (of which I cannot speak to) and Netweaver not fitting the On-Demand strategy has little do with the product itself or whether an SAP Customer's decides to implement PI.

And since whole article is discussing product's life over the next 7 years, and we all know how products change, improve and morph into new versions over time, it really is "PI in the Sky" dreaming from Gartner.

[henrique_pinto]

Well, I can't comment on the whole discussion, but at least I can say something about the following statement:

Gartner's other supporting arguements of SAP themselves not utilising PI (...)

It's not entirely true.

Take for example the SAP Electronic Invoicing solution: /people/henrique.pinto/blog/2008/06/12/sap-grc-nfe-10--new-solution-introduction-implemention-best-practices

More examples can be found in the several projects SAP is leveraging with development partners, specially through COIL (Co-Innovation Labs). In particular, there is a rather neat initiative called PdES (Partner-delivered Enterprise Services) regarding partners defining their own Web Services following SAP Methodology and provisioning it through ESR (namely, PI 7.1).

Best,

Henrique.