SAP HCI VS PI

[Bhargavakrishna]

Hi Experts,

I referred most of the blogs related to HCI vs PI, but I'm not clear on the below points.

We are on SAP PI 7.0 and planing for upgrade. we have interfaces with IDOC /SOAP /FILE /JDBC adapters.

---> Is there any difference between standard content available in PI and HCI?

--> Can we import the interfaces from standard PI to HCI directly?

---> Can HCI handle BPM's?

---> Can we write UDF's / ABAP / JAVA / XSLT mappings in HCI?

----> Is customer or SAP is responsible for deploying certificates / set-up connectivity?

----> What is the main advantage of HCI when compared to PI?

       We have standard content available in PI /

       PI also supports Iflow's /

       we can also connect to cloud applications with the help of standard PI adapters.

As of today HCI have very limited features when compared to PI, so how can we recommend this to a customer?

To do so we should have some valid points to highlight about HCI.

I request you to give your valid inputs on this.

Thanks

Bhargava Krishna

[aashish_sinha · Accepted solution]

Hi Bhargava,

Below is my attempt to your questions -

1. SAP PI can be used with SAP HCI-PI in conjunction as hybrid model. SAP HCI-PI is normally used for Cloud to Cloud and Cloud to In-Premise integration and SAP will support all automatic updates and new features directly to that environment. SAP PI system, customer has to take care of any upgrade and that will come as SP releases.

2. SAP HCI-PI have a lot of pre-build integration templates to be consumed for integration with other cloud/in-premise applications.

3. For SAP HCI-PI, iFlows needs to be created for development, if required and SAP PI's standard contents will be available and you can also create mappings something similar to PI's Mapping.

4. Protocols used in SAP HCI-PI are, SFTP, SOAP, IDOCs, ODATA etc

5. Connectivity or certificate imports, customer has to take care of. 2 ways of authentication are there - a. basic authentication b. certificate based. For certificate based, in the project, you need to import the certificate.

Regards

Aashish Sinha

[piyush_gakhar]

Hello Bhargava,

You will get most of your answers here. Please find my response inline to your specific questions.

Is there any difference between standard content available in PI and HCI?

--> Can we import the interfaces from standard PI to HCI directly?

There is no concept of interface in HCI. Standard XSDs and WSDLs can be imported.

---> Can HCI handle BPM's?

System centric Processes capabilities  (merge, split, filter, routing, parallel routing and many more) are already part of HCI. Human centric process capabilities are in roadmap on HCP.

---> Can we write UDF's / ABAP / JAVA / XSLT mappings in HCI?

Yes, UDFs, XSLT, Groovi and Java script  all are supported

----> Is customer or SAP is responsible for deploying certificates / set-up connectivity?

SAP Cloud Operations is responsible for certificate management, updates and upgrades

----> What is the main advantage of HCI when compared to PI?

        We have standard content available in PI /

       PI also supports Iflow's /

We can also connect to cloud applications with the help of standard PI adapters.

Please refer the following link

As of today HCI have very limited features when compared to PI, so how can we recommend this to a customer?

Regards,

Piyush

[chandansb]

Hello Bhargava,

Answer few of your questions are as below:

1. HCI can be suggested to the customers who do not have PI in their landscape. It is cloud based system and very easy to learn.

2. HCI tenant provides you the standard Out Of the Box artifacts which you can use to build and deploy on your HCI tenant.

3. My experience working on HCI is very good. I have no experience on PI but for HCI, it is very easy to build the artifacts or now it is even possible to deploy the standard artifacts from HCI tenant.

4. Regarding to customization on HCI mappings, yes we can make the customization when these artifacts are built and deployed using Eclipse IDE. I have made the such customization in our projects, however I have no much experience on complex customization.

5. Certificate based authentications can be achieved in HCI.

Hope these few points helps you to understand.

Regards,

Chandan

[Bhargavakrishna]

Hi Chandan,

Thank you very much for your inputs.

My client want's to upgrade from PI 7.0 to 7.4 or HCI. We are checking the feasibility of both PI 7.4 and HCI.  we have lot of IDOC / RFC scenarios in our landscape.

As per my knowledge,if we have standard RFC /IDOC /Proxy based scenarios it will be better to stick to SAP PI.because HCI can consume IDOCs and RFCs if exposed as SOAP Web Services only.

Regards

Bhargava Krishna

[chandansb]

Bhargava,

As per my experience, I have seen nothing differing with respect to On Prem and SAP Cloud for Customer configuration with respect to the middleware used. You will be sending the data out from On Prem solution via IDOCs and out from middleware to C4C using Web Service for both the scenarios. (similarly for other way around communication)

But In your scenario, your client have PI, so you can use PI for integration.

Regards,

Chandan