Why using XI instead of existing custom made interfaces

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I am trying to convince my company (automotive industry) of using XI for putting up communication between the different applications (SAP and NON-SAP).

Currently all interfaces are custom developments on each individual component.

Benefits would be:

- predelivered content for connecting towards SAP appz, so no more program changes need to be made when upgrading these appz + are programmed in the most performant way

- easy to add/remove interface, whitout downtime

- Standaard adapters predelivered

- B2B integration with industry standard STAR can be bought

- re-use of existing components (if custom devz are needed, it is sufficient to do it only once and then it can be used by all components in the landscape!)

- ... .

As you can is my main argument the predelivered content (adapters), so that no more custom devz are needed for this purpose.

There will be also other arguments.

Can you guys give me some more positive AND negative points of the usage.

Thanks in advance

Kind regards

Joris

[former_member91687 · Accepted solution]

Hi Joris,

You can have a look at this link which provides you details about XI.

http://www.sap-press.de/download/dateien/765/sappress_netweaver_roadmap.pdf

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/d2/58cd3b11571962e10000000a11402f/frameset.htm

You can further expand the links to get more information.

Regards,

Chandra

[Former Member]

Hi guys,

Thanks already for the good points.

Anybody else some ideas?

Kind regards

Joris

[Former Member]

Hi Joris,

In a nutshell (besides what you've already mentioned) some of the benefits of XI are:

From an architecture perspective; XI is the beaten heart inside the whole NetWeaver platform, which means if your company has a vision towards ESA (Enterprise Services Architecture) then implementing XI becomes a must have.

Reusability is strongly enforced within XI, especially in the integration builder. Previously created XI objects can be reused in new interface developments or processes as needed.

Central monitoring; very important feature of this product. Which provides you with a single point of interface monitoring, error tracing, alerting mechanism. All of these modules can be fully integrated with other SAP related products like Solution Manager, CCMS among others.

SAP XI fully supports ccBPM (Cross Component Business Process Modeling), providing state of the art orchestrated end-to-end processes and features like linking with workflow's with or without human interaction.

SAP XI can also be integrated (by importing BPEL source into XI) with ARIS for NetWeaver in order to execute predefined business processes/process steps previously created in the ARIS Business Process Modeling Tool.

Last but certainly not least, XI fully supports Open Standards and technologies like Web Services, WSDL, BPEL, XML, XSLT, Java etc..

To be continued...

Cheers,

Roberto

[Former Member]

Hi Joris,

another important point which SAP uses very often is that there is one single point of communication or a central HUB instead of a lot of point to point connections. This allows better monitoring etc.

Have a look at this document https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/e2049090-0201-0010-3aa2-fe3... page 9. There you can see a typical picture on companies integration landscapes without xi and then with XI it should look lean and nice with XI in the middle and every system just having one connection to that XI system....

best regards

Christine