Why you should use SAP CPI II Integration Suit or SAP PO/PI for Your Integrations

[MetinD]

SAP CPI (Cloud Platform Integration) and SAP PO/PI (Process Orchestration/Process Integration) are both integration platforms that help organizations streamline their business processes by integrating different systems, applications, and data sources. While both platforms offer similar functionalities, they have some distinct advantages that make them suitable for different use cases.

Here are some reasons why you should use SAP CPI and SAP PO/PI:

SAP CPI:

1. Cloud-based: SAP CPI is a cloud-based integration platform, which means that it is easy to deploy, scalable, and requires minimal maintenance. This makes it an ideal choice for organizations that want to move their IT infrastructure to the cloud.


2. Pre-built content: SAP CPI comes with pre-built integration content, such as pre-built connectors and templates, which can help organizations accelerate their integration projects and reduce development costs.


3. Easy to use: SAP CPI has a user-friendly interface that allows developers and non-technical users to easily create and manage integrations without requiring extensive technical knowledge.

SAP PO/PI:

1. On-premise deployment: SAP PO/PI is an on-premise integration platform, which means that it can be installed on-premise and integrated with other on-premise systems. This makes it an ideal choice for organizations that have legacy systems that cannot be moved to the cloud.


2. Advanced features: SAP PO/PI offers advanced features, such as Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Rules Management (BRM), which allow organizations to automate complex business processes and define their own business rules.


3. Flexibility: SAP PO/PI offers a high degree of flexibility and can be customized to meet the specific integration needs of different organizations. This makes it an ideal choice for organizations that require a highly customized integration platform.

In summary, SAP CPI is best suited for organizations that want a cloud-based integration platform that is easy to use and offers pre-built content, while SAP PO/PI is best suited for organizations that require advanced features, flexibility, and on-premise deployment.

[jo_kr]

Hi Metin,

thanks for bringing it up:
It's also my experience, that many companies have now the question which solution to use.

If I have to recommend something, I would say:

Use CPI for synchronous (especially Cloud) integrations, but make sure to take really good care about error handling.
Golden rule: Error handling should/must always be done by the integration service consumer in a sync communication!
The initial requester needs a kind of cockpit to evaluate each response and must be able to retrigger all requests/data on demand.
Unfortunately, not many systems provide these abilities (fire-n-forget mentality), which might even cause data loss consequently.

Why: An integration solution is mainly for integration and not for application responses and error handling and/or archiving.
The known comparison to a parcel service fits here again, which only delivers / routes the data. The parcel service does/should not care too much about the content but should guarantee the delivery.

Conclusion: if you really care about message delivery (quality of service) / large payloads / mass loads / reliability in terms of message delivery (especially asynchronously), there is not much better than SAP PO (ESB), I guess.

Other points are H/A+zero downtime and failover scenarios, load balancing, reusability of interfaces, where-used, code history, protocols like RFC, common message framework (alerting, retry, archiving, retention, configuration etc.), less flexibility in terms of steps and coding. Summarized, SAP PO is more framework-based (advantage and disadvantage at the same time), providing out of the box options for: alerting, retry, archiving, retention, configuration etc, but also guarantees the delivery and masters asynchronous communication perfectly - out of the box.

Maybe a hybrid solution of both in some integrations could also be an option, if the sender system prefers to send data asynchronously for whatever reasons – using e2e traceability by using/setting the header SapMessageIdEx./ XI Hoplist(s) / MessageId URL parameter...

BTW: If you can, please avoid BPM, because it's important / enough to be a good and reliable parcel service. If the integration solution is trying to take over all roles, this might be insufficient and maybe even dangerous for the quality of the interface (besides some technical flaws in BPM...).
Only to let you know, there is/was also pre-delivered content by SAP for SAP PO in Service Market Place (XI Content). It feels like a political decision not to continue/extend it anymore…

Kind regards,
Jo

[rbardiau]

Hi Metin,

I was under the impression that SAP PO/PI had an end of maintenance in end of 2027 (extended to 2030) and with the many blogs/articles I see on how to migrate from PO to CPI, it seems SAP has moved on from PO.
Is there a reason to still recommend PO even with it's short lifespan ?

Kind Regards,
Romain