SAP PI/PO vs open source ESB advantages

Question

Is SAP PI/PO now considered a true ESB? I've read various sources claiming it was not quite there 4-5 years ago.

And what if you have a very SAP-centric environment, would it be very strongly suggested to use PI/PO instead of the more standard integration platforms such as Mule ESB, Jboss Fuse, BizTalk and Oracle ESB?

If you primarily have expertise with the platform agnostic ESB's mentioned, would it still be worth integrating with SAP Pi? What are the advantages of PI?

I see they all have some option to integrate with SAP, but unbiased information seems hard to come by in the SAP-scene.

Answer 1

If your entire landscape consists of SAP modules then probably better to use PI.

If however you want to connect to other systems in the cloud, internally or externally then I would not choose PI.

PI is not an integration platform (better to use this phrase an an ESB). In this case it is better than have something fronting your SAP backend such as Biztalk, Fuse, Mule or other. They are more flexible and have more functionality when it comes to communicating with other systems and protocol. They are probably far easier to use as well.

Most of these integration platforms have commercial adapters that can connect to SAP. IBM's Integration Bus has SAP adapters, so does Fuse and others.

Like I said, it depends on your landscape and your integration requirements.

Answer 2

Today, as SAP NetWeaver 7.5 released, SAP PO is common ESB. It is based entirely on Java8 and JEE5 standards, with optional old-fashioned ABAP usage.

Someone could implement integration scenarios with many tools (simple mappings, SOJO or EJB, or even your own JCA-adapter). Now SAP PO is really fast and reliable.