I know that it is really difficult to calculate the TCO before using an integration platform. But still we can make some calculations based on the price strategy given from SAP and Microsoft.
Licenses fees are varying from vendor to vendor. For example, pricing of BizTalk Server is done by an Enterprise Agreement (EA). An EA typically runs for 3 years, and when you buy products in an EA, you also buy Software Assurance (SA), a yearly fee that amongst other secure access to all new versions of the product that are released during the agreement period. There are also a lot of other benefits included in SA, like support incidents and vouchers for training. Typically the yearly SA cost is 25% of the license price (L).
On the other, SAP PI license prices are based on volumes. SAP PI Base Engine is priced based on the overall processed message volume expressed in Gigabytes (GB) per month. SAP PI license for SAP-to-SAP usage is included in NetWeaver 2004 suite license and MySAP license. For some large SAP customers, special discounts are available and price mentality of SAP is “more you use less you pay” (we can also call it progressive scale).SAP PI is free to use between SAP-to-SAP. But not free for SAP-to-NonSAP or NonSAP-to-NonSAP. SAP internal interfaces are free, no need to pay licenses fees for that. Adapters are only available in conjunction with the SAP PI Base Engine or SAP NetWeaver Foundation for Third Party Applications license. Adapters are priced based on the processed message volume or based on the number of connected systems.
So, more or less it is clear that the SAP PI is much better to use for SAP-to-SAP connections, because it is totally free. But, BizTalk look a bit better to use for high data volumes and B2B style connections.
Also, PI has lots of pre-built content for SAP-to-SAP connections. So, the development efforts and “agility” is much higher than BizTalk for these kinds of scenarios.
This very beautiful web articles like this web very well. Ask the good article to read.
This is all very well but SAP to SAP integration doesn’t require SAP XI, right?
Therefore, you’d only consider investing in SAP XI if you wanted to integrate non-SAP dtb/systems with SAP (or non-SAP to non-SAP).
What I’m looking at it for is to integrate custom made forms/apps on mobile handhelds with SAP – I know you can achieve this with SAP XI add on: MDK, but this relies on Java and is a messy install on Windows Mobile. Are you saying that I’d have to pay licence fees for every mobile app we developed in order for it to integrate realtime with SAP, using SAP XI? Ouch.
Helen,
SAP to SAP integration does not require SAP XI if you want to connect them as “point to point”. But, if you want to have an agile systems, master data management, monitoring and so on, you need to use an integration platform. Otherwise, it will be similar to a point to point system.
Windows mobile integration, as you said, is a complex thing. But the licensing is done according to your transferred data volume. So, I am not sure if you have to license fees for every mobile app we developed in order for it to integrate real-time with SAP. Better contact directly with SAP