Early Experience with NetWeaver Process Orchestration 7.3 EhP1

With NetWeaver Process Orchestration through ramp-up, this blog is a mode to highlight the experiences of our customers so far with the software.

With NetWeaver Process Orchestration 7.31, you can expect a host of new technical capabilities and connectivity options in addition to some really sought after non-functional aspects that will certainly qualify it to be a strategic middleware platform for all integration requirements.

Below are some excerpts from our certified ramp-up coaches who are closely working with the ramp-up customers guiding them through setting up their scenarios in the best possible manner and at the same time being on top of all the issues and concerns faced by them.

The general feedback that is surfacing is:

Single stack = Dual stack + better performance + more power – effort

Ralf Haingaertner

Integrated PI/BPM stack boosts performance and reduces effort

At design time the integration of PI and BPM improves usability and productivity because the main tools (Process Composer and Rules Composer for BPM and BRM, PI Designer for Integration Flows as well as ESR access for defining interfaces and mappings) are now all available under one roof in Netweaver Developer Studio. Having a single Process Orchestration system containing both PI and BPM reduces installation, configuration and monitoring efforts on the operations side and scenarios that so far required going back and forth between separate CE and PI instances can now be executed with improved performance because communication across system boundaries is reduced.

Atul Savur

The NW 7.31 ramp up has been the smoothest. I am very pleased with the quality of the product delivered.

We completed a small proof of concept to showcase the API capability, and are now in the final steps of implementing the final product. We have automated around seventy five human approval steps and complex business rules embedded as code. In addition we could get rid of a manual daily database extraction and replication process. All this without having to change the UI technology. This is the third time I have been the ramp up coach for a NW product and this has been without a doubt the smoothest. I must compliment the development teams for the high quality of product.

Juergen Mair

The software functions as expected and the migration was very smooth

The installation was done very quickly without any issues. During the implementation, there were no issues blocking the whole project. I have never seen a project being implemented so smooth: We had a very though timeline and started two weeks later than initially planned, but finished the first phase go-live exactly at the target date.

The iFlow tool is very easy to use and intuitive. Until the end of the year the customer will have transferred more than 80 scenarios to the new Java Only infrastructure. This will help to reduce their TCO for running their PI environment.

Michael Graf

The software delivers enhanced functionality and performance with reduced complexity

It is great to see that even though the functionality with PO 7.31 increased greatly, the technical complexity is actually reduced. Due to the single-stack java-only approach, there is less effort in administration and maintenance. Also, the PI messages can now be treated with complex process models that are modeled in a developer-friendly Eclipse environment. The shift from the web start applications to the Eclipse-based IDE is a good start and I hope that in the future the Developer Studio will be the single tool for non-ABAP developments within the SAP landscape.

Ivo Drösser

The integrated eclipse based modeling, design and configuration environment is very impressive.

The new combination of Process Integration (PI) and Business Process Management (BPM) in a single stack installation was the customer’s main reason for taking part in the SAP Ramp Up program.

The sandbox installation was done in a day without any showstoppers. The development @ the customer side was very impressed with the new features of PI in eclipse. So far the current evaluation meets the customer’s expectations and they are now proposing the new SAP NetWeaver installation option to all internal business units.

Christoph Bley

The fully functional single stack and the capability to co-deploy PI-BPM into one system translates to higher flexibility and lower TCO

The single stack translates into better performance, lower TCO and highly reduced efforts towards maintenance and administrative tasks. It is fully comparable to the dual stack in terms of connectivity options.

The tight integration between AEX and BPM into the Process Orchestration bundle is the key driver for customers to move to NW 7.31. Other good features to look forward to are eclipse-based graphical configuration of scenarios and integrated monitoring through Solution Manager.

Anton Schoeffmann

Central governance boosts performance. Predelivered content allows fast and easy integration.

The main benefit for our customers is the tightly integrated SAP Landscape that covers extensively the newly setup Business Processes. The customer stated that they gained a boost in performance and that they are thankful for the enablement of central governance (Monitoring, Reusability, etc.). Their personal favorite is our predefined XI/PI Content which allows fast and easy integration.

From a ramp-up perspective I can say that this ramp-up was an easy going process and our customer did not report major issues, besides usual questions and requests for clarification.

Antony Isacc

Strong and well developed product from SAP

This was my customer’s first experience with a middleware technology and they were able to go productively live with their first scenario in 2 months after installation. No major issues were reported during or after go-live. The customer now plans to implement more and more scenarios on NW Process Orchestration 7.31.

It covers all customer’s current needs and is indeed a well working product.

What’s New

• Installation: Ease of installation, lesser time taken, smoother installation
• TCO: lower TCO, fully functional single stack, co-deployed PI-BPM
• Ease of implementation: pre-delivered content, graphical configuration, eclipse based tooling
• Through-put: better with the single stack, one system for PI-BPM
• Flexibility: advantage for setting up the landscape, common ESR for multiple domains
• Advantages of tightly integrated PI-BPM stack
• Integrated eclipse based design and configuration environment
• Eclipse based modeling environment
• Benefits of pure java connectivity: HTTP/IDoc adapter
• Enhanced security: with the implementation on the new security standards, althought the handy backdoor enties are definitlely missed, but the highly secure offering is positively received
• Central Monitoring with SolMan: Altering, UDMS, one stop-shop for all monitoring statistics