If you wondering and confused about SAP PO vs PI then this is the right blog that you should read that will help you clear the doubt.
First thing first, PO and PI are not same.
I found many people says “PI and PO are just interchangeable names and you can use anything”.
PO and PI are two different things and if you understand the history, version and architecture evolution of SAP Integration tool most of the confusion will be gone.
SAP PO vs PI:
Evolution of SAP Integration Tool:
SAP released it first Integration tool in Jun 2002 that helps to integrate SAP and NON-SAP applications.
SAP XI was the Integration platform using which it was able to integrate systems in SAP Netweaver Stack.
SAP XI was one of the famous Integration broker along with Web Methods and Mercator.
First Version of SAP integration was called as SAP eXchange Infrastructure (XI) with version 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.
SAP renamed eXchange Infrastructure (XI) and called as SAP Process Integration (PI)
Process Integration was the new version of XI with the first version PI 7.0.
In PI, Business Process was built using ccBPM and it runs on ABAP Stack.
SAP XI and SAP PI was deployed on Dual Stack – JAVA and ABAP.
SAP released its first PI version with JAVA only stack in PI 7.3.
SAP then announced SAP Process Orchestration (PO) as a combo product which has PI (Single Stack), SAP NW BPM and NW BRM.
All components of SAP PO is build on Java Only Stack.
eXchange Infrastructure Components:
The major problem with SAP XI was the underlying Dual Stack.
In XI, for one message to transfer there is lots of communication to be happen between Java Stack and ABAP Stack.
This internal communication slow down the perform the message processing.
Thus SAP decided to move away from Dual Stack and adopted Single Stack.
Interface in Single Stack runs 10x times faster than same interface in Dual Stack.
Process Integration Architecture:
To improve the performance, SAP released its new tool Process Integration (PI).
PI has a new component called as Advanced Adapter Engine (AAE) which has the ability to run on Java Stack Only.
AAE has the complete feature of Connectivity, Routing and Transformation.
That is the reason PI has option to install as Single Stack and Dual Stack as well.
Process Integration as Single Stack:
PI also supports Single Stack which is Java only Stack.
The main purpose of Single Stack is to improve the performance of the Interface.
The main drawback of SAP PI that it does not support BPM features.
Learn more in detail about what is SAP PI from here.
SAP Process Orchestration Architecture:
SAP Process Orchestration (SAP PO) is a combo product from SAP that has the :
- SAP PI (Java Only Single Stack)
- SAP NW BPM (SAP Business Process Management)
- SAP NW BRM (Business Rules Management)
SAP PO is a product which has PI as one of the component.
When you install PO it will ask which component you want to install.
SAP PI in SAP PO product can run independently without NW BPM or BRM feature.
SAP PI vs PO:
Here is the complete journey of SAP PI to PO with all its components:
Hope now you know how SAP Integration Tool moved from XI to PI and now to PO.
