To ‘Integrate’ means to bring the different pieces of your business or your operation together, often time under a common system or onto a single platform. Well, yes, that is fairly simple to define but to choose a software or package to deliver the same, efficiently and effortlessly is another matter altogether; and, when it comes to choosing between PI/PO and SCPI, the task is further complicated as both are middleware integration platforms provided by SAP used for designing and executing integration process. They can both be used for SAP and non-SAP or third-party systems integration, for all scenarios such as application to application (A2A) and business to business (B2B)

The architecture and functioning of SCPI and PI/PO are quite similar, to the extent that the integration flow designed in one system can be deployed in the other as well, thereby allowing for a smooth transition between the two systems. So, the main factors to consider while choosing the middleware are as follows:

• Cost – The cost of an on-premise system depends on whether you have an existing infrastructure of hardware/software and the associated licenses, your scope of requirements, availability of skilled resources and maintenance. If you have an existing infrastructure to support SAP PI/PO, then implementing it may cost less than implementing SCPI. However, if you have no existing infrastructure for SAP PI/PO, it makes more sense to explore the solution offered by SCPI as it is based on pay as you go subscription model and requires minimal upfront investment.
• Landscape – Your system landscape and its requirement are an important factor to consider. For example, if you are considering cloud-to-cloud communication, SCPI comes across as a more useful and robust alternative than PI/PO; whereas an on-premise to on-premise integration scenario is where PI/PO makes perfect sense.
• Flexibility – The middleware implemented should be flexible enough to incorporate any required custom changes or near future changes in your landscape e.g. a merger or a new application. PI/PO has a flexible development environment but it follows a very standardized approach which goes like this Connectivity-> Routing->Mapping->Connectivity, while SCPI is completely flexible and provides transparency about all the processing steps whether conversion, routing, transformation or security.
• Scalability – SCPI is highly scalable as it is cloud based while SAP PI/PO scores a little less in comparison.

SAP PI/PO has its limitations in UI driven scenarios or for synchronous exchange of data. On the other hand, SCPI has its limitation in terms of data modeling (WSDL, XSD, etc.). The fact that SCPI is currently still evolving explains the lack of certain features that are readily available in PI/PO but it is not hard to imagine it improving on its performance as well as the feature-list with every subsequent upgrade.

The adapters available in each system play an important role in helping your cause in terms of ease of implementation and therefore the cost, hence it is always better to be up to date with the list to make a more informed decision. The list of adapters for each system as referenced from the web are as listed below.

SCPI Adapters

PI/PO adapters as of SAP PO/PI 7.4

Conclusion

It is a really close call between the two and there are no clear winners here, but when both the products are from SAP there is no real downside to choosing one over the other. Broadly speaking, one may say that if you are implementing a middleware for the first time and you have cloud solutions, you should go for SCPI and if you are already on SAP on-premise it makes more sense to go for SAP PI/PO even if you want to integrate on-premise with cloud. Let us not forget when you want to move from one platform to the other SAP has full reusability of the iflows and mapping used in either PI/PO or SCPI or also opt for a hybrid solution to address both cloud and non-cloud-based system. An iflow from PI/PO can be imported in SCPI and vice versa. One way or another, it is really hard to go wrong, so go ahead and choose the best!!