B2B Integration Strategy

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SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK scn.sap.com

2012 SAP AG 1

B2B Integration Strategy

Applies to:

SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration

SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, business-to-business add-on

SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, secure connectivity add-on

SAP Information Interchange OnDemand

Summary

This technology paper provides insight into the diverse B2B integration requirements and familiarizesreaders with the different B2B integration solutions available from SAP (On-Premise, On-Demand and

Hybrid)

Authors: Piyush Gakhar, Sindhu Gangadharan, Frank Ruland

Company: SAP AG

Created on: August 2012


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B2B Integrat ion Strategy


2012 SAP AG 2

Table of Contents

B2B and EDI ....................................................................................................................................................... 3

What organizations have to say? ....................................................................................................................... 4

Cross-industry requirement ............................................................................................................................. 4

Enterprises Expectation: Lower Total Cost of Ownership and Gain Real Time Business Visibility ............... 4

SAPs B2B integration strategy........................................................................................................................... 6

Brief Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 6

B2B On Premise .............................................................................................................................................. 7

What is it? ....................................................................................................................................................... 7

Why this model? .............................................................................................................................................. 7

SAPs Solution ................................................................................................................................................ 7

Solution Details ............................................................................................................................................... 7

B2B- Managed Services ................................................................................................................................... 10

What is it? ..................................................................................................................................................... 10

Why this model? ............................................................................................................................................ 10

SAPs Solution .............................................................................................................................................. 11Solution Details ............................................................................................................................................. 11

B2B- Hybrid Solution ........................................................................................................................................ 13

What is it? ..................................................................................................................................................... 13

Why this model? ............................................................................................................................................ 13

SAPs Solution .............................................................................................................................................. 13

Solution Details ............................................................................................................................................. 14

SAP B2B Integration Solutions Benefits ........................................................................................................... 14

Future- Business Networks ............................................................................................................................... 16

Glossary ............................................................................................................................................................ 17

Related Content ................................................................................................................................................ 19

Copyright........................................................................................................................................................... 20


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2012 SAP AG 3

Why EDI is needed

Business expansion via automated

connectivity with trading partners

Reduced manual data entry

Reduced postage and handling costs

Reduced labor processing costs

Reduced order cycle

Increased customer service

Improved accuracy of data

Reduced lead times

Reduced paper handling

Reduced inventory carrying costs

Efficient auditing mechanisms

B2B and EDI

Organizations have been communicating across their company boundries for many years. Procure to pay

and Order to cash among trading partners, financial (tax , wages and so on) information exchange with

government, customs and shipment

information with the logistics provider are

widely used business transactions. This is

a chain of processes across industry

verticals, for example manufacturing,

retail, telecom and so on. Bulk Business

transactions across organization

boundaries are defined as businessto-

business transactions (B2B). B2B

integration is costly and time-consuming.

Only large companies have the expertise

and the transactional volume to justify

the investment in improving operational costs. This becomes more challenging when the connecting

business partners are enormous. It is very tedious to execute, maintain and audit these bulk transactions

using manual mechanisms such as paper, which results in lot of time being spent on communication. It also

delays the execution of business processes affecting procurement, sales cycle, shipping, payments, invoices

and revenue. Adherence to generic standards is necessary in order to reduce the complexity caused by

different message exchange formats and communication mechanisms used by different trading partners. At

the same time, enforced standards increase the entry barriers for business partners and add to the level of

complexity.

EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange and is

particularly used in B2B communication. There are

many standard defining bodies and non-profitorganizations (for example, GS1, OASIS, ISO, DISA,

UN/EDIFACT, WCO, Rosettanet and so on) that focus on

improving electronic business capabilities. The

specifications published by these organizations include

technical and functional protocols. These protocols are

developed with inbuilt flexibility to ensure fast and

accurate integration between trading partners, to drive

an easy way for business collabrations and to describe

new eBusiness capabilities which can be used globally

or for a specific industry vertical. These protocols are

complex and practically very diffcult to implement if

processed manually. As there is a variety of EDI formats

available for different regions and industries, designing an automated tool itself becomes quite complex.

Solution is not limited to EDI and requires a good platform for catering to a customers end -to-end needs

for adhering to both syntax and semantics, thereby harmonizing the complete business process.


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2012 SAP AG 4

What organizations have to say?

SAP did market surveys, discussed in detail with customers globally and considered feedback from research

analysts before defining SAPs B2B strategy and vision. Let us look at some of the points that helped SAP in

deriving the results:

Cross-industry requirement

Almost all industry verticals (70%-80%) have urgent requirements to exchange information with theirbusiness partners. Organizations want

to automate their business processes

(currently manual or semi-automated)

to adhere to globally accepted

standards for making them fast,

efficient and going beyond organization

boundaries. There is a huge volume and

various types of transactions that are

executed between trading partners and

it is not possible to keep track of them

manually.

Enterprises Expectation: Lower Total Cost of Ownership and Gain Real Time Business Visibility

Cost (voted by 82%) is an important factor that companies want to reduce by replacing manual processes

with automated EDI tools. Another most challenging task is to make partners adhere to the organizations

internal processes (voted by 82% customers) which may be different from partners processes. EDI

standards help to ensure this interoperability, yet limit the flexibility in the business processes. 81 % of

organizations want to have real time process visibility for sales, inventory, logistics, procurement and

production. This would help organizations take quick business decisions, ensure valid forecasts, set up aneffective supply chain and solve inefficiencies in their business processes. 69% of the organizations

questioned want

to reduce the

complexity of

bulk transactions

by integrating

with their trading

partners and

sharing business

information in afast and accurate

way. 74% of the

customers stated

that they need to have transparency in business communication, which is also required from legal and

compliance perspective.


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Accurate and fast

execution of transactional

data like orders, inventory

status, demand forecast

and other metrics allow for

better inventory

management and supports

production critical

processes like just-in-time

delivery. Considering such

business requirements, 77%-78% of the organizations want to have support for integrating with multiple

business partners and quick on-boarding mechanisms. Organizations have already invested a lot in their

hardware infrastructure and business software solutions like Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer

Relationship Management to enhance efficiency and productivity throughout their shared network. While

planning B2B integration, 80% of the customers say that they look forward to extending and leveraging the

existing technology landscape for utilizing their existing skillset, minimizing the need of training for their IT

and business users and avoiding adding a new system to their landscape. 77% of the customers stated that

they would like to have a single platform in their landscape for defining, managing and monitoring business

processes (A2A and B2B). This will help them to enhance business efficiency and reduce the overall TCO of

the complex integration requirements.

B2B Technology Requirement: Support for different techincal protocols and message formats

File transfer (FTP, SFTP) remains

the popular choice among

technical protocols for

exchanging messages. Other

protocols include AS2, OFTP(ISDN and TCP/IP), X400, VAN

Connectivity, SOAP and Web

Services and RNIF (Hi-tech

industries Rosettanet messages). There are many B2B message exchange formats available that are popular

among organizations according to

the business requirements and

industry verticals. These standards

allow organizations to interact using

generic data exchange formats and

provide the solution to the problemof diverse formats followed by

different organizations. The most

frequently used and common

standards are EDIFACT voted by 67% of the customers followed by Flat File (52%) and ANSIX.12 (45%).

Other standards (TRADACOMS, VDA, ODETTE and so on) are also important and are widely used within

different industry segments and regions.


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SAPs B2B integration strategy

Brief Introduction

SAPs B2B integration strategy is based on the customers feedback on how a scalable and reliable B2B

solution should look like. There are different organizations (small, mid-size, large) that have different

strategies, business drivers and ecosystem setup. This diversity results in different B2B integration and

interaction models (On Premise, Managed Service and Hybrid) with their trading partners. Let us try to

understand the meaning of these models below followed by the solution details in the subsequent section.

B2B On-Premise (Software Only)

B2B Managed Services

B2B Hybrid Solution

Note: SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration is the new name of combined offering (SAP NetWeaver PI, SAPNetWeaver BPM and SAP NetWeaver BRM) from SAP under one license suite. From SAP NetWeaver 7.31onwards, these products can also be installed together (with one system ID) with tight integration to each other.Both the terms (SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration and SAP NetWeaver Process Integration) are usedinterchangeably in this document.


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B2B On Premise

What is it?

This approach focuses on On-Premise (software only) use of B2B Integration tools where the software is

installed, implemented and maintained within the organization boundaries.

Why this model?

There can be many reasons for organizations to adapt this model, such as:

IT strategy to have everything on premise

Business reasons for not sharing data outside (hosted environment) the internal community

Sufficient budgets to set up an end-to-end integration landscape within the organization.

Requires one time investment instead of recurring monthly/annual subscription

Frequent customizations and in house availability of skilled resources to maintain the internal

landscape

Implement and maintain business critical scenarios in-house (eg. JIT calls)

SAPs Solution

For many years, SAP has been providing an On-Premise B2B integration solution (Partner Adapters) which

runs on SAP NetWeaver Process Integration. Looking at the market requirements and feedback, SAP has

decided to provide the mainstream EDI capabilities and technical adapters that are tightly integrated

with SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (and SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration). SAPs Self-Owned

on-premise B2B integration solutions SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, business to business add -

on and SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, secure connectivity add -on have been available since

March 2012.

Solution Details

As we can see in the survey results (page-5), many organizations want to have a complete on-premiseoffering to tackle their needs in the B2B integration space. These are mainly customers who have the need

for frequent customization to their

business processes. More than 50%

customers (Source: DSAG Survey,

Response Count: 85 participants) using

SAP NetWeaver Process Integration

responded that they were already using

PI (with partner adapters) to process

their EDI messages. This gives a clear

indication for SAP to extend the B2Bcapabilities in the current stack.

Considering the requirements of customers for lower TCO and a single solution in their landscape which can

cater to their end to end needs, SAP now provides mainstream EDI capabilities including technical B2B

adapters as a separate Add-On which can be installed on top of SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration.


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2012 SAP AG 8

Available Releases

PI 7.11

PI 7.3x (Single and Double Stack)

PI 7.31 (Single Stack, Double Stack,

Process Orchestration)

De-Central (Advance) Adapter Engine

Enterprise Service Bus

Single stack ESB capabilities by AAE, (dual

stack also available). BPM and BRMcapabilities available with JAVA only stack

Performance optimizations

Standard adherence (SOAP 1.2, WS Policy

1.2, WS Trust 1.3, Java SE 6 )

Technical protocols support (JDBC, FTP,

JMS, SOAP, RNIF and so on)

Reliable message deliveries

Auditing & Logging

Message and Transport Level security

High Availability

Clustering and scalability

Decentralized architecture (no single

point of failure)

Central Repository for Content

ESR (Enterprise Services Repository) provides

design time governence

Eclipse-based design time for serviceprovisioning and publishing

Unified WS-RM compliant event provisioning

and subscription

Auditing and Logging

Unified Lifecycle Management

Central monitoring by SAP Solution Manager

User Level Defined Search

Upgrade support and fault tolerance

Root Cause Anlysis

Message, Component and End-to-End

monitoring

On Premise B2B Solutions

SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration, secure

connectivity add-on (SFTP PGP Add-On)

SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration,

business to business add-on (B2B Add-On)

Business Process and Rules Management

Define and Design Business Processes

BPMN based modelling

Business Rules Management

Human and system centric processes

Tight integration with technical routing

protocols

SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration stack provides a 360 degree solution for defining and executing

business processes, business rules, monitoring, governance and security mechanisms. SAP enhanced this

platform to provide B2B capabilities.

All B2B components listed below will run on existing

containers of SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration.

SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration along with

B2B Extensions will provide the complete on-

Premise solution for B2B integration

The different solution components for On-Premise B2B Add-On includes:

B2B Adapters

Technical adapters include OFTP (including OFTP 2), AS2, SFTP, and X400 to carry out technical routing of

EDI messages and support for technical acknowledgments (MDN, EERP, Delivery Reports). RNIF, CIDX , FTP,

SOAP, JMS and other adapters are already part of SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration


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EDI Modules

Set of modules that convert EDI formats like EDIFACT, ANSI X12, ODETTE, TRADACOMS, VDA, PLAIN to XML

and vice-versa. These modules can be integrated with SAP PI adapters providing usability to numerous

customers who want to have business conversations with different partners.

EDI XML Converter

It provides GUI for maintaining runtime schema information of EDI standards and generating XSDs for ESR.

It also provides testing of EDI-XML message conversions.

Splitting of EDI Messages (EDI Separator Adapter)

The EDI Separator Adapter is used to split incoming bulk EDI messages into separate single messages based

on the content of the message (e.g. 810-Invoice, 850-Purchase Order for ANSI X.12 format) and the Partner

type. This offers the possibility to use content based routing (message identification) and split up messages

according to the interfaces based on message type and partner. It also provides the functional

acknowledgment capabilities (997 and CONTROL) based on different EDI formats

Archiving Module

Archiving Module and Java Archiver Mapping helps to archive the outcome of module chain processing

steps and different mapping steps to debug/record the messages

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) Module

PGP is an adapter module that can be used with any technical adapter. PGP module integrates smoothly in

the SAP NetWeaver PI environment and provides encryption, signing and compression capabilities.


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B2B Mapping Functions

B2B Mapping Functions are the pre-defined functions (for example, Arithmetic, Date Time, Global, Node

and Utils) that can be used in ESR to reduce the mapping time and efforts.

B2B Mapping Templates

Generic mapping templates for different EDI formats provide a quick setup of the whole on-premise B2B

solution. RDS (Rapid Deployment Solution) will ensure the detailed mapping templates for complex

requirements.

Number Range Object (NRO)

NRO is required to provide the option to insert automatic and continuous counters to check the sequence

of the messages and restrict the outgoing messages to a certain limit

Rapid Deployment Solution

On-Premise Rapid Deployment solutions will have a bucket of mappings for business scenarios and industry

verticals (Order-to-Cash, Procure to-Pay) including services, which will ensure fast implementation and

hence quick ROI.

B2B- Managed Services

What is it?

B2B integration managed services describe a collaborative model between a service provider and the

enterprise bound by Service Level Agreements. Managed Services can also be termed as Outsourcing,

Cloud or On-Demand models. In this model, the B2B integration services offered are a combination of

integration as a service, monitoring, support, maintenance as well as infrastructure set up including

mapping, forwarding and managing B2B documents.

Why this model?

There can be many reasons for organizations to adapt this model, such as:

Organizations do not want to invest in buying and maintaining infrastructure, hardware, software

and configuring a complete solution on premise

Want to have a trusted service provider who can manage all tasks related to the B2B integration

(on boarding of partners, changes in partner profiles, business transactions, monitoring and so on).

To get the solution as an operational expense in a hosted environment and thereby avoiding capital

expenditure.

Limited time to integrate with partners that can affect business revenue

Limited in-house skillsets available to maintain complex landscape.


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SAPs Solution

SAP has acquired Crossgate in 2011, who is a leader in the area of B2B Managed Services and helps a

number of customers to securely exchange information with more than 45,000 business partners across

multiple industries. With the full integration of Crossgate into SAP, the SAP Information Interchange

OnDemand solution provides a simpler, more affordable way to connect with customers, suppliers, logistics

service providers and other business partners for B2B e-commerce and facilitate successful business

network transformation.

Solution Details

The expansion and growth of a business increase the interactions with the ecosystem or business network

that results in increased business transactions and connections with their business partners. It becomes

challenging and complex when enterprises have to maintain huge point to point connections with different

EDI formats (EDIFACT, ANSI, VDA and so on), business transactions (orders, invoices, ASN, forecast,

payments and so on) and communication protocols (FTP, OFTP, X400 and so on). Managing change in

specifications and co-ordinates from business partners becomes a pain area hence increasing costs,

timeframe and requirements for complex monitoring capabilities. Companies have a difficult time finding

staff to keep up with the requests from the various lines of business.

The SAP Information Interchange OnDemand solution enables enterprises to connect, transact, and

collaborate with their collaborative business network of suppliers, customers, logistics service providers

and other relevant business partners. Combined with SAP Business Suite and other SAP applications,

organizations can extend

business processes into

their network without the

need for expensive point-

to-point integration, which

is difficult to maintain and

does not have the

flexibility to adapt to the

speed of business.

Leveraging pre-delivered

content for mission-critical

processes, organizations

gain instant access to a global business network that will continue to grow as more organizations and their

business partners will join. It provides a complete message exchange chain that starts at the sending or

receiving SAP application and ends at the business partners sending or receiving application. It comprises

both service and support for the operation. This relates in particular to the maintenance and support of the

licensed business partner profiles.

SAP Information Interchange OnDemand provides a central content repository with an enormous message

format storage, rules definition, and technical routing capabilities. It is an effective means of

communication for an enterprise without any in-house maintenance and effort requirement.


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SAP Information Interchange OnDemand

A full B2B message mapping system

Partner Profiles based transaction

engine

Various communication protocols

support for receiving and delivering

data (X.400, AS/2, (s)FTP(s), HTTP(s),

OFTP & OFTP2 (TCP/IP, ISDN), SMTP,

WebServices, Rosettanet and so on)

Tools and modules to support

monitoring, accounting, reporting tasks

Message standard support (EDIFACT,

ANSI X.12, TRADACOMS, VDA, CSV and

ASCII Structured Data, IDOCs, XML,Rosettanet and so on)

Runtime module providing all workflow

and mapping capabilities

Repository of relevant profiles needed

by the customer to support the

addressed business processes

The solution alignment of this unique strategy

provides end users with faster partner deployments

with less integration effort. SAP helps companies

connect with any trading partner by joining the

network once and linking with prebuilt business

partner profiles. This full-service alternative

eliminates the need for costly point-to-point

integration. It lowers costs and enables further

partner participation in B2B initiatives

SAP Information Interchange OnDemand becomes

an accelerator for entire business processes.

Enterprises need to establish connections with their

business partner once for each process, for

example, by utilizing SAP NetWeaver as the EAI

middleware and instantly staring to exchange

electronic documents, such as purchase orders,forecasts, invoices, and delivery notes using their

existing SAP applications. There is no need for an

enterprise to get involved in the complexity of

execution and change management processes. End-

to-end information exchange can be configured

using SAP Information Interchange OnDemand and

it acts as a central hub, which provides a one-stop

solution to implement connections with business

partners.

Partner Profiles define the names

and identities of trading partners,

technical protocols, business

transaction(s), and EDI message

format to be used for the

communication. Depending on

particular needs, a customer can

have multiple partner profiles for

one or more partners. It also

provides the design and runtimecapabilities to define runtime

mapping rules. The monitoring

component Satellite keeps track

of the message routing within

different components. With all content being centrally located, it ensures speedy onboarding of the

business partners, which results in a reduced TCO and quick ROI.


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B2B- Hybrid Solution

What is it?

As indicated by market research and customer feedback, many customers want to have certain segments of

integration data on their landscape and the rest is managed by B2B managed services. A Hybrid B2B

approach such as this is a blend of the On-Premise and Managed Services offerings. Depending on the

organizations requirements (considering factors like control of business data, critical business scenarios,

SLA requirements, resources, and skills), certain B2B integration scenarios or business processes are

managed in-house while others as managed services. Other factors, which contribute towards deciding for

this approach, include the amount of business transactions to be exchanged, number of trading partners to

be connected and standardization of business processes.

Why this model?

Apart from the factors, which are mentioned in previous two approaches above, the reasons to follow this

approach are that integration requires frequent changes and organizations do not want to spend huge

amounts on change requests. Another motive can be that organizations do not want to share confidential

business data in a proprietary format with the outsourcing partner and outsource only the technical routing

capabilities.

SAPs Solution

SAP models this requirement by providing SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration as an On-Premise solution

and SAP Information Interchange OnDemand as a Managed Service, which together makes the Hybrid

Approach. SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration is used to map interfaces for specific targets that are

generic and reusable. SAP Information Interchange ensures rules, run time conversion, and technical

communication.


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Solution Details

All features, capabilities and future enhancements of the Hybrid approach can be derived from the

description of On Premise and Managed Service approaches mentioned in the previous sections. The

major effort for developing and maintaining content gets reduced, as it is used from the central repository

of SAP Information Interchange which will hence ensure faster on-boarding of partners along with routing

of messages to the destinations supporting different technical protocols (AS2, X400, OFTP, FTP).

SAPs Rapid Deployment Solutions for the Hybrid Model will provide ready-to-use templates for quicklysetting up the solution and ensuring fast communication. It encapsulates

Best practices for a secure and reliable connectivity set up between SAP NetWeaver Process

Orchestration and SAP Information Interchange OnDemand)

Pre-integrated (standardized) interfaces from SAP Business Suite to SAP Information Interchange

(Mappings from IDOC into SAP II XML Format)

Efficient business partner on-boarding processes based on existing SAP Information Interchange

repository that allows out of the box B2B connectivity to these partners.

SAP B2B Integration Solutions Benefits

According to the customers requirements and market feedback, there are many capabilities needed in an

effective B2B solution. Let us have a look at how SAPs B2B solutions cater to different requirements from

the customers.

Reduced TCO and 360-degree solution catering end-to-end need: Enterprises always prefer to have

one system in their landscape, which can cater their end-to-end needs including technical integration

(including B2B), process flows, auditing, security, monitoring of business/technical data and business

visibility.SAP addresses this customer need by encapsulating PI, BPM and BRM into a bundled solution

known as SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration and providing tightly integrated B2B Solution (along

with A2A) for on-premise customers. SAP Information Interchange OnDemand provides a bundled

solution with all the required capabilities to carry out B2B integration in a hosted environment. Both

these solutions help customers with reduced TCO (infrastructure set up, implementation cost and

maintenance).

Templates for quick deployment: Predefined sets of best practices documents help customers to save

implementation costs and get quick benefits. SAP is delivering out of the box content via Rapid

Deployment Solutions (RDS). RDS provides efficient business partner on boarding, reliable and secure

connectivity, and pre-integrated mappings based on best practices. All B2B Solutions from SAP will becomprised of categorized templates to ensure fast implementation.

Support different delivery models and priorities: Customers should have the flexibility to go with a

completely on premise solution for B2B, or address their B2B solution needs using a managed services

offering but more importantly go also with a hybrid approach for B2B. SAP will provide different

solutions for different customers need. SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration with B2B Add-On for


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On-Premise customers, SAP Information Interchange OnDemand for Managed Services and

combination of both as Hybrid Approach.

Leverage existing investments: This is always a key point involved in customers demand. Enterprises

would not like to start from scratch if they have already invested in their landscape and would like to

leverage the existing landscape, skillset and resources to carry out further extensions. There are 45000+

ERP customers and around 4300+ NetWeaver PI customers who have invested in these products. New

B2B solutions from SAP are based on the same SAP NetWeaver platform to ensure reuse of existingcontent and come along with enriched functionalities that confirm tight and easy integration. The SAP

Information Interchange OnDemand solution provides secure and reliable mechanism to connect to

SAP ERP, the SAP Business Suite and the SAP SME portfolio along with the integration content in a

hosted environment. No intermediary solution is required for these B2B solutions to connect to trading

partners.

Support different protocols and message formats: EDI formats and communication protocols are

diversified according to the regions and different industries. SAPs B2B solutions (on-premise, managed

service and hybrid) covers all major and relevant EDI formats (EDIFACT, ANSI X12, TRADACOMS and

VDA and so on) and technical protocols (AS2, OFTP, FTP and so on).

Accomplish business requirements: Interface with an ecosystem or business network is quite

challenging as interactions happen outside the organizational boundaries. There should be an effective

tracking and monitoring mechanisms available to adhere to legal, compliance, and SLAs of the trading

partner. All B2B tools and content are extended with the business expertise of the SAP Business Suite to

provide excellent business values to comply with the need for EDI business processes,

acknowledgements, auditing and monitoring.

Provide secure and reliable communication: Data need to be exchanged between trading partners in a

secured, encrypted and reliable way. This is one of the critical requirements due to business risks.B2B

solutions from SAP ensure this fundamental need of integration by providing encryption, signing,security (Transport Level, Message Level, and Network Level) and reliable quality of service.

Provide quick ROI: Organizations want to go productive as soon as possible after procuring the solution

and spending a lot of time for implementation hampers their growth plans. The solution should provide

a productized approach along with the templates to finish the project implementation with minimal

efforts and timeframe. Predefined templates delivered using SAPs Rapid Deployment Solutions, a

central content repository and automated reports by business intelligence ensure a quick ROI on the

B2B integration investments. SAP Information Interchange OnDemand provides the underlying

infrastructure ready in a hosted environment along with quick partner on boarding mechanisms.

Need no/less-human intervention: The business process should be automated as much as possible to

save cost (labor and paper), limit/reduce business risks due to typing errors and ensure efficiency with

no human intervention. SAP provides B2B tools (BPM, BRM, Alerts, Events, SAP II Workflow Engine) to

automate the whole business process. These tools are flexible enough to be configured according to

the enterprise needs with automated and semi-automated processes.


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2012 SAP AG 16

Collaborate

Extending Business Network

into people to people centric

business social collaboration

Future- Business Networks

Business trends are changing rapidly and companies do not innovate, manufacture, market, or sell alone. Every

organization works closely with other partners in the business network of design partners, suppliers, channel

partners, outsourced vendors, co-innovators, customers and even competitors.

The solution strategy towards business network will have a set of interlinked enterprise-centric business

networks enabled by SAP applications on-demand and on-premise. It will enable more and more connectivity

to the network, for example: supplier integration, carrier integration, transportation tendering, and invoicing. It

will provide an added value for the customers and the connected business partners through seamless network

management functionality, such as visibility and monitoring, partner and process orchestration, as well as

innovative collaborative applications.

Process data will be leveraged for easy consumption into dashboards and other usability applications. An

insight into single and multi-step process transactions across systems and domains will also be offered to

understand the conversation relationships between partners and business transactions (which partners are

involved in the make-to-order logistics processing). Business Networks will form a community of partners with

quick-boarding mechanisms, platform to collaborate, expand business, and exchange real time information

with the community ensuring reliable and secure connectivity.

TransactDeploy Standardized, pre-

packaged best practices for

multiple lines of business and

functions that integrate to

business process

Connect

On-board and off board

partners quickly without

worrying about future

changes in networks

Real-Time Content &

Insights

High quality, real-time

information delivered at

right time and right context

to effectively drive business

change


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2012 SAP AG 17

Glossary

UN/EDIFACT United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport (Message

Exchange Format)

ANSI X12 The US standard ANSI (American National Standards Institute) ASC (Accredited Standards Committee)

X12 is predominantly used in North America. (Message Exchange Format)

TRADACOMS TRADACOMS standard is majorly used in UK retail industry (Message Exchange Format)

ODETTE Used within the European automotive industry (Message Exchange Format)

VDA Widely used among German Automotive Industry (Message Exchange Format)

EANCOM Subset of EDI messages for commercial transactions (Message Exchange Format)

SWIFT SWIFT operates a worldwide financial messaging network, which exchanges messages between banks

and financial institutions. (Message Exchange Format)

FLAT FILE,

CSV

One of the most popular formats for exchanging information via home grown standards. (Message

Exchange Format)

RosettanetThis consists of a consortium of high tech industries (electronic, telecommunications and logistics)

working together to create and implement industry wide electronic business standards.

AS2 AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) is used to transport data securely and reliably over the Internet.

(Communication Standard/Protocol)

X400 Messaging Standard specified by the ITU-TS (International Telecommunications Union -

Telecommunication Standard Sector) (Communication Standard/Protocol)

OFTP Odette File Transfer Protocol (OFTP) is used for EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) between two

communications business partners. (Communication Standard/Protocol)

FTP File Transfer Protocol (Communication Standard/Protocol)

SFTP Secure File Transfer protocol (Communication Standard/Protocol)

JDBC Java DataBase Connectivity (Communication Standard/Protocol)

JMS Java Messaging Service (Communication Standard/Protocol)

SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol (Communication Standard/Protocol)

SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (Communication Standard/Protocol)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stateshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRADACOMShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdomhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdomhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRADACOMShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States


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ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network, an international communication standard for sending voice,

video, and data over digital telephone lines or normal telephone wires.

TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

EDI Electronic Data Interchange

A2A Application to Application Integration

B2B Business to Business Integration

PI SAP NetWeaver Process Integration

PO SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration

SAP II SAP Information Interchange

VAN Value Added Networks

XML Extensible Markup language

ESR Enterprise Services Repository

TCO Total Cost Of Ownership

ROI Return On Investment

WCO World Custom Organization

OASIS Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards driving the development and

adoption of e-business and web services standards

DISA Data Interchange Standards Association: Responsible for developing cross industry message exchange

formats

DSAG Deutsche SAP Anwendungs Gruppe (SAP German Speaking User Group)
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/communications.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/standard.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/video.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/data.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/digital.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/digital.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/data.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/video.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/standard.htmhttp://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/communications.htm


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2012 SAP AG 19

Related Content

https://scn.sap.com/community/b2b-integration

http://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middleware

http://scn.sap.com/community/process-orchestration

http://scn.sap.com/community/bpm
https://scn.sap.com/community/b2b-integrationhttps://scn.sap.com/community/b2b-integrationhttp://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middlewarehttp://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middlewarehttp://scn.sap.com/community/process-orchestrationhttp://scn.sap.com/community/process-orchestrationhttp://scn.sap.com/community/bpmhttp://scn.sap.com/community/bpmhttp://scn.sap.com/community/bpmhttp://scn.sap.com/community/process-orchestrationhttp://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middlewarehttps://scn.sap.com/community/b2b-integration


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B2B Integration Strategy