A few years ago SAP had multiple platforms that covered the various aspects of "middleware". This got even more complex with the Business Objects and Sybase acquisitions as they too had some "middleware" technology. As a customer you had to decide up front which products were required which sometime (if you got the wrong advice) meant tools being used for the wrong thing.
At a technology level SAP have been working hard to simplify the dependencies so that more and more of these components can run on the same application server / instance......but the commercial problem still existed......
Well great news, you can now buy a bundle of products called Intelligent Business Operations which brings together all the middleware tools into one package that covers everything from modelling process - running processes and monitoring processes. This is the press announcement and below is the marketecture.
This blog by Silvio Arcangeli gives a good overview of what you get in the box.
Essentially it means you get access to all the middleware tools you need with options to deploy them all together.
So if you thought SAP middleware was SAP PI........its time to talk to SAP again, as PI is still there (in a lean Java only way) but now part of a much bigger family.
