SAP Ariba Buyer vs Ariba Sourcing?

[johaneri]

Hi all,

I recently started discussions with a customer to set up an integration with their Ariba implementation; however, they claim that this is not possible since they are not on Ariba Buyer but Ariba Sourcing. I was not aware of the fact that there are two different "Aribas", nor would I have expected that there would be a flavor of Ariba that it is not possible to set up an integration with. Am I missing something here? Please feel free to enlighten me! 🙂

[andrew_tong]

I don't believe your customer needs to have Ariba Buying and Invoicing (B&I) to transact over the SAP Business Network.  They only need that if they need a solution for raising requisitions, processing invoices, etc. independent of what their backend systems can do.

They would need to license SAP Business Network Commerce Automation though, which is the solution that integrates their financial system (e.g. SAP ECC) with the SAP Business Network.  That involves installing the Ariba Integration adapter/add-on so that they can send/receive messages like PO's and Invoices to/from the SAP Business Network, via SAP Ariba's free middleware solution Managed Gateway (ie, CIG).