Cloud is a game-changer and it's here. And cloud is at its best when it's integrated. For organizations that embark on a cloud journey, integration becomes a top-of-mind consideration sooner rather than later (I'd say it consistently ranks as a top-2 or top-3 must-get-it-right-this-time priority, depending on the cloud maturity of the organization you speak with).
SAP Hana Cloud Integration is SAP's cloud integration middleware and it has made integration simple and reliable for our customers to let them focus on innovation. As we've described in other blogs, HCI offers process and data integration on a multi-tenant cloud architecture, hosted and managed by SAP in our own secure data centers globally. Best of all, it comes complete with pre-packaged integration content which cuts integration costs and speeds up integration projects (take a look at our public integration content catalog).
HCI was made available in 2013, packaged as HCI Application Edition.
Now, Hana Cloud Integration is also available as a standalone integration platform as a service (iPaaS), too. ...Did you miss that?... Here is the press release from ASUG/ SAPPHIRE in June: SAP Hana Cloud Integration Technology Now Available. I thought I'd spend a moment in this blog and elaborate on this newsbyte before the 2014 TechEd && d-code season and news storm in.
So what's new and how is it different?
First, let's get it straight, HCI Application Edition has been available with specific SAP cloud services, such as SAP Cloud for Customer, and SuccessFactors. It has simplified consumption by helping customers of SAP cloud applications easily integrate their cloud services from SAP with any other solutions in the landscape.
Now, with the HCI standalone integration platform, we “liberate” the usage of HCI and we enable flexibility by a choice of packages, while we keep offering the same great underlying product. Net, you can now take advantage of HCI to integrate any application in your landscape, SAP or 3rd-party, cloud or on-prem, in a simple and reliable way.
The HCI iPaaS solution supports large and mid-market organizations who look for a general-purpose cloud integration middleware to help them approach integration in a vendor-agnostic fashion and achieve a seamless experience across their cloud, or hybrid landscape. It is for those who take cloud and cloud integration seriously and strategically (who doesn’t?), for those who look ahead in their own cloud journey and beyond the point cloud solutions and want to proactively avoid application silos. It is for the business and IT owners who want to unlock their organization's capacity to innovate, and innovate faster.
To help get there, the HCI integration platform comes in two new editions: SAP HCI Standard and SAP HCI Professional. SAP HCI Standard Edition is the entry package; it contains Process Integration capabilities and allows you to connect a number of systems and use up an amount of bandwidth per month. If you need more connections or bandwidth, or if you need Data Integration capabilities in addition, you can go for SAP HCI Professional Edition. SAP HCI Professional Edition is the bigger package which offers more value and is available at a different price. Customers of SAP HCI Application Edition can upgrade, as their needs change and grow, to SAP HCI Professional Edition.
If you are curious to get hands-on with HCI, the solution is available to try (check Udo Paltzer's blog here). Soon, SAP HCI Standard and Professional Editions will also be available for purchase through SAP Hana Marketplace: check it out. If you are interested, you can reach out to your SAP sales representative, today; call them now.
