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Process Integration (PI) & SOA Middleware:POV: Does PI Eliminate the Pains of SAP HRIntegration

Posted by Abhishek Vinayaka 27-Jun-2013Traditionally any SAP HR implementation, will involve multiple interfaces. These interfaces are typically withBenefit, Time or Recruitment based systems. The key business characteristics of such interfaces are

1. Transmission of PII ( personal information, including Social Security Numbers, Salary etc.) data2. Ability to secure information both at rest and in transit3. Ability to transmit high volume of data, typically around employee demographics4. Predominantly file based interfaces

I have been a part of a few such implementations and observe that customers continue to use legacy filetransmission processes (mostly FTP scripts etc.) for SAP integration and have not been very keen to use SAPPI. The major concern was the inability of PI (until recently) to support their strong security needs, along withissues related to high volume data transfers.

In my opinion this leads to the following:1. A un-managed integration model, which involves multiple FTP programs, causing a maintenance

nightmare2. Lack of central monitoring3. In ability to support orchestration requirements4. High effort to implement non-traditional ( non-file based integration) with cutting edge systems supporting

cutting edge technologies like Cloud connectors, Rest based servers etc.

With the recent developments on functionality SAP PI can really be a Savior !

The following features can really help meeting the requirements: Security in Transmission

With the availability of the B2B Add-on, SAP PI supports an SFTP adapter for SSH based communication. This is in addition to SSL based FTPS communication which is available with the vanilla FTP adapter. Theseprotocols support the requirements for security in transmission. To add, there is no additional cost associatedwith the SFTP adapter.

Security at Rest

Along with security in transmission, there is always a requirement to have encrypted files both within thenetwork and externally. SAP PI supports a PGP module which can be used for the same.

Process Integration (PI) & SOA Middleware: POV: Does PI Eliminate the Pains of SAP HR Integration

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Re usability - Publish Subscribe Model

HCM customers integrate with multiple vendors for business functions like employee benefits. Most of thesevendors require employee demographic information (something like employee master data). SAP PI can beused as a publish-subscribe bus, with ECC generating the data via a generic interface, and PI mapping andtransforming it to vendor format

Cloud Integration/Availability ( Success Factors)

With the advent of Success Factors which is a new cloud based offering from SAP to support global HRfoundation spanning across the recruit to retire cycle along with advanced analytic, SAP back-end systemneed to connect to this cloud based offering. This integration is possible via an on -premise or a on-demandPI solutions. There is standard SAP content available for this, and the integration is via the SOAP - Axis/SFTPadapters

This is in addition to consolidated Solution Manager based monitoring for PI and the Application systems,including defining of Alert Rules for critical interfaces like Payroll.

Overall this brings in the best practices to integration mechanisms by supporting the development of aconsolidated message broker.

The additional cost that might be associated with PI, can be far more lesser than managing an unorganizedinterfacing architecture.2236 Views Tags: hcm, sap_netweaver_process_integration, process_integration, sap_b2b, b2b,sap_netweaver_pi

Abhishek Vinayaka in response to Jose Nunes on page 228-Jun-2013 16:42Hi Jose,

I agree, PI can bring a paradigm shift for legacy HR integration. Just a few more points

The SFTP/PGP add-on is actually a free install from SAP. In general SFTP is a more robust protocol ascompared to FTPS, you might want to try that option

for the Rest integration, though Advantco Rest Adapter suits best, some work arounds can be done using theSAP PI SOAP - AXIS adapter as well

Regards,Abhishek

Jose Nunes

Process Integration (PI) & SOA Middleware: POV: Does PI Eliminate the Pains of SAP HR Integration

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28-Jun-2013 16:06I'm currently working on the PI implementation of HR integration with 13 different suppliers, 36 interfaces and Iagree with you when it comes down to the technology involved with the integration of legacy systems.

Five of these thirteen interfaces were file based due to the lack of investment on new API technologies by thelegacy systems. As we don't have the B2B AddOn installed on our systems, we chose to use FTPS in ourintegration scenarios where file was the only option available. One of these file interfaces is here just becausethe PI is not able to fully comply with a vendor REST API out-of-the-box.

Regarding security, all the communications uses SSL/TLS, SNC to protect the communication fromeavesdropping and all strictly confidential data is encrypted at the HR/HCM side using SSF library anddecrypted at the receiver side, using public/private key. This was also required as we didn't wanted to havestrictly confidential data lying on PI unprotected, even having policies that prevent the payload visualization for1st and 2nd support level.

Right now we are planning on using the SuccessFactors Integration Package Add-On. As we're in the decisionphase, we're considering joining the ramp-up phase for the version 2.0 but nothing is really defined yet.