Delta between Business Connector 4.8 and 4.7

Question

This seemed like the most logical place to put my post so here it goes..
We are assessing our options for replacing/upgrading existing Business Connector installations that will shortly be out of support (OSS Note 571530).Whilst researching our options I have come across OSS Note 1094412 which describes a new version of 4.8 becoming available in July 2008.
Information on BC4.8 is virtually non-existent on the web - can anyone provide me with details of the delta between 4.7 and 4.8, licensing structure, hardware requirements, support/maintenance strategy and ease of migration from 4.6/4.7 to 4.8?
As an aside it is very interesting that SAP has chosen to provide BC 4.8, presumably to ensure BC can continue to runs on supported O/S' and Java environments, when SAP XI/PI is being touted as the de facto integrator for companies with a significant SAP presence. Maybe customers are not quite as keen to move on/remove their BC instances as SAP would hope...

Answer 1

Hi Daniel,
We have been on this topic for years (some vested interest through product development).
What seems to have happened, from what we can gather, is that Netweaver XI/PI uptake hasn't happened as fast as initially hoped (SAP was looking at an intial end of life of Dec 2004 for BC).
The case is quite simple. BC is free, easy to install and maintain. XI/PI, new product, takes a while to stabilize, much more feature rich, but at the same time more complex and less performing (and did I mention the license cost?).
What we know about BC 4.8 and this is purely based on talking to people and reading about it, we have not seen / tested BC 4.8 ourselves - Mainly a platform upgrade, no significant changes. Most likely free as well (the original contract states that if SAP charges money for BC they have to pay extra to Webmethods / Software AG) accordingly. I would expect to see a few new built-in function and hopefully some hooks into standard SAP monitoring tools.
I think you hit the nail on the head. We have seen customers panic and move to non-Netweaver platforms from BC to be on a supported solution (back when EOL was imminent before 4.8 was released). Why non-Netweaver? Because many customers use non-SAP Integration Products as well and they tend to drift to known solutions instead of trying to manage the risk of migrating to a unfamiliar product.
I would not expect any major changes that would make migration to 4.8 hard. If there would be some major issues then that would signal some significant developments from SAP and that would be a strange thing at this point of the product lifecycle.
End of life for BC 4.8 is in 2012 or thereabouts if I remember correctly, this was part of some note which was released/updated towards the end of last year.
You might want to make some design calls if you continue developing your integration scenarios on BC. The best format to allow for an easy / relatively painfree migration to PI one day is by using BC graphical MAPS where possible, NOT XSL maps as wrongfully indicated in so many previous posts and articles. XSL is the hardest format to migrate to PI even though it might look superficially as a compatible format...
Cheers
Kalle