Should we replace ALE with SAP XI?
We are currently running ALE but we're looking into SAP XI. How is XI going to serve our business, and how is it going to save cost?

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XI and its related NetWeaver technology is intended to replace ALE, and in fact as your company moves forward into the mySAP software stack you'll need to give up on ALE and focus on XI and NetWeaver. XI in part will save costs simply because it provides a scalable, reusable environment for building and maintaining integrated systems. It also lowers cost by providing a significant amount of funcationality out of the box that had to be either hand-coded or purchased from a third party vendor in the ALE days. But fundamentally, XI is your ticket to NetWeaver, which essentially makes the NetWeaver value equation dependent on XI. In other words, you can't move forward without NetWeaver and XI in the SAP stack. No XI, no NetWeaver; no NetWeaver, no SAP upgrade path.

This was first published in June 2006