I have some basic questions on SAP Ariba. From what I understand, Ariba network has million of suppliers and buyers can search for their requirements on this Ariba network. So looks like there would be one global Ariba cloud based hosted website, which all customers(both buyers and suppliers) would use.
But, my Ariba knowledgeable colleague was saying that companies have their own instance of Ariba and in this instance they feed their suppliers, but this sounds very counter-intuitive. If companies manage their own suppliers, then they are not using the millions of suppliers who are listed with Ariba network.
Why would company want to maintain their own Ariba instance?
Is it for buying processes streamlining feature that Ariba provides, and they are not interested in dealing with all the suppliers registered with Ariba network?
If I should be asking this question on some other stack exchange site, please let me know.
Not a programming issue but I may help as there is no much information in this.
I can tell you about my experience at my company using Ariba Supply Chain Solution with CIG.
We are using Ariba Network with SAP 4 Hana ERP.
This version of SAP ERP uses something called CIG (Cloud Integration Gateway) which is just another website used to communicate with Ariba Network.
Do companies have their own instance of Ariba?
I would say no, understanding "own instance" as an on Premise solution, in your own servers.
As far as I understand, Ariba provides a cloud web service website.
How does it work
You only deal with the suppliers listed in your ERP.
Some of them you can work with just an email, which will create an automatic account in Ariba Supplier side, these would be Ariba Standard Accounts.
Others will have to be contacted from Ariba, if interested, and make an Enterprise Account for them which will have more benefits than the Standard Account.
The communication would be something like this: SAP ERP <- CIG -> ARIBA NETWORK.
Each company has their own Ariba Network ID (ANID) which will log into.
If you are a supplier, you will log into supplier.ariba.com
However if you are a buyer, you will use buyer.ariba.com
If you are a buyer and you've already logged into buyer.ariba.com you may go to integration.ariba.com (Cloud Integration Gateway or CIG) to check for errors between your ERP and Ariba Network.
So basically, a purchase order from your SAP, will be shown from your Ariba Buyer account (buyer.ariba.com), and the supplier, will receive these orders via email notifications, having the possibility to confirm these, creating advanced ship notices or invoicing directly from his Ariba Supplier account (supplier.ariba.com).