SAP is charging ahead with its approach to a
service-oriented architecture and suggested that users should start
thinking now about ways to join the drive.
Yesterday chairman and chief executive officer Henning Kagermann
told a packed auditorium of users at SAP's Sapphire customer
conference New Orleans that the company is fully committed to
implementing its Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA), using the
NetWeaver integration platform as a crucial tool, and urged them to
start making their own plans today.
A good chunk of SAP's research and development efforts - and
money - will go to the development of ESA and new enterprise
services applications.
ESA is not a technology but rather a blueprint showing
developers how to build new kinds of enterprise applications using
web services, said Hilmar Schepp, director of product management
for SAP's global ERP initiative.
"You need a plan, which is ESA, and you need a tool to enable
this - that's NetWeaver," he said. "It's the hammer you need to
pound the nail."
As SAP evolves toward a service-oriented architecture, its
applications will progress into a mix of core products running on
different platforms. On top of those products, customers will be
able to build their own applications, or composite applications,
otherwise known as xApps at SAP.
John Blau writes for IDG News Service
