MiniApps developers kit joins mySAP offerings

MySAP Workplace inclu-des pre-developed MiniApps and templates, but users will be able to develop their own applets which can be tailored to push information to end-user desktops using Microsoft Visual InterDev and Microsoft Active Server Pages.

According to SAP, the unified Active Server Page and XML environment allows users to draw data from any source before pushing it to the relevant desktop. For example, in an engineering environment, production line sensor information registering equipment failure in a process could be pushed to the production and maintenance managers' desktops, as well as perhaps being forwarded to spares ordering.

Stewart Armstrong, an analyst at Ovum, said, "By having 'communities' developing and sharing MiniApps it extends the SAP ecosystem and gives an extra benefit to the companies who are in it.

In theory, it should allow users to gather and display information from their other business applications, but there is the overhead of developing the MiniApp which could be high if they want to do more than view data from the other system."