TechnologyDriven

SAP TechEd in Las Vegas is over. Not surprisingly in today’s Web 2.0 world, there has been a lot of blogging, podcasting and videos around the event, and Craig Cmehil has summarized those a little bit. I’d also like to resume some of the announcements and news from TechEd I find the most interesting here.

Tim O’Reilly did a guest keynote about the business models of Web 2.0-companies, and in his own blog he wrote about the Web 2.0 activities going on at SAP, like for example activities in Second Life, and their own internal social network called “harmony” (never heard of that before).

The executive keynotes of Peter Zencke and Vishal Sikka were mainly about Enterprise SOA, delivering new functionality for the business suite via enhancement packages and the switch framework, and new features of NetWeaver 7.1 (”Enterprise Services Repository”, “Process Integration” as advancement of Exchange Infrastructure and the “Composition Environment”). To make a long story short, it’s all about code-free modeling of processes, applications and user-interfaces based on services in a central repository today. You can read more about it on ZDNet and in Jeff Nolan’s post.

There also was an announcement of the SDN subscription program, which allows developers to get the SAP NetWeaver tools and platforms for an annual fee, similar to offers from other software vendors (e.g. MSDN). This is meant to enlarge the SAP developer community. Michael Koch wrote more about it.

So, this was TechEd in Las Vegas, but TechEd Munich is just around the corner. And:

Only on thursday, though, expensive enough…
Technorati: sap blogger

The TechEd 07 in Las Vegas has started, and Peter Zencke unveiled some more technical details about SAP Business ByDesign (BBD) in his keynote and an interview with Dan Farber.

Some key points:

• Everything is built on services (UI is built on services also, there no integration of components on the database-level like in R/3 but on the service-level)
• SAP will not allow to run custom code in the hosted environment, but customers can run code on their own site, e.g. compose new applications based on the hosted services
• AJAX-functionality is not included in the UI for BBD at the moment, but it will come
• The basic foundation for BBD is ABAP (Objects), having “one implementation for each function”. The layers above are done with Java, based on (and partially automatically generated from) models.
• “Customizing” is done with a configurator, with a “question and answer and constraint engine”, not on the level of process models
• Linux is used as operating system for the hosted environment, and SAP’s own MaxDB as database

Technorati: sap blogger

Today SAP officially announced it’s new on-demand Enterprise Software for small and mid-sized businesses called “Business ByDesign” (BBD), which was formerly known as “A1S”, in a press-conference in New York.

CEO Henning Kagermann called it “the most important announcement” of his career and described BBD as “breakthrough innovation”. In fact, the SaaS-market is completely new for SAP but probably very important for it’s future, and BBD is perhaps the most important product for SAP since R/3, which made the German software-vendor to the market-leader in business software in the 90’s. And the way BBD was designed and built is truly innovative. It is completely service-based (”SOA by design”, also the UI is based on services in contrast to ERP where the services are delivered additionally to the transactions), and it was built with the latest model-based development tools from SAP (Composition Environment).

An often heard (see also Nicholas Carr’s post) question/thought is whether BBD could threaten SAP’s own business. Larger companies running SAP’s rather expensive ERP or Business Suite could also think of using a cheap and easy to implement on-demand software, what by the way would also challenge a whole industry of consultants implementing and adapting SAP software for customers. But those larger businesses will probably always have the need for a wider adaption of their enterprise software than possible with BBD, and for SAP it’s still better to loose customers to themselves than to loose them to competitors…

The replay of the press-conference can be found here.

Further informations:

• http://www.sap.com/solutions/sme/businessbydesign/index.epx
• http://sap.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/09/19/a1s-is-now-sap-business-bydesign/

Technorati: sap blogger

Already last year Hasso Plattner had a lecture at his “Hasso Plattner Institute” (HPI) about the so called composite applications, applications “that sit on other applications” as he said, with no own data storage.

He gave an overview of what composite applications are and illustrated this with the example of Duet, a joint project of Microsoft and SAP to integrate Microsoft Office and SAP applications. I would say this is more an example of an integration of two systems than an example of a composite application, but at least it shows how relatively easy applications can be built with the help of standardized services, on top of web-based platforms (NetWeaver and .Net).
Technically an integration has always been possible Plattner outlined, but nowadays it is easier because of the standardized protocols (e.g. SOAP) and the systematization of application integration.

Nevertheless, there are some issues to consider when composite applications are built (and just as well when systems are integrated):

• User-experience consistency: which UI-guideline is to use, e.g. that of Microsoft or that of SAP?
• Data model overlaps: the data of which system is to use, when there are overlaps?
• Process overlaps: every software has some functionality, perhaps overlapping with other systems, and will obtain new functions in the future. So only the core-processes have to be combined.
• Joint configuration: to stay in the example of Duet: MS Office has extensive configuration options, and there are thousands of customizing tables in SAP. To bring the two systems together the configuration has to match.
• Life-cycle synchronization: every software has a release-cycle, perhaps one system changes and the other does not change accordingly.

Finally, as he likes to do very often, Plattner brought an example from the automotive industry, pointing the way for the software industry: in earlier days there were radios with their own brand in cars, nowadays the radios have the “user-interface” of the cars, but the car-manufacturers still don’t produce radios on their own. This would also occur in software-industry, Plattner predicted, software would consist of services (= components) of different manufacturers, and there would be a consistent UI on top the respective application-suite.

A video of the lecture (in German) can be found here:
http://www.hpi-potsdam.com/index.php/2006/07/05/summer-term-2006-composite-applications/

Technorati: sap blogger

The SAPPHIRE 07 took place a few weeks ago in Atlanta, time to sum up some news and announcements from there:

• SAP and Adobe will deliver an e-learning suite, integrated in SAP ERP, to offer online-trainings within the SAP environment
• New features of the coming NetWeaver-Release:
  • “State-of-the-art user-experience”: The SAPGUI-successor “NetWeaver Business Client” (aka “Project Muse“), an enhanced and more ergonomic user-interface for the Portal (with the help of AJAX), and some Web2.0-functions within the portal like e.g. a wiki-system
  • Support for the new Java EE 5 standard
  • NetWeaver “Process Integration” (PI), formerly Exchange Infrastructure (XI), contains new features (e.g. Business Activity Monitoring) and performance improvements
  • NetWeaver “Composition Environment” (CE), a Java-based modeling- and development environment (including and bundling together WebDynpro, Visual Composer and Composite Application Framework)
• SAP will continue the cooperation with Microsoft on Duet, bringing some new features in the upcoming releases, like connection to SAP CRM and SCM, a development platform to build own integration scenarios and integration with MS Sharepoint
• There was not much talk about “A1S”, the coming on-demand solution for the mid-market. Probably the launch of the product is postponed to 2008, Q1 or even later. A1S has it’s own code-base, but is based on NetWeaver like other SAP solutions. It will contain a set of web-services which allow to build own extensions for the standard-product, although it is hosted on SAP-servers. There will also be a kind of market-place for these extensions, comparable to the “AppExchange” of salesforce.com.
• “mySAP ERP 2005″ is now called “SAP ERP 6.0″. Back to the roots…

Sources and continuative links:
http://searchsap.blog-city.com/sapphire_2007_quick_takes.htm
http://searchsap.blog-city.com/sapphire_2007_quick_takes_part_2.htm
http://blog.danmcweeney.com/24
http://www.accmanpro.com/2007/04/24/sapphire-07-day-1-the-wrap/
http://www11.sap.com/company/press/press.epx?PressID=7615
http://www.ekampf.com/blog/2007/04/24/DuetAtSapphire.aspx
http://www.sap.com/company/press/press.epx?PressID=7597
http://www.sap.com/company/press/press.epx?PressID=7690
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4903
http://sapport.blogspot.com/2007/04/all-in-one-a1s-business-suite.html
http://www.accmanpro.com/2007/04/27/amr-sees-a1s-confusion-reigns/

Technorati: sap blogger

I played around with the first beta-versions of WebDynpro Java (WDJ) already some years ago, now that NetWeaver 2004s (AS ABAP 7.0) is available I also had the chance to go in for WebDynpro ABAP (WDA). This is the version we will probably work the most with, as it doesn’t need a separate runtime environment, is directly integrated into the ERP-system and thereby makes developing business applications based on ERP-functionality much easier.

I am approaching the topic by working through the book “Web Dynpro for ABAP” by Ulli Hoffmann, which treats the subjects with hands-on examples, various source-code excerpts and screenshots rather than abstract descriptions.

The WebDynpro-framework, development tools and runtime environment apparently bring a lot of advantages to (web-)application developers (and users):

• Declarative and graphical tools speed up the development of UIs
• The MVC-model leads to a clear separation of layout and business-logic
• Data-binding makes it easier to bring the data to the frontend and enables automatic type-checking
• The componentization-options allow reuse on the presentation-level of applications
• The runtime generates highly interactive, “flicker-free” screens running within a standard-browser

But I have to say that I also like programming BSP’s with HTMLB and the MVC-model very much. This concept has most of the mentioned advantages too, but offers more flexibility I would say, especially when it comes to dynamically generating screens or parts of screens. WebDynpro becomes slightly complex there.

Those are also good starting-points to WebDynpro ABAP (besides the mentioned book):

• SAP Online Help
• SDN Developer Area for WebDynpro
  
• SDN WebDynpro ABAP Getting Started

Technorati: sdn blogger

SAP announced an upgrade for it’s All-In-One (A1) solution for small and mid-sized businesses.

It will be based on mySAP ERP 2005 and NetWeaver (and thus be “SOA-enabled”), which is not a surprise.
What I find interesting is that it will also include CRM-capabilities. mySAP CRM as a standalone solution is surely not efficient and affordable for the mid-market, a CRM that is integrated into the core ERP-system (which contains some CRM-related functionality anyway) is just what they want.
To deliver a modern and easy to use GUI with the “NetWeaver Business Client” (aka Project Muse) is also a good idea in a market where you compete with Microsoft.

Besides, there are some rumours that SAP will also bring a completely new ERP-system for SMBs, perhaps in an on-demand model.

(you can read more on it here and here)

Technorati tags:
sap blogger

Craig Cmehil and Tuncay Karaca have listed some blogs about SAP, outside of SAP/SDN.

Quite complete I think, I only have a few more in my RSS-reader:

• MYSAP An Access to SAP Knowledge
• Mobilizing SAP Applications
• SAP Blog
• and of course: TechnologyDriven

Technorati tags:
sdn blogger

A few weeks ago Hasso Plattner, co-founder and former board member of SAP, did a lecture at the “Hasso-Plattner-Institut” at the university of Potsdam, an institute for IT systems engineering he founded and is financing. The topic was “Design and Innovations in Enterprise Applications”, you can find the full version of the speech here and the highlights here.

In his lecture he made some interesting notes about SOA and Gartner calling it “the next big thing”: SOA would surly be a good concept and will be widely adopted (if it not already is), but there would be no “plug and play” or “putting lego-bricks” together, believing this he noted would instead be “the next big trap”. “We can do more”, but nevertheless complexity of software systems would increase, like seen in other disciplines of engineering (e.g. cars or airplanes).

Other parts of the speech focused on “people-centric design” and the ignorance of engineers towards the needs of users or consumers. Concerning this he brought the example of German car-vendors that disregarded the need for coffee-cup holders in cars for the American market for a long time.

It’s always nice to hear someone like him, with such a big experience, insight and passion for the software industry, no matter if you agree with all aspects or not.

Perhaps most of the SAP professionals already know it: the currently released version 7 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer causes some problems with SAPGUI (more precisely the HTML-control it uses in some Dynpros) and SAP’s web-applications based on WebDynpro or HTMLB. You can find more information in OSS-notes 981710 and 950975.

Firefox has quite the same features as the new IE, so perhaps installing this one and keeping IE 6 would be the better option