SAP First to Make Web Services Work for the Enterprise All SAP® Solutions to Leverage New, Enterprise-Scale Web Services Architecture
New York, NY — SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA), the blueprint for complete, services-based business solutions, allowing companies to drive additional business value from existing technology investments-enabling, for the first time, enterprise-scale usage of Web services. By combining SAP’s business process and industry solution expertise with the openness of Web services and other technology standards, SAP’s new enterprise architecture provides companies with a template for the creation of fully integrated IT environments built entirely on services-based business solutions that extend across systems and beyond business boundaries. Going forward, all SAP® solutions will be developed using the ESA blueprint, and are expected to set new standards in usability, scalability, adaptability, and extensibility. Today, the company also launched SAP NetWeaver™, the next evolution of mySAP™ Technology-SAP’s industry-leading integration and application platform, which provides the technology foundation to enable an ESA.
An ESA outlines how an integration and application platform is used to orchestrate business processes by means of packaged composite applications across existing systems leveraging Web services. An ESA introduces a new layer of flexibility to manage all aspects of a given business process, including people (all roles participating across the value chain), systems (be they SAP or non-SAP), and information (structured or unstructured). Services-based architectures are universally recognized as the way to solve the growing integration challenge. An ESA enables the design of a complete, services-based solution for a given business process/problem that uses existing systems and applications while accelerating the deployment of new functionality. To drive new levels of flexibility and innovation, SAP NetWeaver, which enables an ESA, provides tools, frameworks, patterns, rules, and methodologies that allow SAP and partners to efficiently develop cross-functional business processes.
SAP’s strategic vision for a new enterprise architecture represents the next chapter of business solution design and is a major milestone along the timeline of SAP’s application development history. “Today’s announcement is as significant as the 1992 introduction of SAP’s 3-tier client/server architecture,” said Hasso Plattner, co-chairman, CEO, and co-founder, SAP AG. “SAP’s long-term success has been driven by its ability to interpret constantly evolving customer requirements into comprehensive business solutions utilizing the latest technological advancements. Motivated by the initial success of mySAP Technology and SAP xApps™ cross-applications, we will fulfill the promise of Web services, bringing adaptability and interoperability to enterprise IT infrastructures through the introduction of the Enterprise Services Architecture. SAP will develop all new business solutions in accordance with the Enterprise Services Architecture blueprint, enabling customers to fully leverage the promise of today’s technology to seamlessly integrate their business process across all of their disparate systems, linking suppliers, partners, and customers across the value chain.”
SAP’s 3-tier client/server architecture quickly became the industry ‘de facto standard,’ providing the fundamental structure upon which client/server systems enabled information and process integration at the user, application, and data levels. The 3-tier client/server architecture is a highly-scalable framework which provides the foundation for SAP business solutions that drive success today for more than 19,000 companies worldwide.
While the 3-tier client/server architecture replaced existing mainframe based systems, the ESA allows companies to add important new levels of flexibility while allowing customers to maintain and build upon their existing solutions investments through Web services. The ESA blueprint makes heterogeneous application integration a reality by creating a services-based, enterprise-scale business architecture that treats applications as services that can be accessed seamlessly by users, leveraging open, standards-driven, Web-based technologies.
SAP has already begun to deliver on the promise of ESA with the first shipments of SAP xApps, a new breed of packaged composite applications that snap-on to existing IT environments. Going forward, the ESA provides the framework for all development and delivery of new capabilities across the SAP solution portfolio. For example, these will include new integration scenarios within the SAP solution suite, new capabilities delivered on top of an SAP industry-specific solution, functionality extensions to SAP’s core ERP solutions, and new levels of flexibility to enable custom development projects.
“Web services today are largely used to ‘wrap’ existing systems,” said Yvonne Genovese, research director, Gartner. “To deliver on the promise of the real-time enterprise, companies need to define and deploy complete business processes built upon a services-based infrastructure that enables the weaving of Web services into packaged composite applications.”
SAP NetWeaver is the enabler of the Enterprise Services Architecture. Details on the new capabilities of, and the availability of SAP NetWeaver can be found in the associated press release, “SAP Announces Industry’s Leading Integration and Application Platform, SAP NetWeaver” (please see http://www.sap.com/company/press)
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About SAP
SAP is the world’s leading provider of e-business software solutions. Through the mySAP.com® e-business platform, people in businesses around the globe are improving relationships with customers and partners, streamlining operations, and achieving significant efficiencies throughout their supply chains. Today, more than 18,800 companies in over 120 countries run more than 56,000 installations of SAP® software. With subsidiaries in over 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol “SAP.” (Additional information at http://www.sap.com)
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