Customer and Partner Community Invited to Contribute to Definition and Development of Enterprise Services as SAP Delivers on the Next Major Milestone of Its Enterprise Services Architecture
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — In a continuing demonstration of its leadership in helping customers move toward services-oriented architectures and building on its commitment to provide the partner community with the development platform of choice, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today unveiled an Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) preview system with more than 500 live enterprise services. Developed and deployed on the latest version of mySAP™ ERP, the ESA preview system will be available for partners, developers and customers in a hosted form, giving them the opportunity to test enterprise services and contribute to the definition and development of solutions that will help companies run their most prevalent business processes in new, more effective ways. The solution will be first available for demonstration at SAPPHIRE® ’05, SAP’s international customer conference, being held in Copenhagen, Denmark, April 26–28.
“SAP continues to deliver on the vision of a business-driven services-oriented architecture first introduced in 2003, and continues to lead the market to solutions that will offer customers new levels of flexibility and innovation,” said Shai Agassi, president of the Product and Technology Group and member of the executive board, SAP. “We are excited about the strong customer adoption of SAP NetWeaver™, the first true applistructure platform. Now, with the ESA preview system, we are helping customers and partners experience the power of a services-based solution. SAP continues to outpace its competition by delivering real solutions to the market that set the pace for platform leadership on a global scale.”
The Future of Enterprise Software Is Here Today
Web services provide a widely adopted technology standard that enables higher flexibility of system interaction. Enterprise services use Web services technology to capture “the language of business” for consistent, business-driven system interoperability across IT landscapes according to defined business semantics. Based on enterprise services, organizations can compose new and innovative business processes on top of existing systems. Enterprise Services Architecture marries the concept of enterprise services with technology infrastructure and composite applications into a powerful, unified blueprint for more business process flexibility and innovation. Such flexibility will enable new levels of value to be derived from existing IT investments while smoothing the way to even faster solutions to new business challenges.
For the ESA preview system, SAP provides 500 such enterprise services, which are used in prevalent ERP processes such as procure-to-pay and order-to-cash. One example is the management of an exceptional event such as a wrong delivery in a standard “procure-to-pay” process. Such an exception typically sets off a complicated chain of manual steps such as informing the delivery call center, organizing re-pick-up and arranging delivery to the correct recipient. In the ESA preview system, SAP demonstrates how enterprise services react intelligently to exceptions and support the various users along the workflow, triggering an automated process flow from problem identification to resolution.
These enterprise services are made available in an extended mySAP ERP system, easing business process execution for customers and streamlining integration for partners and developers.
Expanding the SAP NetWeaver and Enterprise Services Community
The scalability and openness of the SAP NetWeaver™ platform represents a large opportunity for software vendors to develop software more quickly and cost effectively. SAP partners including Accenture, AI, Atos Origin, CSC, Infosys, Jedox and Pecaso are already demonstrating solutions that integrate with the ESA preview system. On display at SAPPHIRE Copenhagen in the ESA Pavilion of the SAP NetWeaver Village, these solutions are the first of many from partners building complementary solutions based on the Enterprise Services Architecture blueprint.
Pecaso, a specialty provider of human resources solutions and services, will demonstrate an application that closely tracks employee attendance based on “clock in” and “clock out” times and synchronizes absence information with mySAP ERP in real-time.
“Enterprise services enable us to link our application to SAP systems, fitting a specific need for customers who require comprehensive and real-time insight into the attendance of their employees,” said Andreas Fritz, managing director of Technology, Pecaso. “Using enterprise services, we were able to develop an application that integrates with mySAP ERP 90 percent faster than we could have without enterprise services. SAP is helping us drive down the cost of product innovation, allowing us to deliver even better value to our customers.”
Beginning in June, partners, developers and interested customers can access the hosted ESA preview system from the SAP Developer Network (SDN) at http://sdn.sap.com. The list of the more than 500 enterprise services provided in the ESA preview system is available from the press contacts cited below.
Customers Can Harness the Power of ESA Today
The ESA preview system marks another important milestone on SAP’s road map to Enterprise Services Architecture, helping customers achieve an evolutionary and orderly path forward. SAP has already service-enabled its solutions by building them upon the SAP NetWeaver platform, leveraging the convergence of applications and integration technologies in a true “applistructure” approach. Customers seeking the benefits of ESA can begin by moving to mySAP ERP—the front-runner for service-enablement in the SAP application set, and across the IT marketplace—by taking advantage of the ESA Adoption Program. This program offers a formalized, step-by-step approach to managing the strategic transition to ESA based on individual business needs while maintaining the productivity of existing systems. For more information, please see the March 30, 2005 press release titled “SAP Helps Customers Accelerate the Move Toward Services-Oriented Architecture,” available at: http://www.sap.com/company/press/press.epx?PressID=4300
About SAP
SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software solutions*. Today, more than 27,000 customers in over 120 countries run more than 91,500 installations of SAP® software—from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize businesses to enterprise-scale suite solutions for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver™ platform to drive innovation and enable business change, mySAP™ Business Suite solutions are helping enterprises around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP industry solutions support the unique business processes of more than 25 industry segments, including high tech, retail, public sector and financial services. With subsidiaries in more than 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>)
(*) SAP defines business software solutions as comprising enterprise resource planning and related software solutions such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle management and supplier relationship management.
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