SAP NETWEAVER FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - FAQ 1. What is SAP NetWeaver Every company is striving for growth. As a consequence, they all share the need for continuous change and innovation. SAP NetWeaver enables this business process evolution by empowering IT to become an enabler of flexible business strategies, driving innovation into business processes across an enterprise, and by making change sustainable through contained cost and reduced risk. SAP NetWeaver elevates IT infrastructure from an enabler of work into an enabler of change. The SAP NetWeaver technology platform powers all SAP solutions and as such significantly reduces the cost associated with integrating SAP and non-sap systems. However, the benefits of SAP NetWeaver go much further than that: SAP NetWeaver introduces an open, services-based architecture that eliminates TCO drivers and complexities across a company s entire IT infrastructure. As a result, companies can leverage their current investments while setting the stage to better align IT with the business to execute innovative business strategies. 2. How should we sell SAP NetWeaver SAP NetWeaver is the foundation platform for all of SAP s applications. Therefore, SAP NetWeaver should be part of the extended value proposition in every sales opportunity. Our offer is unique in the market SAP provides ready-made, integrated solutions for both applications and technology; whereas others offer one or the other; requiring customers to have to assemble the complete solution which results in higher total cost, and higher overall risk. SAP NetWeaver extends SAP s value to our customers through the reduction of TCO by addressing the complexity in integrating with and extending from their current IT environment. For several years now, other software and service companies have been trying to address these business challenges with limited success. During that time, the market has become educated to the level where SAP s unique value proposition is becoming acknowledged. Our main opportunity is ensuring our customers understand that SAP NetWeaver represents the most complete vision to address these business challenges, with the flexibility to choose between the asset vs. service approach that will best help them grow their business. The business value of reduced TCO is one of freeing up resources (both people and money) to focus on adapting the business more quickly to new changes, and innovating to stay ahead of the competition. To-date the complexity of change has been a hindrance to these objectives, but by specifically addressing this problem we are providing our customers with significant added-value to their business. 3. What is Enterprise Services Architecture and how does it relate to SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) provides a blueprint for services-based, enterprisescale business solutions (like the new mysap solutions) and flexible IT infrastructures
(including SAP and non-sap systems). While SAP NetWeaver is the technology platform that is the technical enabler of the Enterprise Services Architecture. Enterprise Services Architecture leverages Web Services and other open standards and is based on service-orientated software design. The concept of ESA describes how existing systems can be componentized into service-oriented business objects to be recomposed into innovative applications and processes across an entire IT infrastructure. With NetWeaver, SAP will design new applications while customers can re-architect their IT landscape following the ESA guidelines to make business process evolution a reality. SAP NetWeaver provides the technologies to get the customer from the integration nightmare they have today to a more flexible IT infrastructure as described by Enterprise Services Architecture. This step-by-step strategy allows SAP to position itself as a trusted innovator with customers, while potentially replacing some of the customer s existing third party or legacy systems with powerful SAP business solutions on the way. 4. Why is the concept of Enterprise Services Architecture so significant Enterprise architectures today are dominated by big suites of enterprise-wide applications. These applications were originally designed to integrate disparate corporate information systems and were usually implemented to provide a rigid uniform structure to a business operation. Businesses are evolving much faster, creating a need for more agility both in business processes and IT infrastructure. At the same time Web Services, which are a fundamental part of Services-Oriented Architectures, have become a mainstream technology. SAP has raised the bar by taking the Services-Oriented paradigm and created a new application architecture the Enterprise Services Architecture - that allows companies to expose and combine pre-defined, business and context-specific services that span the functionality of multiple enterprise-wide applications. In other words, building applications following the concept of Enterprise Services Architecture is the surety for system flexibility across a heterogeneous landscape. 5. In what way is SAP NetWeaver a new technology platform Traditional middleware sits underneath the applications. Today's platforms are very different they envelope the processes, allowing one to recompose them to meet different scenarios and needs of the end-user, the company, or the integrated business. Once the technology is combined with a collection of services or business objects, the result is an application platform. It is the foundation for a new set of applications. SAP NetWeaver allows one to interchange the components and build composite applications without touching the components. The highest part of the total cost of ownership equation is people writing custom code, which becomes an increasingly bigger liability over time. SAP is helping our customers to get out of that situation by enabling them to make changes to the composites above SAP NetWeaver, allowing them to inherent each following release. 6. What is the market potential for SAP NetWeaver SAP NetWeaver spans many currently defined software markets including Portal, Business Intelligence, Application Integration, Application Development and Application Server. The
value of each is substantial by itself, with expected market growth ranging from 4% to 18% between 2002 and 2006. NetWeaver also addresses emerging markets such as Web Services and coupled with its value as the strategic open integration and application platform for all SAP Solutions, NetWeaver will have a significant impact on the software industry. IDC defines the Application Integration Software (AIS) market as a bundle of components similar to NetWeaver, where AIS is expected to significantly outperform the sum of standalone technologies by 2006. Based on Competitive Market Intelligence s analysis of relevant technology segments, the AIS market is currently valued at $ 4.7 billion with a minimum expected 6% market growth from 2002 to 2006 (source: IDC 2003). As the enabler of change, which is required for successful growth of a business, SAP NetWeaver reinforces SAP s trusted innovator status with our customers by expanding from our traditional business applications model to business applications and technology platforms. This will allow SAP to dramatically increase our market share thus NetWeaver Leadership for SAP s growth. 7. What is Business Process Fusion and how does it relate to SAP NetWeaver Business Process Fusion is a concept invented by Gartner that is heavily influenced by SAP s overall strategy around NetWeaver, xapps, and ESA. It is an evolved position on Gartner s views of the Smart Enterprise Suite (SES) and Application Platform Suite (APS) markets. The following quote from Gartner helps to put Business Process Fusion into perspective: Business process fusion is the next stage in how business applications are developed, delivered and deployed to achieve business value. It represents a significant discontinuity in IT and the value that it can deliver to the business. Enterprises that recognize this discontinuity will be positioned to achieve a new order of value from their IT investments. SAP s strategy and vision for NetWeaver and xapps has played a key role in the creation and current evolution of the Business Process Fusion concept by Gartner. All Gartner research to-date on the Business Process Fusion topic offers direct and indirect validation of SAP s overall strategies for NetWeaver, xapps, and ESA. 8. Which SAP solutions are based on SAP NetWeaver All SAP solutions are based on SAP NetWeaver. The earliest adopters are CRM, SRM and mysap ERP, all are Powered by SAP NetWeaver. 9. What is SAP NetWeaver 04 In 2003, SAP NetWeaver was already the most integrated technology stack in the market. SAP NetWeaver 04, which will be released to Ramp-Up at the end of Q1 2004 will be the first truly integrated platform in the market. SAP's strategy is to synchronize the release of our software by launching the technology stack at the beginning of each year, to be followed by the solutions six months later. The ramp-up of SAP NetWeaver '04 is the first step in this direction For this release, SAP NetWeaver goes through a rigorous solution production process that ensures all components can be installed and run perfectly together in terms of hardware, operating systems, databases, and other system parameters. Customers will benefit from streamlined operations, upgrades and maintenance processes and will significantly
reduce complexity and cost of developing and operating custom built applications and integration projects. In addition, SAP NetWeaver 2004 introduces new features in all components and for the first time offers to select customers access to the Composite Application Framework. 10. Will SAP NetWeaver be tailored to specific industries SAP NetWeaver is a non-industry specific technology platform. SAP NetWeaver does currently address certain industry specific requirements such as integration (through technology adapters) and business content. Industry-specific SAP NetWeaver solutions are currently under evaluation by the Business Solution Groups (BSG). 11. What goals has SAP set for SAP NetWeaver for 2004 NetWeaver is SAP s top priority in 2004. Our mission is to establish NetWeaver as the primary integration and application platform within the SAP customer base. Our goal (including the field), which is focused on NetWeaver adoption, is 1,000 NetWeaver reference customers by the end of 2004, using SAP NetWeaver beyond running pure SAP applications. A NetWeaver reference customer is defined as a customer within the Global Reference Portal, who is using 2 or more SAP NetWeaver technology solutions*, with at least 1 point of non- SAP integration. *Where a NetWeaver technology solution is one of the following: Portal platform (EP, KM, Collaboration) Business Intelligence (BI) Web Application Server/Java (Web AS/Java) Mobile Infrastructure (MI) Master Data Management (MDM) Exchange Infrastructure (XI & BPM) 12. How do xapps relate to SAP NetWeaver SAP xapps are packaged composite application software products that have been built to achieve several objectives: drive business innovation quickly snap onto existing heterogeneous IT environments deliver new functionality (next practices) that is not delivered by existing SAP solutions (best practices) provide out-of-the-box integration for the delivery of the functionality. xapps are powered by SAP NetWeaver, which is the technology platform designed to deliver flexible and innovative business processes. SAP NetWeaver enables xapps to lower the Total Cost of Ownership for our customers through packaged applications vs. custom projects out-of-box integration with SAP and non-sap applications drive more ROI on existing IT assets quick implementation
The following xapps are available today: SAP xapp Resource & Program Management (xrpm) SAP xapp Product Design (xpd) Global Trade Services (GTS) SAP xapp Emissions Management by Technidata (xem). 13. Is SAP NetWeaver a suite or a platform and what does it include? SAP NetWeaver is an open-standard platform for developing applications and for integrating SAP and non-sap applications. SAP is designing its next generation of applications on the SAP NetWeaver platform; while partners and customers are leveraging its uniqueness by building composite applications on top of SAP and other applications. Companies can reduce complexity and cost while innovating at the speed of business by using SAP NetWeaver as the platform for their custom applications and integration projects. SAP NetWeaver evolved from a set of market-leading, mature components such as SAP Business Information Warehouse and SAP Enteprise Portal. In 2002, Web Application Server, the SAP Exchange Infrastructure and SAP Mobile Infrastructure joined the platform. More recently SAP Master Data Management and SAP Composite Application Framework were added. SAP NetWeaver now combines all these capabilities into one integrated platform with a common runtime environment for Java and ABAP (Web Application Server); a common programming environment (SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio); an application environment (Composite Application Framework); a common environment for testing, deploying, managing and monitoring an implementation (SAP Solution Manager) and the overarching ability to share services among all these components and applications. All components are best-in-class; and integrated into one platform - create value that is greater than the sum of the parts.