Technology, G. Phifer Research Note 23 June 2003 SAP Prepares to Launch Enterprise Portal 6 SAP is nearing general availability of the newest version of its portal product, Enterprise Portal 6. SAP seems to be overcoming the challenges it faced with the release of Enterprise Portal 5. Core Topic Internet Platforms and Web Services: Enterprise Portals Key Issue Which vendors and portal products will survive and succeed in the rapidly changing and fragmenting portal product market? Strategic Planning Assumptions SAP's Enterprise Portal 6 will reach unlimited general availability in 4Q03 (0.8 probability). Due to the late conversion of some critical components to Java, and the fear of a repeat of the issues related to the launch of SAP Enterprise Portal 5, more than 75 percent of customers won't deploy Enterprise Portal 6 into production until at least 2Q04 (0.7 probability). SAP is nearing general availability of Enterprise Portal 6 (EP6), the newest version of its portal product. Enterprise Portal (EP) is a key component of SAP NetWeaver, SAP's latest technology stack (see "SAP's Visionary NetWeaver Platform May Prove a Risky Bet"). Gartner expects EP6 to be a solid Generation 3 portal product (see "Generation-Three Portal Products: Unification" and "The Horizontal Portal Product 2003 Magic Quadrant"). EP6 will provide portal functionality to SAP NetWeaver. Gartner expects that EP6 will provide excellent integration into SAP's applications and will deliver new features, such as advanced collaboration and high scalability. EP6 is in limited customer ship (a phase of the SAP "ramp-up" process), and will reach unlimited general availability in 4Q03 (0.8 probability). SAP's Strategy SAP's strategy is to garner broad use of EP for every SAP application customer. SAP plans to initially entice customers with aggressive pricing (free of charge in some cases). Next, it will provide added-value features only through EP. Finally, it will make the portal the only supported user interface for its applications (0.7 probability), as it has done with its new generation of composite applications called SAP xapps. For SAP application customers making a portal product selection, the question isn't "Should we use SAP's portal?" but rather "When should we use SAP's portal, and how much of the enterprise should use it?" SAP customers will likely end up with SAP's portal in at least limited deployment. SAP applications can be accessed via a portal in one of three ways: Gartner Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
EP6 can be deployed as an enterprisewide horizontal portal framework. EP6 may be deployed vertically as a subsidiary portal, under a different horizontal portal product (known as the "uberportal" model). SAP applications' functionality may be accessed directly from many other horizontal portal products, totally skipping EP6. However, no other portal product will provide as robust an access to SAP applications as EP6, and users should determine if the "good enough" integration provided by other portal products is adequate for their requirements. EP6 builds on the successes of EP5, which was the first release of SAP's portal product after it acquired TopTier. TopTier's portal product was all Windows-based and written in C++. Prior to being acquired by SAP, TopTier started to port some of its code to Java. After the acquisition, the product's Java conversion accelerated significantly. The version of EP6 that SAP shipped during the ramp-up process has some C++ components. SAP plans to convert most components of EP6 to Java by general availability of EP6. The exception is the Unification Server, which SAP plans to convert soon after general availability, with a target of 2Q04. Strengths Compared to EP5, EP6 includes a new distributed administration model, performance improvements, a more-robust and easy-touse personalization model, support for multiple directories, simplified portal development, Unicode support, cascading portal support and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (except for the drag and relate feature). Many of the EP6 enhancements were developed because EP now runs on the SAP Web Application Server (WebAS), which has built-in performance management tools, change management tools and Unicode support. One of the most significant enhancements is that EP6 will run in a Unix environment, which will provide greater scalability. Other product strengths include: Deep integration with SAP applications Built-in content management, search and classification Highly integrated collaboration features that are available as an extra-cost option 23 June 2003 2
Unification server, an extra-cost option, provides drag and relate functionality and enhanced composite application support Highly scalable architecture Several important features, including a.net PDK and federation, will be delayed until after general availability of EP6. SAP is concentrating on the completeness and quality of EP6. In the initial release of EP5, many promised features were missing and many other features did not work. It took until Service Pack 4 of EP5 for SAP to achieve a stable, reliable release. EP6 seems to be taking a different course, with two slippages in the release date so far, both attributed to additional quality assurance activities. It seems that EP6 will not be the near disaster that EP5 was in general availability. Challenges Although an improvement over EP5, EP6 has some challenges to overcome. JavaServer Pages (JSP) skills are still required to build robust portals. The EP6 personalization model lags many of its competitors. Other product challenges include: EP6 requires SAP WebAS to run. The personalization model is limited. Multiple portal support is weak. Cascading portal feature is due just prior to general availability. Federated portal feature is not due until after general availability. Although portlet wizards are provided, Java skills are required to build robust portlets. SAP is facing two additional challenges with regard to its portal: one is organizational, the other is technological. Organizationally, the portal unit grew from 200 people to 2,000 in less than two years, first as TopTier, then as the spun-out wholly owned subsidiary of SAP called SAP Portals, then as the merged entity with SAP Markets and, finally, as a global business unit of SAP AG. Employees in many departments (sales, support, development, marketing) are now responsible for dealing with portal-related issues, and many of them are still not well-versed on these issues. From a technological perspective, SAP had the challenge of merging two diverse technology stacks: the original Windowscentric TopTier stack and the monolithic Basis/ABAP stack from SAP R3. These are being merged into the combined SAP 23 June 2003 3
NetWeaver technology stack, but we expect glitches and lack of maturity to persist for the near term. Longer term, SAP management has a strategic focus, and SAP has the corporate resources (more than 500 engineers dedicated to SAP portalrelated technologies) to execute well, hence its strong position in the Horizontal Portal Product Magic Quadrant. What SAP Users Should Do Gartner expects SAP EP6 to be a leading Generation 3 portal product. The underlying unification technology of EP6, which enables drag and relate, also provides easy integration with back-end applications and correlation across different applications. These features will make EP6 desirable to the SAP installed base. Some features lag the industry, however. Among these are personalization and portal management. Due to the heavy investment in SAP and SAP's technology stack, EP6 is generally best-suited for established or planned users of SAP's applications, or enterprises that will be aggressively pursuing a composite application strategy and are looking for a visionary platform. Enterprises that don't have SAP applications, that need support for application servers other than the SAP WebAS, or that need advanced personalization should look at other portal product vendors. Migration from EP5 to EP6 should be relatively straightforward and will require no manual conversions because SAP has automated most of the migration tasks. Enterprises evaluating SAP for their portal frameworks should focus on EP6, and should target deployment no sooner than the release of Service Pack 1, which should occur during early 2004. One note of caution: Some of the most complex parts of EP6 (Unification Server conversion to Java, Unification conversion from Oracle DB to SQL Server) will not be ready early in the ramp-up phase. The Unification Server will not be converted to Java until 2Q04 (0.8 probability). SAP's guidance is to use the EP5 Unification Server with EP6. Because of the delay in converting Unification Server to Java, that code will miss the testing done during the ramp-up phase, one of the goals of which is to identify and correct the bugs. This places enterprises using the Unification Server at a higher risk, and reinforces the need to wait until one or more Service Packs are released before any production deployments are attempted. Bottom Line: For SAP application customers, Enterprise Portal 6 will be a robust upgrade to EP5, and will likely end up in their enterprises, eventually. Enterprises using EP5 should examine the feature list of EP6 and plan an upgrade soon if their needs are met in this release. As with most software, the x.0 release is 23 June 2003 4
usually too high risk to deploy in production. Because of this and the lateness in conversion of critical components to Java, enterprises are advised to wait until Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 for production deployment. For non-sap application customers, EP6 can provide a robust horizontal portal framework, but at a high cost and a significant technology investment in SAP. 23 June 2003 5