SAP broadens NetWeaver, support options
Clarification: This story was updated at 3:24 p.m. PDT to clarify details of the SAP Enterprise Support plan for new customers.
SAP said on Tuesday that it plans to release a pair of tools that could ease the process of customizing how business software works.
The company launched the tools, NetWeaver Business Process Management and NetWeaver Business Rules Management, at its Sapphire conference taking place this week in Orlando, Fla.
Combined, the tools make it possible to alter and modify business process rules, which determine how SAP's financial, human resources, and accounting software works. "In SAP, we have delivered a business process model. But users cannot change models," said Peter Graf, SAP's executive vice president of global marketing.
Henning Kagermann, SAP co-CEO
(Credit: SAP)Graf said that traditionally, to change business process rules, IT and businesspeople would meet and "IT would go away for two months and build something, and then it would not be what business wanted."
"(With this announcement) we have introduced a level of abstraction, a repository of Web services, defined so customers can use them, and then can combine them to put together a new business process," Graf said. "This is a way for IT and businesspeople to look at the same visuals and decide on a process and make it work."
Graf said that the tools can be used by both IT developers and business process analysts and do not require hand coding. "They are more universal in nature," he said.
The tools are currently in beta testing and will be available later this year, SAP said.
Separately, the company announced a new service plan intended to provide support for SAP's software and the composite processes, built atop a service-oriented architecture, that work with other software.
For new customers, the SAP Enterprise Support plan replaces standard support contracts, and costs 22 percent of a customer's software license fee annually, Graf said. Enterprise software is traditionally sold with a maintenance plan, which can cost up to 25 percent or more of the overall licensing fee for the software alone. SAP's standard support costs 17 percent of a customer's software licensing fee annually, Graf said.
Mike Ricciuti joined CNET in 1996. He is now CNET News' Boston-based executive editor and east coast bureau chief, serving as department editor for business technology and software covered by CNET News, Reviews, and Download.com. E-mail Mike. 
