SAP reaches out for helping hands

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companies. The SAP application features can be presented via Web services interfaces. The company has catalogued about 1,200 services that can be accessed and combined with other services.

This provides a blueprint for all the business processes that can be automated through SAP software. The company calls this blueprint the Enterprise Services Architecture, or ESA.

"It's pretty hard to be a software company and not compete with SAP."

--Rod Favaron, president, Lombardi Software

The first services to be published in the spring will be commonly used tasks already in the SAP system, such as a financial program for tracking the time between a purchase order receipt and actual payment, Paolini said. Over time, SAP intends to publish more of these services and create a repository to be used by third parties.

SAP will also provide its own Java-based tools to software developers, Paolini said. The company is a member of the Eclipse open-source tools foundation.

One goal of the Enterprise Service Architecture effort is to make SAP's products more widely used in its customers' installations, said Bruce Richardson, an analyst at AMR Research. "Opening it up is a subtle way to get customers to begin investing again."

In theory, ESA will provide a more flexible software infrastructure, called a services-oriented architecture, for SAP's applications and make it easier to make changes, he said.

"SAP has to figure a way to manage upgrades," Richardson said. "Today, it's like when a lightbulb goes off in your house, you'd have to replace all of the wiring."

Eventually, SAP would like its customers to regularly go to its portal application to get to business information, much as many people use Microsoft Office every day, Richardson said.

But he also noted that there are "many mysteries" in SAP's ecosystem approach, including how much it will cost third parties to access its services and what any eventual certification process will entail.

Cooperating--or co-opting?
Partnerships have not always gone smoothly in the past for SAP, and industry observers are waiting to see how the company will handle the challenges involved in this effort.

As the Walldorf, Germany-based company pushes more aggressively into the software infrastructure market, it is increasingly bumping heads with large industry players--some of which are important partners.

IBM's WebSphere software and BEA Systems' WebLogic suite provide the same software plumbing functions as NetWeaver, although they are not SAP-specific. Similarly, Microsoft--another significant partner--provides a .Net-based system for building applications that use data and functions from SAP applications.

In the past, the German software maker has formed partnerships, only to end up competing with those same companies later. For example, it once had relationships with supply-chain-software company i2 Technologies and procurement vendor Commerce One, but SAP dissolved these after it began making competing products, Richardson noted.

"It's pretty hard to be a software company and not compete with SAP. Culturally, that's just how they think," said Rod Favaron, president and CEO of Lombardi Software, a small, independent maker of tools for business process management.

However, Favaron and other partners noted that SAP appears to be changing its stance by offering application makers and developers more technical and marketing resources.

In the past, SAP has been "partner-unfriendly," said Randy Hawkins, director of strategic alliances at Serena Software, which provides change management tools. But the German company's efforts to open up its software and foster relationships with other application providers has helped Serena sell to SAP customers moving to NetWeaver, Serena executives said.

"They have got a very large installed base--it's almost a whole economy in and of itself," said Mark Manzo, senior director of strategic alliances at Serena.

The NetWeaver community process should be a good way to scale up SAP's existing program for independent software vendors, Manzo said.

Paolini acknowledges that opening up to the outside world poses some thorny issues for both SAP and its partners. The company intends to get feedback from other industry players as it builds a larger NetWeaver network.

"In an open platform, the risk is you do need to work with competitors and you do have to accept there will be competition--perhaps even with our own products," Paolini said. "But the idea is that you grow the pie for everyone."

[elements2]

Next step: open

Would an open source model be more helpful to developers? I
am referring to Centric CRM, an open source software solution
that competes at some level. http://www.centriccrm.com

[elements2]

Next step: open

Would an open source model be more helpful to developers? I
am referring to Centric CRM, an open source software solution
that competes at some level. http://www.centriccrm.com