WALLDORF, Germany, May 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP - News) today announced a design and development governance offering for enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA.) The new offering will enable SAP customers to more rapidly experience tangible business benefits as a result of an enterprise SOA strategy. Growing adoption of the SAP enterprise SOA strategy -- the design and reuse of rich enterprise services to enable efficiencies in business performance -- has led to customer requests for training and education involving SAP's proven design and development governance methodologies to help them speed their path toward enterprise SOA.

A thoughtful, organized approach to enterprise SOA enables companies to implement, adapt and reuse business processes with unprecedented speed and ease. To enjoy the opportunities that enterprise SOA delivers, companies need an open, flexible technology platform to integrate best practices and third-party solutions. In addition, they need business-focused, reusable enterprise services. When companies can design services that are reusable across the enterprise, as well as in different regional organizations and across departmental lines, they achieve an increased efficiency and productivity that in turn results in the ability to rapidly innovate with differentiating services to drive additional business success. Without enterprise SOA governance, companies run the risk of investing time and budget in the development of services that are either not reusable or not aligned with the priorities of the business.

"We've evaluated SAP's enterprise SOA tools and methodology and found them to be very robust," said Ian Robertson, senior director of global IT, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. "A key tenet of the enterprise SOA value proposition is the ease with which we can leverage existing SAP content. This increases the return on investment of our entire SAP landscape, and provides a business process platform through which all content, SAP and non-SAP, can also be leveraged."

The ability to design and reuse services across the enterprise is a primary driver for IT organizations that are working toward becoming more agile, both in providing technological solutions to meet the needs of the business and in building an infrastructure that is able to accommodate the changing business environment from mergers and acquisitions to shifting business models. With the design and development governance offering for enterprise SOA, SAP customers can learn a formalized process to put into place that helps to ensure the adoption and implementation of SOA, with the design of reusable services that will deliver increased business performance and productivity.

"Design and development governance plays a pivotal role in organizations for the effectiveness of a large-scale SOA," said Paolo Malinverno, vice president of research, Gartner. "Business services modeled around business processes, and designed in coordination between all the service definition entities in the enterprise are the key for high reuse rates and the agility only strong alignment between business and IT can provide."

Efficient SOA Governance With SAP NetWeaver®

In developing the Enterprise Services Repository (ES Repository) of SAP NetWeaver®, currently deployed more than 32,000 times, SAP created the tool to support its best practices to build its own 2000+ enterprise services. The repository, a central library where all enterprise service metadata is illustrated and explained, enables the reuse of enterprise services for modeling and composing new applications. It includes tool-based governance automation at design-time to help ensure that newly built and existing enterprise services adhere to the design and development governance -- all to provide business-level services for instant reuse.

SAP Services and Consulting Provides Governance Training

SOA300, a three-day training course offered by the SAP Education organization, delivers the knowledge and hands-on skills that customer teams need in order to implement a mature enterprise service design and modeling methodology derived from SAP's best practices. The course covers the definition of process components and objects for reuse, the methodology and tools for the design and modeling of business-driven enterprise services, and the best practice guidelines for harmonized data models and consistent business semantics. This course enhances the enterprise SOA curricula from SAP that offer role-focused, education-providing tools and methodology-based skills to customers and partners. More than 1000 customers and partners participated in the enterprise SOA training curricula in Q1 2008.

"We know companies have many options when they consider their IT roadmap," said Dr. Stephan Fischer, vice president, Enterprise SOA Delivery Program, SAP AG. "As more and more SAP customers demonstrate momentum and results in an enterprise SOA approach to IT, they are validating SAP's sound approach to SOA and requesting the release of SAP tools and best practices for enterprise SOA governance in order to facilitate their architectural shift. The release of the design and development governance offering for enterprise SOA, alongside the ES Repository of SAP NetWeaver, will provide a road map to success and will allow our customers to make rapid strides toward reducing risk and delivering measurable return on investment -- all of which align to the goals of the business."

Customers will be able to experience the design and development governance offering at the SAP's annual customer event, SAPPHIRE® 2008, taking place May 19-21 in Berlin, Germany. At the event, customers will be able to gain an understanding of the breadth of offerings that SAP provides to speed the path to enterprise SOA, including SOA starter-kits and methodologies.

The design and development governance offering, including classroom training, is available via SAP Consulting and SAP Education. The ES Repository of SAP NetWeaver is available via a variety of product options including the latest versions of SAP NetWeaver® Process Integration and SAP NetWeaver® Composition Environment. Additionally, the model content of the enterprise services is available for usage in the ES Repository of SAP NetWeaver, if customers have at least SAP® ERP 6.0 with enhancement package 3 for SAP ERP.

SAPPHIRE® 2008 Orlando and SAPPHIRE® 2008 Berlin

More than 15,000 customers, partners and technical experts are convening at SAPPHIRE 2008 to discover how SAP and its thriving partner ecosystem are delivering IT solutions that create value beyond the four walls of the enterprise, to create "business beyond boundaries." SAP's premier educational and networking event, SAPPHIRE is the one occasion where senior executives, business managers, and decision-makers can come together every year to explore how innovative business solutions foster long-term, profitable growth. SAPPHIRE® 2008 was held in Orlando, Florida, May 4-7, and is being held in Berlin, Germany, May 19-21, 2008. For more information, please visit http://www.sap.com/sapphire.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 47,800 customers (excludes customers from the acquisition of Business Objects) in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." (For more information, visit http://www.sap.com)

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource