SAP Unveils Comprehensive SOA Service and Support Offering
Additional Tools and Services Leverage Strength of SAP NetWeaver(R)
Technology Platform and Further Simplify Path to SOA
BERLIN, May 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today
announced that it has delivered a complete accompaniment of
service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies, ready-to-run services and
comprehensive support offerings to help companies achieve additional
business value and increased IT efficiencies. With SOA as the de facto
market standard and mass adoption underway, customers can turn to SAP for a
simplified, comprehensive option for executing a sound SOA strategy that
delivers rapid value. The breadth of offerings from SAP addresses the full
lifecycle of SOA projects -- from development to deployment and ongoing
management -- making the transition to SOA easy and affordable. By taking
advantage of hands-on guidance through SAP's methodology, customers can
accelerate business network transformation. The announcement was made at
SAPPHIRE(R) 2008, SAP's international customer conference, being held in
Berlin, Germany, May 19 - 21.
Small, midsize and large enterprises around the world face the need to
drive a more global approach to business, manage faster transformational
changes in market conditions and cope with increased customer power in
networked economies. As a result, companies are continually looking for
ways to innovate business processes while reducing the amount of expense,
time and effort associated with driving the operation of their business.
Companies need a comprehensive architecture that is based on an open
platform to govern their IT landscape in order to enable change, and are
increasingly adopting enterprise SOA to fill those needs. Enterprise SOA,
SAP's approach to SOA, focuses on easily linking stand-alone standard
processes to quickly compose new end-to-end processes. In addition, the
approach selectively redesigns existing processes to make rapid changes and
facilitate seamless design across company boundaries to include business
partners.
"SAP's approach to SOA has enabled Offentliche to improve customer
management for further growth, as well as made us more efficient and
effective," said Dennis Lidzba, managing director IT, Offentliche Insurance
(Versicherung Braunschweig). "Through the use of Web services, we are able
to provide our customers with online processes and our partners with an
online environment where interfacing with different systems is flexible."
End-to-End Professional Services for Scalable Business Solutions
The set of innovative professional services and tools offered by SAP
ensures customers have the ability to complete their SOA road maps and move
forward on projects, maximizing success at every step. The professional
service portfolio from SAP covers all phases of a company's transition to
SOA -- from initial exploration to training end users to take advantage of
newly introduced functionality. The portfolio includes:
-- Starter Kit for Enterprise SOA -- Released recently, the starter kit
for enterprise SOA provides step-by-step guidance for initial SOA
projects with knowledge building blocks including content focused on
value and benefits, architecture, governance, composition of services
and ongoing operations. In addition, the kit contains a methodology
for project managers and hands-on developer guidance. To learn from
other user experiences, references and customer cases are included as
well. This kit is available at no cost to customers via the SAP
Developer Network site (sap.sdn.com --
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/enterprisesoa).
-- Methodology for Accelerated Transformation to Enterprise SOA -- The
methodology accelerates the transformation to SOA by helping
consultants, partners and customers implement service-based solutions.
The methodology supports and accelerates the transformation of
customer IT landscapes into an enterprise service-based architecture,
consolidates existing approaches and provides end-to-end guidance
throughout the entire transformation process with a single procedural
model.
-- Packaged Composite Implementations -- Providing customers with
value-add SOA offerings that address specific business problems, each
offering comes as a packaged SOA project, including a composite
application, relevant productized services and comprehensive
documentation. These offerings ensure faster time to value and are
ideal to leverage the benefits of SOA.
-- Value Prototyping -- Provides a comprehensive high-speed collaboration
platform to create custom-tailored prototypes. This service comprises
a one-stop shop, combining business, industry, solution and technology
skills into a holistic approach to outline and bring to life
customer-specific SOA value.
SAP Consulting, Custom Development and Education Maximize Customer
Success
Customization is a primary characteristic of SOA projects. Through a
combination of offerings from the SAP Custom Development and SAP Education
organizations, customers can leverage existing investments and accelerate
value gains in their business as they develop composite solutions that
differentiate themselves in the marketplace. SAP's offerings address the
full lifecycle of an SOA strategy to best position the project for success.
Professional services from SAP Consulting include:
-- Advisory and Value Services -- Demonstrate the benefits of enterprise
SOA to customers, identifying potentials for their business and
creating an action plan.
-- Design and Development Governance -- Released earlier this year (see
May 13, 2008 press release titled, "SAP Accelerates the Path to SOA
for Customers"), the enterprise SOA design and development governance
offering from SAP ensures process integrity and enables customers to
more rapidly experience tangible business benefits as a result of an
enterprise SOA strategy. Enterprise SOA governance ensures structure,
discipline and control from a generic perspective while addressing the
requirements of each company in a specific view according to the
customer's situation.
-- Enabling and Implementation Services -- These services educate users
and build up skills for the planning and execution of SOA projects. In
addition, these services help customers through the implementation of
enterprise services bundles and composite applications.
-- SAP Custom Development -- This organization delivers individually
tailored enterprise SOA-based composite applications,
customer-specific enterprise services and related support offerings.
In doing so, the organization helps to shorten concept and design
cycles and reduce development time while minimizing technology and
execution risks.
-- SAP Education -- With a newly launched certification program in 2007,
SAP Education focuses on enterprise SOA governance, design, modelling,
composition tools and best practices for critical roles such as
enterprise architect. The training builds on existing SAP skills and
also brings more SAP-certified professionals to the market to meet the
increased demand for talent for SAP customer employees and partners.
"Over the last few years, we have seen SOA move from a concept to
reality with customers, due in large part to the comprehensive set of
offerings from SAP," said Bernd-Michael Rumpf, global head of Field
Services, SAP AG. "Complementing the SAP NetWeaver technology platform,
SAP's tools, applications, services and a robust ecosystem of partners
enable customers to develop a sound SOA strategy and execute on it. With
additional ways of enablement like the enterprise SOA starter kit or the
methodology for accelerated transformation, as well as comprehensive
support offerings that have been developed over the last year, customers
can more rapidly and easily derive business benefits like greater
flexibility in our rapidly changing global business environments."
SAP Provides Ongoing Support
With the convergence of enterprise SOA and flexible business process
management, ongoing support is crucial to delivering on enterprise SOA
business value. A new support offering, SAP Enterprise Support services, is
being increasingly adopted by SAP customers because it meets their needs by
supporting mission-critical business processes and heterogeneous software
environments. SAP Enterprise Support delivers holistic support beyond just
single elements of the landscape. This end-to-end approach helps customers
operate the solutions vital to their business by providing continuous
innovation and investment protection of their software landscape. (See May
6, 2008 press release titled, "SAP Announces Next-Generation Support
Offering")
To learn more about delivering business value through enterprise SOA,
please visit https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/enterprisesoa
SAPPHIRE(R) 2008 Orlando and SAPPHIRE(R) 2008 BerlinMore 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(R) 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 planning and related applications.
For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK
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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect
IT RESOURCE NETWORK THE SOA NETWORK SOA Verticals
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