SAP WORLDBegining of New ERP World

With providers releasing more and more apps for iPhone or BlackBerry to supplement customers’ business software, the SAP NetWeaver Mobile platform serves as the interface between these mini-programs and SAP systems. Here, we introduce you to the latest version (7.1).

SAP NetWeaver Mobile: The link between partner software and SAP systems. (graphic: grasundsterne)

A few years ago, Apple showed the world how small programs known as “apps” can enable users to run software while on the move. Apps have since become commonplace in everyday business. For SAP partners, this a prime opportunity to program new, industry-specific software that integrates with existing SAP systems and makes it possible for employees to access them with their mobile devices. In the articles “The Best Business Apps for Your iPad” and “Best Business Apps for iPhone,” we told you about the mobile software currently leading the pack.

This time, we take a look at the link between partner software and SAP systems: SAP NetWeaver Mobile 7.1.

Just like SAP NetWeaver, SAP NetWeaver Mobile is a technology platform on which SAP software and third-party programs run. Whether it’s SAP ERP, SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), or SAP Business One, SAP software is based on the programming language ABAP. SAP NetWeaver Mobile, meanwhile, facilitates the integration of additional industry-specific applications written in C++, Java, or other languages. It also enables users to merge business information from various databases.

The concept behind SAP NetWeaver Mobile

SAP NetWeaver Mobile replicates data from the back end, syncs it to mobile devices, and handles the corresponding processing.

The platform’s Data Orchestration Engine (DOE) directs data and transactions to users based on individual rules, which ensures that it only distributes needed information and transmits changes in the order they are made. When an employee is assigned a new customer, for example, all of the required information is automatically sent to his or her mobile device.

In addition, DOE automatically syncs changes to the devices of employees in the field every time they log in. Rather than transmitting complete data records, the engine only transfers new information – an updated phone number, for instance – which saves time.

Since the data is made available on a middleware server, customers can skip buying additional hardware. From PDFs and Microsoft Word documents to image files, the server sends along the latest data every time users synchronize their mobile software. Technicians on their way to a repair assignment, for example, can access their service manuals whenever needed.

NetWeaver Gateway is positioned between end-user devices and the back end (screenshot: SAP) 

Structure and functions

Since SAP NetWeaver Gateway is designed to support rapid development and ease of use, every application created with it should focus on a clearly defined business requirement while integrating the corresponding business data and processes. SAP’s technology generates the objects required based on aggregated data drawn from various SAP systems and other sources, and transfers information between user and SAP applications using a REST-based standard.

In addition to REST services, SAP NetWeaver Gateway utilizes Atom and OData 2.0 as its transfer protocols, which also support SAP-specific notes. The technology’s model repository makes it possible to save, search for, and call up analysis models following their creation, and a push channel supplies developers’ apps with information from SAP systems, which can then be transferred, for example, to an e-mail client.

Meanwhile, SAP has set its sights on establishing an ecosystem with enough expertise to meet its customers’ needs from day one. To this end, the company has joined forces with Capgemini, CompriseIT, intelligence, and Software AG to found the Design Partner Council.

An independent life cycle

To keep the respective life cycles of apps and the corresponding back end separate, SAP NetWeaver Gateway also includes an “abstraction layer.” As such, updates, upgrades, and new releases on one side won’t require adjustments on the other. Since the technology is an ABAP platform add-on, most SAP Business Suite customers – as well as those on SAP R/3 4.6C and later – will be able to use it.

Development made easy

As an additional advantage, those who develop their apps with SAP NetWeaver Gateway will be able to use more or less whatever integrated development environment they choose. SAP also plans to offer optional plugins that will make it easier to incorporate Visual Studio, Apple’s Xcode, and Eclipse. In addition to Xcode, the technology is to support Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry devices, as well as the Web frameworks .NET, Ruby on Rails, PHP, and ASP.NET. It also includes an object- and screen-based generator that will enable developers to reuse models they program just once on other end-user devices – without further coding. Preconfigured models, meanwhile, will map objects from SAP ERP and SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM), and runtime services will support IT engineers with regard to security, monitoring, and administration.

Source : SAPINFO

The route to the app (screenshot: SAP) 

REST Architecture

REST – or Representational State Transfer – used with Gateway is a software architecture concept for implementing Web services. The biggest REST application is the World Wide Web itself; and Amazon, Twitter, and Google apps are also built using it. The architecture is based exclusively on four commands: GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. Compared with the network protocol SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), this simple structure ensures ease of use when working with content.

RESTful Web services can receive data as HTML or XML versions. In the case of Gateway, the Atom is used as standard. This comprises the Atom Publishing Protocol– or AtomPub for short – and the Atom Syndication Format (ASF). ASF is an XML language used for Web feeds similar to RSS and enables platform-independent exchange of information. This isn’t sufficient for business apps, because the content changes constantly, so AtomPub is used to process incoming data. The data finds its way to the developer using SAP’s data protocol, which is based on OData and can read JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) as well as Atom.

Source : SAPINFO

We’re used to seeing IT industry megavendors such as SAP augment their solutions with web 2.0 technology from smaller vendors, but now one of the leading enterprise 2.0 companies is turning to SAP for a cloud computing offers to extend new capabilities to customers.
At the Enterprise 2.0 2009 event in Boston, Jive and SAP announced that Jive is going to be a reseller of SAP’s on-demand BI solutions, providing “social BI” to their customers.
SAP has long been a customer of Jive Software’s Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform, notably to power the forums on the SAP Development Network, and SAP’s Collaboration Workspace, and a few years ago SAP signed an OEM agreement to include Jive Forums as a standard part of the SAP NetWeaver portal application.
This announcement is a clear sign of the growing maturity of the enterprise 2.0 market, in two different ways.
First, it’s the first concrete results of SAP’s increased focus on the web 2.0 market, and in particular the investment in the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio of products, designed to transform the work of “business users” in the same way that ERP has transformed operational processes.
SAP BusinessObjects was one of the early pioneers in the on-demand business intelligence market, with a flexible platform that provides the best of both worlds: customers can use the same technology platform in a mix of on-demand or on-premise configurations, and move smoothly between the two. SAP’s agreement to partner with Jive is non-exclusive: the on-demand BI software is already used within other partner solutions including Oco.
Second, it shows that enterprise 2.0 solutions are real, and providing value in organizations. Jive’s 3,000 customers include many large organizations, that have been gathering valuable data about how companies collaborate internally and engage with customers and partners externally. As with any successful business process, they now want to examine and optimize that process, and mine that data with best-of-breed business intelligence tools.
These two trends were echoed by Susan Scrupski of ITSInsider, in her post And They’re Off. A Postcard From Enterprise 2.0 Event:
“This new venture, however, marks a clear initiative by SAP to (finally) take social software seriously, and likewise, it provides a grownup capability for a social software platform like Jive to deliver some clear business benefit.”
I believe business intelligence is an essential part of any successful enterprise 2.0 initiative, in order to:
Provide statistics on usage trends. Business intelligence helps proactively identify any technical or social roadblocks to effective deployment of collaboration tools, answering questions such as:
When are the peaks and troughs of user activity? What causes them?
Who has access to the system but is not using it?
Which users have recently stopped using the system? Do they share any common characteristics?
Are there any regular occasions where particular groups don’t use the system? Why?
Prove the ROI. Business intelligence functionality will help provide the data required to prove to skeptics of the value of collaboration and social computing inside organizations.
Are users of the system more likely to get better (or worse) employee evaluations or bonuses?
What’s the correlation between any groups of identified “top performers” and system usage?
Do sales people who use the system achieve quota faster than sales people that do not?
Does using the system replace other types of internal information dissemination, such as attending internal web seminars, or does it complement it?
Is there any correlation between system use and employee or customer satisfaction?
Are customers that engage in collaboration more or less profitable?
Optimize social relationships. If enterprise 2.0 software generates return on investment, it follows that it makes sense to try and optimize its use. Business intelligence systems can help decide where the network of relationships between employees, customers, and partners can be improved:
Are there certain key “connectors” that provide a valuable service, but are not being recognized as such within the organization?
Are there any groups of people that collaborate among themselves, but not with the rest of the organization? (e.g. bosses that frown on “their team” working with other departments)
Do similar groups (such as regional sales offices) have different patterns of relationships? Why?
Are there people that seem to be a negative influence on relationships within the organization? (e.g. detecting “bad bosses”
Did the new bonus or incentive system we just introduced stop people collaborating?

Analyzing sentiments. Collaboration technology generates a lot of textual information that can be analyzed using technology such as SAP BusinessObjects’ Text Analytics, for analyzing the sentiment of customers, partners, and employees, about products, processes, or the collaboration system itself.
Note that in every case, it’s not enough to have information just from the collaboration system – it must be combined with information from other key financial and HR systems in order to get a full view of what is happening. This means that organizations must have a strategic approach to implementing business intelligence across the organization.

Source: sapweb20.com

This used to be a quick, irreverent overview of the brand-new cloud-based, software-as-a-service ERP offering from SAP, featuring the graphics you can see above.

The Mini SAP Web Application Server 6.10 is a full SAP basis system, but without application areas such as HR, SD, MM etc. Because it does have standard SAP development tools such as the development workbench(SE80) you are able to develop and test new custom functionality including reports, transactions, Business Server Pages and ABAP Objects on your home PC. It has Full ABAP Stack functionality of mySAP Technology SAP Server, GUI and SAPDB database.

In the present era, where companies are struggling to unite various heterogeneous environments in their organizations and maintain a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) NetWeaver comes as a solution to all their problems. SAP NetWeaver is the latest advancement in the mySAP Technology, which was developed as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) shell that accepts standard comments, literally as they are spoken, by domain experts.

Another unique feature of NetWeaver™ that makes it stand out amongst other software technologies is its modularity. The knowledge engineer can more easily create “digestible chunks” of modules or sub-dependency networks, which help to keep the overarching dependency network from becoming potentially incomprehensible because of apparent complexity. This text is aimed at explaining SAP NetWeaver architecture and its interoperability with Microsoft.NET and IBM WebSphere. In addition it aims at bringing out all the advantages that are associated with SAP NetWeaver.

Net Weaver in simple words is an application and Integration platform in which Web Services play a major role and which is open for Non-SAP applications and platform. It is used by organizations to improve productivity and enhance efficiency by making all the resources that are available in an enterprise to work collectively. The SAP customers to bring heterogeneous environments at one platform use SAP NetWeaver. In addition, it enables customers to use the already existing systems without putting in much investment. Further in the near future, the various corporate sectors and Organizations have to take a decision for some common platform; could be Microsoft .NET, IBM Websphere or SAP NetWeaver. Irrespective of the choice that they make, SAP NetWeaver is the one that integrates with all the three technologies.
SAP NetWeaver attains the process of integration by integrating all the available heterogeneous resources of the existing system and unifying them into a homogeneous form. This integrated information forms the basis of total, comprehendible, focused solution as desired in an enterprise.

Source:
http://www.thespot4sap.com/articles/SAP_Netweaver_Introduction.asp