Well, I heard it again - our customers are struggling to understand what message SAP is trying to deliver for ESA. A Clear and Loud Voice "Understanding SAP's Enterprise Services Architecture message is the first step in transitioning a company to a services-based architecture." started a recent searchSAP.com article. Good point, it's exactly right. Wait, it went on, "But many executives are still scratching their heads, according to Naeem Hashmi, chief research officer of Information Frameworks, ..." Uhmm? Why? Isn't enought said about ESA? I turned to google and did a quick search for "SAP ESA", 1,330,000 entries were returned! I don't know how many of these were delivered directly from SAP, but obviously the world is buzzing with the term "ESA". Naeem made it cleared in his interview why many heads are still scratched, "ESA is quite confusing to many people. Many of the presentations by SAP give varying definitions. So even among SAP, it is not clear what message they want to give. ... "
oooh! Thanks for bringing it up again, Naeem. Though I understand that the complain is not the focus of your interview, it's still worth some pondering in SAP side. It's actually another sprout of an old cry which SAP has been trying to address constantly, and SAP does have a solution in place for this issue. Not long ago, SAP launcded a global policy which aims to describe "SAP solutions and services in plain terms so that the entire SAP community can communicate about SAP consistently and accurately -- in essence, with 'one voice.'" As the ESA blueprint and supporting web services technology are still evolving rapidly, it's pretty challenging to formula a consistent and accurate message. But obviously we have some work to do to develop a consistent message for ESA, and to apply the One Voice policy across all SAP communication channels. I hope that your voice, clear and loud, can also be heard by SAP executives, so it will get the attention it deserves. Need Everybody's Input to Get Started It's a challenging job to define a consistent message for ESA. What do you think should be the essential components of such a message? IMHO, a good starting point should have at least: - An easy to understand and crystal clear definition of the key "ESA" terms. The ESA Glossary may be a good start for this.
- The top 10 defining characteristics of ESA in plain english.
- A short paper explaining the cornner stone technologies for implementing ESA
- A few case studies/success stories of how ESA and SAP NetWeaver solve customer pain points. ...
What do you think?
