IT Scenario Enabling Platform Interoperability – What is interoperability with SAP NetWeaver all about? Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information= and to effectively use the information that has been exchanged. SAP NetWeaver offers interoperability, openness, and extensibility in the areas of people= -, information-, process-, and application integration. As with SAP NetWeaver 2004, they are organized in the following IT scenario variants: Variant 1, Enabling Enterprise Portal Co-existence and Interoperability, describes how to leverage two portals to combine content between SAP NetWeaver Portal and a non-SAP portal technology. In several customer situations, it is necessary to combine portal assets, e.g. when a customer already has an up- and-running portal and needs to interoperate with SAP NetWeaver Portal. New with 2004s: Support of Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP): Sharing of content between the SAP NetWeaver Portal and and a non-SAP portal using the Internet standard WSRP. WSRP facilitates federation and integration in a heterogeneous portal environment for any portlet in a WSRP-compliant portal (such as those created on IBM´s platform) WSRP also facilitates federation and integration of publicly available WSRP Portlets (such as WSRP libraries). It allows the implementation of global scenarios, and reduces administration and maintenance costs. Variant 2, Enabling Messaging and Enterprise Application Interoperability, talks about how to extend A2A and B2B scenarios to include point-to-point and mediated brokering communication across messaging frameworks and product boundaries. To ensure interoperability on the messaging and process integration level, several standards help SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure to collaborate with other solutions out in the market. These include Microsoft BizTalk and IBM WebSphere which play an important role in our customers’ landscapes. Variant 3, Providing Enterprise / Web Services Interoperability, describes enterprise / web services interoperability with third party components to enable service-oriented solutions. To make this interoperability happen, Web Services must be the underlying fundamental component that will communicate across organizational boundaries. All vendors’ application server technologies must support the ability to provide and consume Web Service-enabled interfaces based on open standards. Variant 4, Enabling System Management and Infrastructure Interoperability, is about complementing SAP NetWeaver's capabilities with market leading System Management tools in order to manage heterogeneous system landscapes. Customers want to run and manage SAP and non-SAP applications within one enterprise management solution, often from 3rd party vendors. It is absolutely essential to enable SAP NetWeaver to interoperate with existing System Management solutions -- focusing on key areas such as Storage & Archive and Provisioning. Interoperability for Identity & Access Management permits unified and centralized management of user identities as well as single sign-on (SSO) capabilities.
