As of Late a Lot of Questions are being asked on The need of yet another new Paradigm for SAP: ESOA Here i try to Share my viewpoints on the same.
1. "HOW" or more importantly "WHY" it began?
Enterprise SOA Began as an Effort by SAP to make its Solution More Process Oriented, Thus enabling business network transformation and operational excellence at the same time.What we mean by Process oriented is that we concentrate more on the Business Process in Question, rather than the individual system which answers a portion of out business requirements. Most of the Time Business requirements are not restricted to a Single Module. For a Sales Person to work effectively, not only does he need to create a sales order in R3, but he needs to look after the customer complaints etc (CRM Jumps in), Also he needs to be aware of his own performance (BI jumps in). Older transaction based approach was not fulfilling this complex interrelated requirement.
As of ESOA all the Systems Define the Operations as Services declared in ESR. Any Business application makes use of these services from one or more System as per the requirement. The following diagram makes understanding this scenario easier.
By Centralizing the Services at one Location (ESR) we get to concentrate more on the core business process in question.
2. How it is going to shape up tomorrow's business?
The Impact on tomorrow’s business is interesting. The Businesses will become more agile, and incorporating new Practices/Change in the Business scenario will become far easier...which will in effect empower the Business user to adapt to the highly dynamic market scenario.
3. Where we are now?
As of now Netweaver Composition Environment 7.1 release from SAP facilitates the Technical System Requirements of the ESOA Paradigm. Free Downloads of a Trial version are available on SDN. Existing Landscape system can act as the source of services, which will be available to Composite Applications.
These Composite Applications can be simple transactions or Complex Business scenarios where multiple reusable components can be utilized to form Complex processes. We use Visual Composer, Guided Procedures, Workflows, etc to Model Business Processes.
I wanted to give a general idea about ESOA here in this article. I hope I have done justice to that requirement. This is in no means a comprehensive Source on ESOA many Questions remain unanswered, but I am sure ill be able to answer more doubts as time allows me to gather more knowledge and share it. This is the starting of a knowledge sharing Session which I hope to carry on.
