Generating Mini-Apps – Using SDN as a platform for sharing or trading webservices.

A couple of things before starting off. This whole idea started off during the SAP Developer Challenge that was hosted by SAP Labs, Palo Alto in June 2008. That’s when some points by Chip Rodgers and Mark Finnern set the trigger on. The question that lingered was “Is it practically possible to make SDN a collaboration hub for developers to create and sell web services”. Then I finished the book called Rigged by Ben Mezrich which talks about Oil trading at NYMEX. This added another twist to the ongoing thought process. Why isn’t there an exchange for Software Services? Why software services can’t be traded like on an exchange. It sounds absurd to begin with, and that’s when I thought of getting this topic to SDN Community Day and get some more thoughts from the experts in SAP Community.

So, what do we have on our hand at the moment?

Lots of developers in SAP community.
Most of them use SDN, hence leveraging the SAP community.
All the developers are experts in their fields who can develop independent software/tools and expose them to the outside world as web services.
We know how in general a stock exchange works.

Also taking cue from the recently launched App Store by apple, where individual developers can create applications and sell them.

So the million dollar question? Would such a setup work in SAP environment. Wouldn’t it be nice where SDN can offer a platform for developers to be able to sell their applications? Now this is not big scale ERP applications which we are trying to sell through SDN, some utilities, some tools, which would take some time to develop, rather than buy it off the shelf, which in our case could be the SDN. What could be the further possibilities to setup an SDN store to sell web services?

Once the applications/web services start selling, then the next point could be can they be traded? Can you judge the price of a service based on its current popularity and how many subscriptions it has. What could the other factors be which could lead towards a creation of an exchange for web services trading.

This is not a hands on session but is a brainstorming session and I expect all the Birds of the Same kind, the ones with similar thoughts and ideas to create a platform for exchange of services to come together and share thier thoughts and opinions.

Lets get together and promote this idea which seems a possibility but is far from reality. Lets make this a reality.

2 Comments

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Ankan Banerjee

August 8, 2008 at 2:21 am

I hope you share what comes out of the BoF session here!

Former Member

August 10, 2008 at 2:56 am

The big hurdle seems to be the enormous cost of having SAP validate and approve of the components.
We are developing an add-on/plug-in right now. I'd love to be involved in helping to push this forward.
Thanks for raising this issue.

Generating Mini-Apps – Using SDN as a platform for sharing or trading webservices.

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