Are you interested in the latest news in the area of SAP NetWeaver Collaboration? This blog summarizes the current status and provides links to detailed information.
In short - what is SAP NetWeaver Collaboration all about?
The collaboration capabilities of SAP NetWeaver enable you to effectively connect to the right people with the right information. People can use collaboration rooms for common access to and organization of documents, applications, and ideas. Thus, companies can bring team and project members together regardless of time and of their geographic location.
Focus on business application-centric mash-up & collaboration scenarios
SAP is extending its offering for collaborative and situational processes with a strong hook into SAP's business applications. The key drivers for business-centric and event-driven collaboration scenarios are:
- Intuitive usability using e.g. AJAX-based user interfaces and drag & drop support
- Web 2.0 elements such as Tagging, Forums, Wikis, Mash-ups
- Easy content development in preferred UI technology (e.g. WD ABAP/JAVA, Flash Islands)
- Easy to install and monitor at low total cost of ownership
Some of those aspects are already addressed by existing SAP NetWeaver capabilities. For detailed information about collaboration tools such as Collaboration Rooms, Forums and Groupware Framework please visit Collaboration in SAP NetWeaver Portal
Additionally Wikis are planned to be released for selected customers as part of a pilot shipment in H2/2008. See the News from SAP NetWeaver Portal: Wikis Included in Product Offering for details.
Results of the pilot shipment of the new “Collaboration Workspaces”
Recently, SAP conducted a pilot shipment with selected customers and partners to evaluate a first set of collaboration services such as workspaces, tagging and business cards (fka “Collaboration Portal”):
- Customers enjoy the nice and intuitive user interfaces, good performance and easy creation of collaboration workspaces.
- Partners especially appreciate the open collaboration framework to integrate complementary collaboration and Web 2.0 services.
The pilot shipment ended in August 2008. We received a lot of valuable feedback from the participating customers and partners. The common feedback is that SAP is heading in the right direction. If you are interested in a preview of the current collaboration services (overview, screen cam, roadmap, etc.), please contact your SAP account. On an exceptional basis, customers can apply for access to a trial version.
Roadmap for enterprise mash-ups and contextualized collaboration services
We include the feedback from the pilot shipment and take the next step: SAP invests in delivering collaboration services for enterprise business scenarios and extends its offering for collaborative and situational processes. The focus is on UI flexibility, mash-ups and collaboration in the context of business applications. Backbone, composite and user-centric processes can share the same context information. A common infrastructure for business mash-ups and collaboration is designed to support pre-packaged and custom-build business solutions.
The new services are planned to be available with SAP NetWeaver 7.2. (Please have a look at the official SAP NetWeaver release plan for details about the availability: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/nw-mainreleases)
Join SAP’s collaboration eco-system and get in touch with the experts!
SAP aims to strengthen its eco-system of customers and partners in the collaboration area. Thus we offer the opportunity to get in touch with SAP experts and participate in various community activities, e.g.
- Early product evaluation for the new mash-up and collaboration solution planned for H1 / 2009
- Partnering for complementary collaboration services
- Info Sessions to test latest demos, provide feedback and share product information
Feel free to contact SAP for details or participation in the different activities.
Additional information will be released at SAP TechEd conferences and on SDN soon.
-SAP NetWeaver Product Management
