NetWeaver 7.30 hits the streets – Innovation and Simplification ?

NetWeaver 7.30 is a synchronised release for the following SAP Products that currently run on various version of the SAP Java Application Server :-

SAP Composition Environment – CE
SAP Process Integration – PI (Java only version)
SAP Portal – Enterprise Portal
SAP BI Java

Today this was announced at SAP TechEd – Berlin…so what does this announcement mean for customers ?

SAP talked about Evolution and New Horizons – my chosen words are Simplification and Innovation.

Simplification

Simplification because now you can take a whole bunch of SAP products that greedily wanted their own server and put them together. This means that for the first time in about 5 years you can start talking about less hardware for NetWeaver and not more ! (just in time for you to re-use all that tin for your Business Objects 4.0 and Sybase Unwired Platform…but that is another story). A typical landscape might look like the picture below.

Innovation

Innovation in that you can do more with one 7.30 box than you could before. You can take all the tools from each separate product and blend your solution across them, so if your Visual Composer applications (typical CE) needs personalisation (typically portal) and a brokered Web Service (typically PI) – all this can be done in one place.

It also means that hard pressed BASIS teams can focus training on 2 application servers (or 4 if you include BO and Sybase!) – which should smooth the delivery of applications – so more value quicker ?

5 Comments

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Fred Verheul October 12, 2010 at 12:03 pm

Hi Owen,

I think you might be oversimplifying things a little bit here: the fact that’s technically possible to execute these products on one box doesn’t mean it is sensible to do so: what if after this sync point the products will go their own way again? What about existing customer landscapes? It’s not that easy to migrate your dual-stack PI 7.1(1)-system to the Java-only variant on NW7.3. Etc.
I think customers would be wise not to act too quickly. By which I don’t mean they shouldn’t deploy BO 4.0 and SUP of course :).

Just my 2 cents,

Cheers, Fred

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1. Owen Pettiford Post authorOctober 12, 2010 at 8:18 pm
  
  Fred, You are right the devil is in the detail and I think that you will have a difference in how you actually physically deploy. Having said that even if you physically have 3 boxes having them on the same release will simplify management of the systems.
  
  I also know that quite alot of companies currently use only one of these technologies because adopting another was seen as a “big deal”.
  
  I think these companies will more easily explore these other tools.
  
  I did say simplification not simple 🙂
  
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Former Member October 12, 2010 at 11:02 pm

From a skills perspective this gradual convergence of PI and CE is a good thing i believe. Now more than ever it becomes valuable for the PI developer to have knowledge on CE, composite applications, NetWeaver BPM/BRM etc. The shared components between the two products such as the ESR, SR and the eclipse IDE for development already aid in the simplification and ease the up skilling process somewhat.

How customers and consultants adapt to this will be interesting to see.

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1. Owen Pettiford Post authorOctober 12, 2010 at 11:21 pm
  
  I agree with your comments.
  
  I think we need to start thinking about PI/CE and Portal as a set of capabilities that (can) run on the same platform.
  
  Hopefully with this approach solutions will merge across the capability, which will result in more robust solutions.
  
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Former Member October 13, 2010 at 12:22 am

yeh simplicity and innovation are great but what if our (innovative and simple) business apps are somehow hard to be consumed?
Consumption is the key success factor. The Gateway project is promising in that sense. Gateway demo is impressing 🙂

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