Project “Gateway” – The Rise of UIs
After returning from Tech Ed, SAP’s new strategy is firmly cemented in my mind – on device, on demand, on premise. Having done lot’s of UI projects for clients where the user experience has been extremely important to success, on device has special meaning to me. It means designing a user interface that hits the mark with users, is appealing and flexible, and is certainly anything other than out of the box. That’s one of the things I’ve learned over the years in terms of designing great digital User Interfaces for clients – out of the box UIs are becoming more and more unacceptable.
And its no different for SAP.
Sure, everybody knows the power of the SAP backend, but can the SAP front end, the “true” user experience, match that power? That’s what today’s digital users have come to expect – great UIs. At Excellis, these are the kinds of things flowing through our mind daily, as we look for the best ways to make SAP simple and appealing across many different devices and many different platforms. Its what we do all day, everyday – make SAP look great – and there’s lots of products to pick from – to name a few: Web Dynpro ABAP and Java, NW Portal, CRM Web Shop / ISA, Bobj / Webi, and now Sybase as well. The thing is, all of these UIs are being rolled out to users to access the backend of SAP in some way. We always ask, what if that accessing of backend SAP was easier – so users can have it their way, in terms of utilizing SAP data to do their work?
And then I ran across some information on Project Gateway, and that’s when the juices started flowing.
Here’s what we learned – “Project Gateway enables UI-centric consumption of SAP Business Suite data by popular devices or platforms in an easy and standards-based fashion”.
It’s not that connecting to SAP from these devices and platforms was a foreign concept before – it’s just that now it’s easier. “On device” is really is a microcosm of reality. There are so many devices and platforms today, which equates to all of the UIs being different. Embracing the fact that customizing UIs are what users want, and making it easy to access SAP on top of that, makes touching 1 billion people with SAP a whole lot easier. Project Gateway makes accessing SAP easier than pure web service consumption or with JCA, which was the way to do it in the past.
While the direct benefit of project gateway is open APIs to SAP (with standards), there is more of an indirect underlying message with all of this – UX design. I think now UIs can be designed for SAP projects more from a traditional UX project perspective – around the users and how they work and what they need. Project gateway places prominence on designing truly great UI’s on any device or platform. Because now the focus can be around improving the users experience on their platform of choice, and not on writing tons of custom code to access SAP or change it’s out of the box UIs.
With Project Gateway, we get a chance to see how SAP is recognizing this rise in the prominence of UIs, and how important it is to get the user experience right. I believe Gateway will help SAP keep pace with users’ growing UI expectations in terms of creating UI flexibility and allowing clients to have their own UIs that consume SAP. It’s a win-win situation. SAP back ends will still be utilized, and users will still get the UIs that they want – exactly as they want it, without having to settle for constraints in flexibility or out of the box shortcomings. This ultimately makes the role and craft of UX design much more prominent on SAP projects moving forward. Now, true user centered design can prominently take place on sap based projects where things like wireframes and mockups are no longer dirty words and don’t produce eye rolls. Instead the focus shifts from what can’t we do to what can we do. Users don’t care about why something “can’t” be done, only that it “can” be done. They want easy and they want fast.
So with Project Gateway – it looks like SAP has finally realized – that the power of the front end is just as powerful as the back end. Times have changed. Users want more. And now with a focus on the UI, they’re in line to get it.
On that note, I remember reading that some of the improvements in SAP's flagship WDA UI technology that come with Netweaver 7.02 were completed internally by SAP a couple of years ago. But customers will not be able to use these until June 2011 when NW7.02 is officially released. Hope that for Project Gateway, SAP is using a shorter runway and that we will not be kept waiting till 2012!
Firstly I want to make it clear that I totally agree with what your saying and would like to thank you for taking the time to blog on the topic, to me it is a no-brainer; if the user is involved early, upfront and often in the UI design then the project is likely to me far more successful... The challenge I think is getting the money from the projects to focus on the UI and the UX, for too long projects have thought about that too late in the process, so when you actually say "Hey we need money to do this..." and "we need to do it right from the start..." that can be a challenge. Showing real ROI and building a business case around a good UX can be a challenge - esp. for internal users (e.g. not customers) since the response can sometimes be "they need it to do their jobs, so they will use it regardless of the UX..."
This is a topic I am greatly interested in so thanks for starting the discussion.
Cheers,
Simon
Few lines for SAP....
There was the time, where bulks of Data to be analysed to take Important Decisions, SAP made his entry successfully and just changed the view of reporting....
Now its the time to Integrate UIs, SAP decided for the entry and I am expecting the same change of View of the World....
Project "Gateway" - The Rise of UIs.... Cheers....