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SAP Influencer Summit 2010: What is the NetWeaver direction, if it is core to SAP's strategy?

In TechEd Las Vegas this year, there was a very clear theme that NetWeaver was alive and well and we could see that this was a definite and clear statement of intent. Vishal Sikka, CTO, stood up on stage and we saw the whites of his eyes when he told us that NetWeaver was well and truly alive as SAP’s go-to platform.

I suppose that the reasons for this were multifold. Customers are confused about Java, which may or may not be slowly dying a death in SAPland. Regardless of the future of Java, SAP’s traditional ABAP environment is gaining in strength.

Why ABAP is becoming king once more

There are several clear reasons for this, and most of them are investment-related. There are several applications that were built on SAP’s Java based platform that have come back into the fold.

In Business Suite 7 innovations 2010 (yuck to the name) aka ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 5 (EhP5), the HR Self-Services components are all built in ABAP. The new version of SAP’s access enforcement software, GRC, is built in ABAP. The new planning modeler for NetWeaver BW Integrated Planning is built in ABAP.

Is Java in Terminal Decline?

Fellow mentor Thorsten Franz got some flak for his blog on "Has NetWeaver Java been given the kiss of death", which seems to have been taken down. But is SAP Java in terminal decline in any case? The Summit will be an opportunity for Vishal to set the record straight on this, and tell customers where they should be investing their money. They will thank him for it.

NetWeaver 7.3

NetWeaver 7.1 and 7.2 can be considered as interim releases. There were versions of SAP’s Process Integration and Composition Environments as well as Mobile (for 7.1 only). SAP was going to release NetWeaver 7.2 for Business Warehouse but pulled it at the last minute, citing insufficient functionality.

And in retrospect, I think that was right. They then focused on 7.3 which is a full NetWeaver stack release. For Process Integration, Composition Environment and BW. No mention of Mobile, but I think it’s fair to say that NetWeaver Mobile is dead after the Sybase acquisition. 

Support still ends in 2015

So SAP are proud of their support platform. Leo Apotheker, former CEO of SAP (now HP) stood up in 2008 and told us that SAP customers wanted their systems down “every 7 years, on a Sunday”. And this is kind of true. Customers want serious stable platforms with long support intervals.

And if you look at the NetWeaver 7.0 platform, this has born out to be true. It was released in January 2006 and current support says that it will remain in standard maintenance until the end of 2015, and paid extended maintenance (usually 2-4% extra) until the end of 2017.

So when NetWeaver 7.3 was released earlier this week, I expected that given the fanfare, there would be an excellent support interval. But no. 7.3 will not be generally available until mid-2011, which means that most customers won’t consider upgrading until 2012, and won’t complete their upgrades until 2013.

And yet, standard support ends for NetWeaver 7.3 ends in 2015, the same as for the 7.0 platform.

SAP needs to put their investment where their mouth is

I saw a great quote this week as well. “Software is like ***. One mistake and you’re paying support for ever”. The risk of making a software release of any kind is that as a vendor, you have to support it. And if you haven’t got enough customers, the financials don’t add up and it drains cash out the business.

I suppose that SAP may be concerned that cloud computing and in-memory may deprecate traditional on-premise solutions like PI, CE and BW and the tooling for those business requirements may look very different in 5 years time.

This may as be, but if SAP want us to take NetWeaver 7.3 seriously as a go-to platform, they need to offer proper sustainable support. 2015 (or 2 years for many customers) just isn’t enough.

Conclusion

The Summit represents an opportunity for Vishal to tell the ecosystem what SAP is doing in real terms to ensure NetWeaver remains alive, and clarify the messaging between ABAP and Java. Let's hope this is an opportunity taken!

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