SAP News:
1. SAP Muse graphical interface could be next business browser
LAS VEGAS – SAP's graphical interface upgrade called Project Muse will be released in phases beginning at the end of the year and could represent the first business browser for end-users.
SAP gave attendees at its TechEd conference here a closer look at the preliminary results of its graphical interface upgrade. While users said the interface was primed for a much needed update, some expressed confusion over the future of SAP Portal and the viability of supporting multiple interfaces for end-users.
"They're offering almost too much choice without any guidance," said Don Allen, a manager at IT consultancy, Accenture. "There's no real hard and firm rules, so portal usage as a client might be diminished."
But Shai Agassi, president of SAP's product and technology group, said SAP didn't want to force end-users into a standard interface for tapping business data. Instead, using SAP Portal as the underlying technology, multiple graphical interfaces – SAP Enterprise Portal, Muse, Duet, widgets and voice – would be supported, Agassi said.
"We don't force users into the world of SAP. We take SAP into what users are doing," he said. "We're giving our customers the option to tie the core portal engine in NetWeaver to whatever user experience their users want to be delighted with."
Muse gives the interface client the look of a slick Web site with a shell area that gives end users access to specific data and a canvas, which can be changed for a specific job function. The style is similar to SAP's Business One interface with the ease of use of the SAP-Microsoft joint Duet product, which connects SAP processes with familiar Microsoft Office products.
Questions remain about the new interface. SAP executives haven't said whether it is easy to deploy. SAP is also still determining whether to release Muse as an update or sell it as a separate product.
Muse will be released in phases with specific SAP modules for customers running Microsoft Windows. Support for Apple OS and Linux will be added later, said Filip Misovski, an SAP product strategist. SAP is also seeking customers to beta test the interface, he said.
"It's all the same underlying portal infrastructure that the different clients take advantage of," Misovski said.
SAP will still support, but will begin gradually phasing out use of former SAP UI technologies like the SAPGUI, BSP, and HTMLB Misovski said. The Muse client in addition can run HTML/AJAX and FLEX/Flash based apps.
The minimum basic requirement to use Muse is mySAP ERP 2004s. The new Muse interface standardizes on Web Dynpro and uses the tooling environment of Visual Composer, Eclipse for Web Dynpro and ABAP Workbench for Web Dynpro.
For Marc Manuel, an ABAP programmer with Shell Oil Co., Muse gives end-users a slick new look, but he said like many other SAP firms, Shell has standardized on its own custom portal application.
"We use a portal and we're happy with it," Manuel said. "But Muse adds value by giving end-users more control over company data."
2. SAP aims at ISVs with on-demand model
By Robert Westervelt, News Editor
13 Dec 2005 | SearchSAP.com
LAS VEGAS -- SAP plans to launch software in an on-demand model in 2006, but according to executives at a recent SAP analyst summit here, the model would be quite different from that of Salesforce.com and other on-demand CRM vendors.
"We will come out with a product when we are ready to come out with [one] that actually answers the needs of customers, scales and integrates," said Shai Agassi, a member of SAP's executive board, who serves as president of SAP's product and technology group. "All the base functionality of an enterprise solution needs to be in place. … We have plans that will be clarified when we are ready to clarify them."
SAP executives at first brushed off the idea of an on-demand model for small and midsized businesses (SMBs). But SAP CEO Henning Kagermann told financial analysts earlier this year that the recent success of SalesForce.com and NetSuite Inc. caused SAP researchers to focus on an on-demand model for SMBs.
Agassi said the focus will be on simplicity for small businesses, and a resulting product would be different from the on-demand products currently on the market.
"We believe the issue is about simple products with a simple way to ramp up into the product, with the need for it to still be integrated into backbone systems and the ability to actually take it anywhere you want to go to," he said. "It [asks] a much more complicated set of questions than just do I have my data on my data center or some other data center."
SAP could be timing its on-demand release with Microsoft, which is planning on-demand products by making the applications support Web services and service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and adapt to customer-specific processes, said Sanjeev Aggarwal, a senior analyst at Boston-based Yankee Group, in a recent research brief to clients titled, "Appeal for On-Demand Solutions Is Expanding."
"To succeed, on-demand applications need to be purposefully architected and developed to function in a distributed Web-based environment through the support of Web services, XML standards and SOA concepts," Aggarwal said. "This is a key requirement for collaboration, data sharing, mobile/remote workforce, multi-location enterprises and supplier-partner collaboration."
SAP is also planning a model that could be aimed at small independent software vendors, according to Klaus Kreplin, a member of the SAP extended executive board, who focuses on NetWeaver development. In his briefing to industry analysts, Kreplin said up to 90% of ISVs are small businesses and they don't have the systems to support major development on NetWeaver.
"We want to provide a hosted sandbox development system for ISVs," he said.
Kreplin called the new system the "mySAP Sandbox," and said it would support ISVs by providing the tools necessary via the Web to test modifications in a real-world environment. The development could speed new NetWeaver development from SAP partners and boost the time it takes to bring new products to market, he said.
The sandbox could be used to build composite applications, called xApps, which draw data from several sources to solve a specific business problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment