SAP is probably the world’s leading supplier of process automation software. Over half of the world?s business transactions, involving 12 Million users in 120 countries, touch one of 140,000 SAP systems. But the company is only now entering the “BPM market” with the launch of NetWeaver BPM, part of the NetWeaver middleware platform.
You would not expect SAP’s approach to be anything like that of a BPMS pureplay like Lombardi or Savvion, but it’s nothing like that of middleware giants like Oracle, IBM, or TIBCO, either. SAP is not a middleware company. It is a provider of enterprise apps, or “value scenarios” as they call them. In the short term at least, SAP is not looking for BPM to unlock process from the SAP Business Suite, but to integrate Business Suite with the outside world and deal with processes that the Business Suite does not touch.
At first glance, SAP’s BPM strategy might seem like a ball of confusion. There’s Business Workflow in the SAP Business Suite. There’s a separate BPEL product. And there’s NetWeaver BPM, based on executable BPMN. None of those are going away. On the modeling side, there’s BPMN in NetWeaver BPM, but to many SAP customers there’s also IDS Scheer ARIS for enterprise-level modeling. And then there’s SAP’s massive effort to create an army of Business Process Experts (“BPXers”), supported by an online community, education, and certification.
But there is surprising method to the madness. The pieces do fit together, and the strategy makes sense when you are talking about the process logic embedded in the mission-critical core applications that actually run the business. If you want to understand it all, check out my latest white paper, which registered BPMS Watch readers can download for free.
Bruce
Thank you for the job. It’s always fun when a vendor needs outer view to bring method to his madness.
SAP’s efforts to establishing BPM community are very impressive and probably this is what today BPM market needs most. On technology side, SAP seems to outpace Oracle in the run towards 21-st century SOA-ready BPM-aligned ERP.
Getting back to your report, there is a vague point that hopefully you could clarify. You wrote: “SAP believes that the processes subject to continual change are not the customer?s core application processes. Sometimes called edge processes, they include functionality generally outside the realm of SAP Business Suite, as well as local variations of SAP Business Suite processes that cannot be accommodated by application configuration alone.”
People at SAP forum applause to this in a belief that they got your approval of the concept. Yet you wrote few pages down: “While its initial release emphasizes edge processes, SAP is evolving NetWeaver BPM to become a common process layer for core application processes as well.”
This makes me suspect that you don’t share SAP’s idea of fixed core processes, just understand their intention not to spoil existing processes wired into ERP package while making the first steps of BPM journey.
Thank you
AB
The truth is somewhere in the middle. It is true that the BPM idea of “build for change” is more applicable at the edge than in the run-your-business core processes, where stability sometimes trumps agility. But it is also true that SAP’s end goal is selling adaptable process solutions. The monolithic enterprise app architecture does not allow that as well as a composite app architecture layered on BPM/SOA middleware like Netweaver. So SAP knows they need to get there, but since they are not competing in the middleware business per se, they are in less of a hurry than Oracle.
Bruce, it’s a plesure read something about BPM. I’m Project Manager, and I’ve been using ARIS / Solution Manager to design the so desired TO BE process that customer wants.
I’ve been implementing SAP using Solman since phase 1 until 5; I think the most cause of problem in SAP implementation using ARIS/SOLMAN is that they’re don’t use these approved processes after Business Blueprint to run the integrated tests due a difficult of SOLMAN control; it’s a shame, because when the customer validated his process, he believes that he will receive his process done as he desired, but he will see some difference. When projects using complete BPM resources closes with ARIS processes sincronized with SOLMAN, will be easier convince the customer that SAP/BPM will be invencible. Solution and Consulting need keep working together.
Thanks
Anselmo Comaru
SAP/BPM Project Manager