New SAP Community Fields Partner Input On Enterprise Services

Enterprise Services Community SAP

The move is part of SAP's services-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy, which centers on the company's Enterprise Services Architecture. ESA is SAP's buzzword for using its NetWeaver platform as a base, atop which an assortment of enterprise services modeling typical business processes can be connected.

SAP expects itself and its partners to take services definitions and build applications around them. The ES Community includes formal procedures for proposing, collaboratively crafting and then officially finalizing enterprise-services definitions.

Individual, short-term definition groups will be created for each new service requested. The groups will work through more than a dozen stages to create a service request document, which SAP then will evaluate for product potential. Definition groups will be dissolved as their service requests are completed. The ES Community also will be responsible for devising certification tests to endorse products as "ES Ready."

Membership in SAP's ES Community is free for customers but carries annual fees starting at $5,000 for partners that intend to create certified applications. Early members include Computer Associates, Cisco Systems, Adobe Systems, Research In Motion and Mercury Interactive.

The group's first three definition groups will focus on enterprise services for RFID (radio frequency identification), geospatial information and banking.

More information, including a complete list of members and documents describing the enterprise-services evaluation process, is available on the community's Web site.