Mastering Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver® and mySAP™ ERP

Chapter 2. ESA in Context: The Emergence and Benefits of SAP’s “Applistructure”

Chapter 1 introduced ESA and provided some background on why the evolution is so important to SAP’s overall strategy. This chapter helps you understand ESA concepts by providing more details on changes taking place throughout the Information Technology (IT) industry. A danger for many professionals who have worked primarily with SAP technologies is viewing ESA in a vacuum. Many believe the approach is unique to SAP or merely an extension to existing SAP landscapes.

ESA represents a radical shift from the architecture of a traditional SAP R/3 landscape. While SAP’s approach has many unique elements, ESA is completely consistent with the technology and business changes occurring in the offerings from most major IT vendors. In effect, SAP is moving the company’s underlying infrastructure from its proprietary roots into a standards-based SOA technology platform. That change offers many benefits to SAP customers.

Knowing how and why SAP’s approach to ESA came into being is important to understanding what SAP NetWeaver offers, and what changes will take place in applications like mySAP ERP. Think of this chapter as a key history lesson behind the evolution of application platforms, as well as in the marketplace for independent software vendors (ISVs) who sell solutions to enterprise IT customers. Interestingly enough, this story will affect you, regardless of how your organization chooses to move ahead with ...