SAP CEO Kagermann Tells Developers Enterprise SOA Delivered, Outlines Great Opportunities to Engage, Contribute and Make Significant Impact

MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Standing before 4,000 developers, partners and customers, Henning Kagermann, CEO, SAP AG , and Klaus Kreplin, corporate officer and member of the Executive Council, head of SAP NetWeaver Technology, spoke today about the innovative power that enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) has brought to the market and how hundreds of thousands of developers are better positioned than ever to create the next generation of innovative solutions because of SAP's leadership. Kagermann and Kreplin described SAP's steadfast commitment to delivering continuous innovation to the market, with enterprise SOA-enabled offerings based on the solid foundation of SAP's business process platform and the SAP NetWeaver(R) technology platform that are fully available to the market today.

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Kagermann and Kreplin emphasized how SAP's unique heritage of business process expertise coupled with the delivery of business process platforms for industries has made the company's value proposition more compelling than ever. The keynote presentations were made at SAP(R) TechEd '07, SAP's largest ecosystem education event, being held in Munich, Germany, Oct. 17 - 19, 2007.

Henning Kagermann: Enterprise SOA -- Put the Power to Work Today

Henning Kagermann kicked off the 11th annual SAP TechEd by discussing the next major business trend in the industry -- business network transformation. First discussed by Kagermann in his keynote address in April this year at SAPPHIRE(R) '07, SAP's customer conference, this movement is coming from the drive by companies to build a network of trading partners, customers and suppliers to leverage best thinking, make best use of existing resources, stimulate co-innovation, accelerate product innovation, quicken delivery of products and introduce services based on the evolving needs of their customers to gain significant competitive advantage. SAP is helping customers understand and optimize their business processes in real-time as they realign their business networks and leverage a strong IT infrastructure to support the interconnections of those networks. Kagermann explained to the SAP TechEd audience that a solid enterprise SOA foundation is a fundamental requirement to fully engage in business network transformation.

Highlighting his company's success at delivering on its commitment to offer the full SAP(R) Business Suite on enterprise SOA in 2007, Kagermann explained to SAP TechEd attendees how business network transformation requires accelerating innovation. At the same time, he said, customers want a stable core for their mission-critical applications. SAP delivers on these requirements by providing continuous innovation via enhancement packages on top of the stable enterprise resource planning (ERP) core -- an industry-first approach. Kagermann also outlined the benefits of the latest version of SAP NetWeaver, which allows companies to achieve even faster innovation while leaving the current version of SAP applications unchanged.

"SAP has the right vision for companies of all sizes, delivering open, flexible solutions that help businesses connect to efficient global networks and gain competitive advantage," said Kagermann. "There are many powerful arguments for companies to make the transition to enterprise SOA today -- flexibility, innovation and agility among them. At the same time, as businesses look to deepen their networks of trading partners, a strong foundation like the SAP platform provides the assurance that companies can best take advantage of true business network transformation. This approach is not some future vision or promise: it is fully available from SAP today."

Klaus Kreplin -- Unleash the Power of Enterprise SOA Today

Klaus Kreplin told SAP TechEd attendees how they can exploit the promise of enterprise SOA because SAP has now provided all of the building blocks: standardized, ready-to-run enterprise services, an established common language of business and the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE) to flexibly extend the Business Suite applications. SAP has fully established enterprise SOA by evolution in the large enterprise space through its market-leading SAP(R) ERP and SAP Business Suite applications, as evidenced by the record numbers of customers running SAP NetWeaver and migrating to the latest versions of its business solutions. And, in the mid-market, the company's introduction of a complete on-demand business software solution, SAP(R) Business ByDesign(TM), provides an immediate path to fully leverage enterprise SOA, along with the already successful SAP(R) Business All-in-One solution -- all built on a common technology platform.

SAP is fostering business networking through enterprise SOA and a business process platform. The four elements of SAP's business process platform are available today: the new SAP NetWeaver(R) Composition Environment to plan and build flexible and innovative business processes; process components that implement those services in a robust and reusable fashion; the new Enterprise Services Repository with deep business semantics going above and beyond simple registry capabilities; and an integration platform to integrate and run service-enabled business applications. The innovations available within the SAP NetWeaver technology platform today help establish a strategic platform that fuels business process innovation without disruption for existing applications and at the same time keeps up with the speed of change required by businesses.

To tackle SOA challenges like flexibility, productivity, and integrity, customers can now leverage the new SAP NetWeaver CE to compose processes across systems' and organizational boundaries, and extend industry processes to collaborate across companies. Developers gain significant productivity increases, as they can now access all development artifacts from one view, while gaining full development and lifecycle support. SAP NetWeaver CE combined with the Enterprise Services Repository supports customers in their efforts to innovate quickly without disruption on top of a stable core.

Klaus Kreplin continued by explaining how business process management (BPM), standards-based modeling with deep semantic integration, generated process flow models, and human interaction management, will be embedded in SAP NetWeaver CE. Extending its footprint into the BPM market, SAP will use the technology offerings from YASU Technologies to enable SAP customers to consistently apply business rules to their business processes across heterogeneous computing environments.

"Tens of thousands of companies are leveraging SAP NetWeaver as their platform of choice to integrate SAP and non-SAP applications," said Kreplin. "In this consolidating marketplace, customers are showing a clear preference: to integrate their heterogeneous application landscape on the same platform that also runs their mission-critical SAP applications."

Kreplin urged SAP TechEd attendees to gain the skills and credentials to help their companies and clients be ready to take full advantage of the power of enterprise SOA. He suggested developers be prepared for the innovation, flexibility and agility of enterprise SOA that is available from SAP today.

Kreplin cited the massive adoption numbers of enterprise SOA solutions from SAP, as well as the strength of the SAP Developer Network (SDN) community, as some of the reasons why SAP continues to win in the marketplace. SAP has more than 13,000(1) SAP NetWeaver customers, with more than 18,000 productive systems and over 900,000 contributing SDN community members. SAP continues to make it easier for developers to engage with SAP solutions and recently announced that the company will offer individual developer licenses for SAP NetWeaver through its online community (see Oct. 2, 2007 press release titled, "SAP Offers Individual Developer Licenses for SAP NetWeaver Through Online Communities").

SAP(R) TechEd '07 in Las Vegas, Munich, Shanghai and Bangalore

More than 15,000 SAP customers, partners and technical experts are convening at SAP(R) TechEd '07 to learn how to transform existing business processes and IT landscapes and take advantage of the power and flexibility of enterprise service-oriented architecture. Celebrating its 11th anniversary, SAP's largest ecosystem education event of the year offers more than 1,000 hours of lecture-driven and hands-on sessions. SAP TechEd is being held in Las Vegas on October 1-5, Munich on October 17-19, Shanghai on November 6-7 and Bangalore on November 28-30. For more information, please visit http://www.sapteched.com/.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software*. More than 41,200 customers in more than 120 countries run SAP(R) applications-from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize enterprises to suite offerings for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver(R) platform to drive innovation and enable business change, SAP software helps enterprises of all sizes around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP solution portfolios support the unique business processes of more than 25 industries, including high tech, retail, financial services, healthcare and the public sector. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." (Additional information at http://www.sap.com/)

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle management and supplier relationship management.

(1) SAP will provide a report on continuing adoption of SAP NetWeaver when it reports its Q3 2007 results on October 18, 2007.

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During SAP TechEd '07 Munich (from Oct. 17 - 19), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room at +49 6227 7-74105 or +49 6227 7-74106.