With the revolutionary technology platform of SAP, it becomes easier to implement changes and innovations in the business, to decrease IT-related costs, and to organize processes.

SAP introduced SAP NetWeaver™, its new integration and application platform in March 2004. Starting from the ECC 5.0 system, the components of the SAP NetWeaver™ platform provide the technology basis for SAP solutions (mySAP™ Business Suite, SAP xApps composite applications, and custom developments); furthermore, utilizing Internet standards (HTTP, XML) and Web services, they help integrate information and business processes from both SAP and non-SAP systems.

NetWeaver™ is SAP’s answer to the unprecedented propagation and popularity of Internet technologies and the most important IT trends after the millennium, including the following:

• heterogeneous IT infrastructures built on systems from a large number of different vendors, with ‘rigidly’ defined interfaces among the systems resulting in high maintenance costs;

• the need to integrate information and processes originating from different systems (even connecting cross-company processes in order to cooperate with customers, suppliers, and service providers);

• decreasing IT budgets and spending, with more and more focus on the return on investments (ROI) and the total cost of ownership (TCO) associated with IT systems;

• consolidation efforts (including the consolidation of hardware infrastructure and software environment);

• outsourcing of support processes, etc.

• the need to sustain innovation, i.e., making new processes and improvements available and utilizing new technology.

In our accelerated world, the evermore rapidly changing business environment and competition requires companies to react more quickly. A precondition for realizing a flexible organizational structure is to implement an IT environment that is capable of coping with the ever-changing demands. What is necessary is a technology platform that enables companies to adapt to changes and, if needed, to adjust the processes within a short time. This places a heavy burden on IT organizations, but determines the success or survival of the company.

This is exactly what NetWeaver™ promises: it helps with implementing flexible business strategies and driving business growth and innovation, while it reduces IT-related costs and allows companies to reduce and control their technology spending. With NetWeaver™, companies can achieve the basic goals of improvement by innovation, flexible reaction, and cost reduction. By making Web services available, it makes it possible to transform the existing client/server-based IT infrastructure into a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the most important benefit of which is that processes can be quickly and easily adapted to the changing business environment.

The SAP NetWeaver™ infrastructure software functions as an integration platform, running above the databases and the operating system, and managing the application layer that maps and implements information and processes. It is the basis for all current SAP products and will remain to be the basis for SAP solutions in the future. Because of its versatility and diversity, it is already prepared for meeting future changes and challenges.

NetWeaver™ supports the integration and development of heterogeneous system environments, which may be realized on four levels:

1. in the user interface (people integration): mainly via the portal and mobile devices; its goal is to implement a web-based view for all content necessary for a given role by integrating all applications, services, and data,
2. on the information level (information integration): providing fast and simple access to data and information originating from different sources and having different structure,
3. in the processes (process integration): work processes spanning over applications, systems, or even companies need to be integrated on the level of the whole organization. NetWeaver™ provides a technology base for this.
4. on the application level (application integration): it allows developing and running Java and ABAP applications, it offers seamless collaboration in heterogeneous system environments, supporting Microsoft .NET and IBM WebSphere technologies.

These different integration possibilities are mapped in the software components of SAP NetWeaver™, many of which have been successful in the market for a long time (see figure):

NetWeaver™ also offers tools to design SAP xApps composite applications (Composite Application Framework), to manage the SAP system (Solution Manager), and to realize custom developments (SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio).