I’m not sure if this should be an obituary or a eulogy entitled “Ode to SAP NetWeaver Components”? Anyway it got your attention and I should proceed. If you are involved with any SAP NetWeaver projects, this is essential for you to know.
In the late hours of October 28th 2005, the term ‘SAP NetWeaver components’ passed peacefully away into SAP product terminology history and was put to rest from future SAP NetWeaver use at SAP. They were the fortunate victims of the evolution of the single SAP NetWeaver platform. It was a very somber and poignant moment for the SAP NetWeaver teams as this page in SAP NetWeaver terminology closed and they joined other famous past terms like mySAP.com (remember the enjoy release smiley? sob sob!!), SAP R/3, SAP Basis, SAP R/2, etc. Coincidently the date coincided with the birth of the SAP NetWeaver 2004s release of SAP NetWeaver (i.e. into the Ramp-up program).
Fortunately we opened a new page and SAP NetWeaver has a terminology succession plan! You may have seen a sneak preview of them at the ‘SAP NetWeaver, BW, and Portals’ conference, ASUG conferences, and our SAP TechEds. ‘SAP NetWeaver components’ have been succeeded by the IT-Practice & IT-Scenario concepts. SAP NetWeaver, the platform, will be rolled out based upon these concepts going forward. Therefore we strongly encourage you to become familiar with these new concepts as it will affect everyone who comes in contact with SAP NetWeaver or SAP NetWeaver powered by applications. They are already here! For system administrators I suggest that you also look at the new “usage type” concept too. My colleague, Matt Kangas, has a good introductory Blog on these concepts Building the Bridge - From IT Practices to Usage Types. (Building the Bridge - From IT Practices to Usage Types) To see how IT Practices and IT Scenarios are implemented in the SAP Service Marketplace SAP NetWeaver home page click here (http://service.sap.com/netweaver) For the people without access to the SAP Service Marketplace, for the information on the published IT Practices, click here (http://www.sap.com/solutions/netweaver/itpractices/index.epx) And for information on the published IT Scenarios, click here (http://www.sap.com/solutions/businessmaps/6064CC13D46849EC8491E2308AA43795/index.epx) Update: SDN is now moving to the IT Practice and IT Scenario view too: https://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/developerareas/itpractic... 
So you say, “What exactly went the way of the Dodo?” (kind of like a funeral crasher’s question “who was he? - I’m just here for the food and drinks!” 😉 For those of you who don't know what a funeral crasher is, it's a wedding crasher who realized that you don't have to bring a present to a Wake! A Dodo is a casualty of evolution or unintelligent design (not too politically correct I guess.. oops) Well, the SAP NetWeaver components themselves evolved from the new dimension product names and were rolled into SAP NetWeaver in 2003. Unfortunately for historians the actual SAP NetWeaver component names also evolved in the short 3 years too – more times than Prince has changed his name! Did someone get paid per name change? I’ll endeavor to explain the rationale for sending the components to the branding graveyard in the sky later in the post mortem at the end of the blog. So moving on, here are the terms that will no longer be used going forward for describing SAP NetWeaver; - SAP NetWeaver Application Server (formerly SAP Web Application Server – SAP Web AS)
- SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (formerly SAP Business Information Warehouse - SAP BW)
- SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (formerly SAP Exchange Infrastructure - SAP XI)
- SAP NetWeaver Portal (formerly SAP Enterprise Portal – SAP EP)
- SAP NetWeaver Mobile (formerly SAP Mobile Infrastructure – SAP MI)
- The astute readers will notice that SAP NetWeaver MDM escaped the axe, but this is only temporary until it is rolled into the SAP NetWeaver synchronized release and that’s a blog of its own on its roadmap!
The Post-Mortem:
SAP NetWeaver components’ time has simply past, the meaning just gave out and we cannot use them to adequately describe the new integrated capabilities of SAP NetWeaver. The components segregated the technology platform into meaningful point-in-time ‘buckets’ but things have radically changed since their inception. With the new release of SAP NetWeaver (SAP NetWeaver 2004s) these buckets quite frankly do not adequately represent what IT is doing with SAP NetWeaver to deliver business solutions. SAP NetWeaver’s integration really blurs the lines between ‘old components’ and makes most of them irrelevant within the context of the platform. That is, the sum of all of the components into a whole platform means that the underlying technology can be reused and developed upon in any context. Essentially, the whole platform is greater than the sum of the parts (components). It’s a natural progression that occurs with most technology evolution, innovation and progress. The emphasis here is 'progression' as customers can easily utilize and expand using the the new IT Practice/IT Scenario concepts with their existing SAP NetWeaver deployments. No point in throwing the baby out with the bathwater! I’ll give a quick example: - In the past the SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (aka SAP BW) component represented data warehousing functionality running on the SAP NetWeaver Application Server (aka SAP Web AS) ABAP stack. - The BI capabilities of SAP NetWeaver 2004s are now built on technologies from other ‘old components’ of SAP NetWeaver and some clever new technology too! In short if we use the previous ‘component’ view, you will now need the SAP NetWeaver Portal running on the SAP NetWeaver Application Server Java stack with some special SAP NetWeaver BI Java capabilities in addition to the old SAP NetWeaver BI component to develop/deploy queries and analytical applications and to manage the Data Warehouse – Phew!. So doing the math… 
Does the SAP NetWeaver BI component name still fit if you are using most of the technology of the platform? We don’t think so… so it's time for the old terminology to die and a bigger, better concept to take its place.
Does the SAP NetWeaver BI component name still fit if you are using most of the technology of the platform? We don’t think so… so it's time for the old terminology to die and a bigger, better concept to take its place. R.I.P.
150 Comments