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Future of SAP NetWeaver BPM ?

SB9
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Over the past year I am observing that SAP BPM demand has become significantly low. Not many projects are coming up in this area. Moreover SAP merged this functionality into SAP Process Orchestration tool (and part of SAP PI now).

What is the future of SAP BPM ? What alternative tool is preferred over SAP BPM ? Why has the demand gone low on BPX side.

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

Former Member
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Hi All,

Let me get this out before I say any more - I personally think BPM is one of the best SAP products I've worked with and has the most potential to be a pivotal part of any customer's SAP landscape (more so than HANA in my mind.)

But it has a number of challenges...  As already mentioned, the licensing costs are a massive issue - this has been the biggest obstacle to implementation with many of my customers.  As with so many other solutions, SAP seem intent on licensing it out of existence.

BPM can still be a standalone product, the PO package is more of a license change from the perspective of BPM/BRM but improves the features in PI by replacing the older ccBPM solution that was available there.  A customer can choose to implement BPM on its own, without PI.  However the power of PO with the combination of PI and BPM makes it a phenomenally able platform (bugs and "features" aside.)

There are lots of weaknesses with the overall SAP Java platform, especially when you are used to the stability and tools in the ABAP stack, and this has also been a big negative when customers consider the BPM solution.  When the lifecylce management tools are working, they are fine but a few issues and errors and it gets complicated, fast.  Having said that, my experience of pretty much all platforms/languages/paradigms/whatever outside of the ABAP stack is the same - they are all very much complex and "feature" packed...  I guess the point isn't necessarily that AS Java has issues, more that AS ABAP is so very well polished!

You can now generate UI5 interfaces direct from your BPM user tasks, but I personally think this came too late and was lost in the furore around HANA, Cloud, Mobile, etc.  Everyone has moved on to Fiori now and SAP did a bad job of pushing the message of how BPM is evolving.

I spoke about BPM at SITMan a couple of years ago and believe with the right re-positioning of the platform it still has the potential to be a pivotal part of the future SAP landscape.  I suspect we won't see that happening until POoH* is released and the whole BPM platform is in the HANA fold.

As mentioned, if you want to combine SAP & non-SAP systems into a process that has a combination of system and human tasks, BPM is your solution (although maybe not SAP BPM?!)  There isn't a customer I have worked with who couldn't take advantage of the PO platform in their business, the problem always comes back to cost.  If it was part of the Netweaver license, or closer to being a negligable cost, the bugs and features could be lived with, as it would deliver some amazing solutions for customers.

Lets also not forget that whilst we are talking about BPM as a software platform, you also need a customer to buy into the whole BPM methodology and start to think about how their processes are modelled and work.  I personally think without this approach, any BPM platform (SAP or otherwise) will struggle to be successful, as it is often then deployed as a tactical, single point solution and the value proposition is blown out of the water.  If you have an organisation bought into BPM as a company wide approach, the costs for the BPM platform to deliver this can then be justified much more easily.

In my current organisation, we don't do any BPM and hence I don't have access to a BPM system to play with.  I started exploring other solutions, mainly around the open source Java world.  I never got past trying to install any of them, as they were all so "feature" packed.

* Assuming it will be, and what an unfortunate acronym!

Cheers,

G.

SB9
Active Participant
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I did a SAP BPM implementation for a large US based retailer a couple of years back and really liked the tool. It gave lot in terms of flexibility - integrating with ABAP RFCs / BAPIs, Oracle database and some other systems using web services. Customer wanted to first go with Win Shuttle but later decided to implement SAP BPM due to the amount of customization possible. Unfortunately that was the last project I did in SAP BPM. Hopefully with PO on HANA it will get a renewed interest.

Thanks,

SB

Answers (3)

Answers (3)

Former Member
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We've implemented one BPM project using WDJ and CAF.

Currently I'm switching for some User Interfaces to SAPUI5.

I come from the ABAP world and I must admit that it's really frustrating to work with SAP's BPM platform.

It's so damn unstable: If you deploy something, you've to cross your fingers that everything is still working afterwards. Here I'm talking especially about the "Application Communication" section in NWA!

So often I had to deassign profiles, assign them again afterwards etc.

It's really a mess!!!

The same happens if you change a web service interface and reimport  it into BPM: Sometimes it takes ages to get everything working again...

The idea behind the BPM engine is nice, but let's be frank:

SAP in combination with JAVA just sucks!!!

It's just frustrating...

I've lost so much time for implementing this process.

And setting up NWDI/CTS+ was really a pain. It took me weeks to make it work.

If you use SAP WAS JAVA, you really appreciate how stable the ABAP stack is!

I would rather choose SAP Business Workflow now although our implemented process is not related to SAP ERP.

joao_sousa2
Active Contributor
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I agree after touching Java, you do appreciate ABAP a lot more. All hail STMS, everything "just works".

junwu
Active Contributor
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it may find some place for PI scenario.

for other case, pretty much useless

joao_sousa2
Active Contributor
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I don't think it's useless. If it weren't for the bugs and had WDJ become THE canonical user interface for SAP apps, it would have become the go-to tool for BPM. It had a good process editor, you could document processes and execute processes, tight integration with BRM, for that it was good.

When WDJ became obsolete, and SAP basically abandoned SAP Java Application Server as "the future", it was left dead in the water. Customer have to install a specific instance just to run it, and versus other BPM solutions in the market it was too expensive.

The only project I had with SAP BPM, the customer had already decided on the technology before the RFQ was issued. On all the situations I actually had to convince the customer that BPM was the right tool, the price was not competitive.

junwu
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bpm is not tied to wdj, i think. it was when it was born, but not now.

joao_sousa2
Active Contributor
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Yes yes, you are right it's not. But when I worked with it, using SAPUI5 or WDA was not as streamlined as using WDJ.

SB9
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In that case, what would be the preferred tool to develop workflow outside SAP business suite, which has SAP and non-SAP integration ?

junwu
Active Contributor
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i was using "useless", it is not that fair... i should say worthless(compared with other sap stuff)

if you are in sap world, it is still the option. outside of sap world, i don't see much presence of sap bpm

joao_sousa2
Active Contributor
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From my perspective, having done one such project, the tool suffered from many bugs and a Java infrastruture that wasn't nearly as sturdy as ABAP stack. It was also deeply tied to WDJ which basically was left obsolete.

And you have cheeper tools available, in my country there is one very popular software for this.