Baking company "shocked" by SAP's tireless attention

Growth through innovation was the theme of SAPPHIRE 2004—the annual conference for users of the SAP enterprise software system—but the underlying message was this: the more things change, the more SAP hopes they stay the same.

Beginning with the keynote address for the May 11-13 event in New Orleans—delivered by CEO Henning Kagermann—SAP executives hammered the point that they are building an "open" technology platform that allows companies to design their own business processes through creative use of Web services and composite applications, or xApps, as SAP prefers to call them.

SAP started down this path a couple of years ago with the release of NetWeaver, the technology platform that supports the mySAP business application suite. Kagermann says future versions of the platform will feature a complete "enterprise services architecture" for building composite business scenarios rather than simply applications. Next year, SAP plans to unveil a repository of Web services that can be used to create these scenarios.

SAP executives stressed that any composite applications or scenarios built on the NetWeaver platform could include functionality from other vendors' applications—an important point from SAP's standpoint.

In addition to trumpeting the openness of NetWeaver, SAP demonstrated a commitment to making it easier for SAP customers to use other vendors' technology. Most significant is a joint agreement with Microsoft to smooth integration between NetWeaver and Microsoft's .NET platform, which is expected to facilitate creating composite applications in Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET environment and pulling program objects from SAP applications. Conversely, programmers working on the NetWeaver platform should get easier access to functionality contained in Microsoft's Outlook, Exchange, and Sharepoint Services programs.

The Microsoft alliance should bolster SAP's efforts to capture more business from medium-size manufacturers, which until recently has been an uphill struggle. Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP America, said his business unit is starting to see positive results from a concerted effort to woo medium-size manufacturers. To prove his point, McDermott invited Autumn Bayles, CIO of Tasty Baking Co.—a $250-million, Philadelphia-based manufacturer of snack cakes that recently signed on with SAP—to speak at a SAPPHIRE press conference.

"Frankly, I was shocked at the level of attention SAP has given us," said Bayles, adding that SAP also shattered perceptions about its system being difficult to use. "Our users overwhelmingly picked SAP as the most user-friendly system," she said. "And when we spoke to companies the same size as us, they said the same thing."

While professing its commitment to open systems, it's clear that SAP has not given up its desire to have customers run their entire enterprise on SAP applications. "We believe in the best-of-suite—rather than best-of-breed—approach," Kagermann said. "We want to give users flexibility even if they work with one vendor of choice."