SAP Midmarket Enterprise Apps Overhaul In The Works
The software snippets, referred to as best practices, target industry specific business processes for mid-market companies. Seventy five versions are complete, with plans to make approximately 80 more available by the end of the year, acknowledged Jim Dever, an SAP spokesman.
Dever confirmed SAP's commitment to mid-market companies, but wouldn't comment on "rumors" that SAP will launch "a new product called Kayak" referred to in a recent report by AMR Research Inc. analyst Bruce Richardson.
While mostly keeping quiet about the details, SAP company executives, however, are familiar with the codename "kayak."
Internally, "kayak" refers to SAP's overall mid-market initiative and one piece of its "best practices" strategy that includes methods, documentation and pre-configured end-to-end industry specific scenarios built into the software, a source confirmed.
SAP's mid-market initiative will allow developers and systems integrators to build mySAP All-In-One solutions faster, companies implement the applications quicker.
But AMR Research Inc. analyst Bruce Richardson said SAP is redesigning the mySAP All-In-One enterprise suite to move away from the Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP), a language created by the German softwaremaker that supports its legacy applications.
Richardson believes SAP will redesign rather than modify because the process has become too complicated. The finished product suite will have between 300 and 400 business processes.
Companies with between $200 million and $1 billion in annual revenue should find the new version easier and faster to deploy. "mySAP is too complicated for mid-size businesses," Richardson said. "It is SAP enterprise stuff running on a single server with too much functionality."
Richardson said the new suite could run on Web Dynpro, an SAP NetWeaver programming model for user interfaces that provides business applications development support.
SAP said mySAP All-In-One solutions will eventually run on the next version of NetWeaver, know as the Business Process Platform (BPP).