SAP NetWeaver Overview for the Business User

Since moving to SAP from Microsoft .NET, I’ve found that the information available on SAP’s products is surprisingly thin. The actual SAP Help site is massive, but seems to contain very little value. I find that it is both too shallow for technical users, and too deep for business users. This is quite unusual, as documentation usually veers to one of the extremes rather than hovering in the middle. It is also quite a contrast from the Microsoft world, where documentation is generally very well maintained, accurate, and complete. Microsoft (and many other large software companies) have an impressive ability to direct their documentation at the correct type of user, which I feel is severely lacking at SAP.

I’m hoping to write a series of posts tackling various aspects of SAP NetWeaver, with the goal of clarifying areas of potential confusion. “NetWeaver” as a term is quite commonly misunderstood by many SAP users – and even SAP consultants, who are supposedly selling / using the product – so I feel this is a good place to start.

SAP as a company has a vast number of products and applications, and are largely to blame for the confusion over what their products are. Firstly, back in the early days, they decided to name the product after the company (or the company after the product). So you still find many users referring to SAP ERP as “SAP” or “R/3″ – even though they’re actually running on NetWeaver. And secondly, they frequently change the product names & versions, which is very frustrating. NetWeaver 6.40 was renamed to NetWeaver 2004; NetWeaver 7.0 was originally called NetWeaver 2004s; SAP XI (Exchange Integration) was renamed to SAP PI (Process Integration)… and the list goes on.

So what exactly is NetWeaver?
In very simple terms, NetWeaver is the platform upon which “all” SAP products run. I put “all” in quotes, as this is not technically always true – but I’m keeping it straight-forward purely for the purpose of explaining the concept.

If you’ve spent any time researching NetWeaver, I’m sure you would’ve come across the “NetWeaver fridge” diagram. Unfortunately, that diagram explains nothing – and was most likely drawn up by someone in Marketing who knows very little about the product or how it works. It clearly shows the components / applications that make up NetWeaver, but it doesn’t show the relationships between them, nor does it separate the functional / technical differences between them. For all intents and purposes, it is no better than a bullet list. Here’s the diagram I’m referring to, as displayed on the SAP Help site:

NetWeaver "Fridge"

I’m sure that sounds like an unnecessary criticism of the diagram, but it is leading somewhere. Seeing as that diagram is so commonly referenced, I’ll try to fill in some of the gaps that are missing from it – and hopefully in doing so, will explain more about what NetWeaver is and how it fits in with other SAP products.

Application Foundation
This section of the diagram contains three components: “J2EE”, “ABAP”, and “DB and OS Abstractions”. For the business user, the primary point to understand from this is that applications written in both Java and ABAP are able to run on NetWeaver. Why is that important? Well, most companies (regardless of their size) have a multitude of systems that serve different purposes within the organisation. I have never seen a company with a single system that meets all their needs, and I highly doubt I ever will. Now before some salesman tries to tell you that a single system is the ultimate goal – it is very seldom the case. Applications are built for a purpose – so it is nearly impossible to find one system that does everything exactly the way you want it to. Remember that systems are built to serve the needs of the company, not the other way around!

So you can run your Java applications on NetWeaver, along with your ABAP applications. What’s the big deal? I guess different people will derive different benefits from this. Some will gain from having a single core platform to support; some will gain from having a single vendor to pay licensing fees to; some may not gain anything from this at all. It is entirely dependent on your needs.

If you already have applications written in Java, then this can be of particular interest to you. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you could migrate your Java applications onto NetWeaver (and remove the need for another system), or you could consider direct integration with SAP. Although that is what Process Integration is designed for, I’ve seen very few companies that implement middleware well (or at all). That said, you don’t need to do anything – these are just options for you to consider.

Stuff that got lost
As a little side note, there are also some items in the diagram that seem to have been misplaced. I think that the “Composite Application Framework”, “Lifecycle Management”, and “Multi-channel Access” items belong in the Application Foundation section. I can see that there was an attempt to categorise the software by usage, but I do think these are incorrectly positioned – or at least misleading. None of these can really be classified as products, but are rather enabling technologies that provide services to the products – which is why I think they don’t belong where they are. I would be interested to hear other opinions on that, though.

These items aren’t crucial to the business user – but it may be useful to know that “Multi-channel Access” is generally accepted to mean that you can access applications running on NetWeaver using a variety of client platforms (e.g. web browser, mobile phone, etc.). This may be of particular interest to some users, although it is important to point out that you can do that with any web application server.

Everything Else
The are a few more sections in the diagram: “Process Integration”, “Information Integration” and “People Integration”. I’m grouping these together in the “Everything Else” section – as they all run on top of the “Application Foundation”. However, these are quite often very significant products in themselves. Business Intelligence, Integration Broker and Master Data Management, for example, are quite substantial products in terms of their size and value to an organisation. You will often find consultants that specialise in one of the products listed in these sections, as they each require a very detailed level of skill and knowledge to operate and configure.

What should a business user know about this? Well, the main point to note about all the items in these sections is that they are predominantly technical applications. Users will seldom log in to the Integration Broker or Master Data Management. These are mostly the cogs that keep the system running. They are important in their roles within the system landscape, but are not generally seen or directly accessed by end users. Be careful not to underestimate the value of these applications. For systems to run smoothly, all aspects need to be well maintained. In simple terms… it’s pointless washing your Ferrari if you never get it serviced!

Portal is perhaps one of the most commonly misunderstood applications in the NetWeaver suite. There is a lot of hype around this product, which makes it seem bigger than it really is. Don’t get me wrong, it is not a small product – but it can be explained very simply. Think of Portal as a container that hosts applications. To better illustrate the point, think about Microsoft Windows. Within Windows, you can run Word, Excel, Outlook, Adobe Reader, Skype, iTunes, and many other applications. Portal provides a similar container from within which your applications can run. So within Portal you can run Employee Self Service, Manager Self Service, Business Intelligence Reports, custom developed applications, and much more. But Portal itself is simply the container – it’s actually pretty boring and useless to the end user until you put something in it.

So how does this fit in with ERP and CRM?
Going back to what I was saying earlier… NetWeaver allows you to run applications written in both ABAP and Java. ERP, CRM, and other SAP products were written in ABAP and Java – sometimes purely ABAP, sometimes purely Java, and sometimes a combination of both. So ERP and CRM run on top of NetWeaver. In the same way as you need Microsoft Windows to run Microsoft PowerPoint, you need SAP NetWeaver to run SAP ERP.

I’ve spoken about NetWeaver in very general terms so far, as all the points I’ve made are true of all versions of NetWeaver. However, it is important to note that each version is obviously different. These differences must be properly evaluated against your project / company requirements before choosing which version to implement.

I’m sure there are other questions that this post may have raised, such as:

• If NetWeaver supports both Java and ABAP, which should I use?
• So should I just throw away my Oracle / IBM Java Application Server and use SAP NetWeaver?
• How do I know which version of NetWeaver I’m running? [update: see my new post about this here]
• I’m still on SAP R/3. Should I consider upgrading? Why?

These, and many others, are all valid questions but are definitely beyond the scope of this post – so I will tackle them as and when they are raised.

I’d be interested to know if anything here has sparked your interest, or if this explanation has helped you. If you disagree with anything I’ve said or have spotted any mistakes, please also let me know so they can be corrected.