Experts Needed to Drive ESA Success

By Gurvendra Suri
Chief Executive Officer, Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

As SAP's base of over 35,000 global customers moves toward service-enabling their business processes, the demand for expert consulting services around the SAP NetWeaver platform will increase significantly. Based on the SAP NetWeaver platform, Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) holds open the promise of improved productivity, faster time to market, greater flexibility and a more effective workforce. But while the promise of ESA is certainly enticing, large-scale business process redesign and related ESA initiatives should not be undertaken without the guidance of expert consultants.

According to studies from the Standish Group, every year more than $60 billion are lost in the United States as a result of unsuccessful IT projects, 66% of which either fail completely or are late and/or over budget. META Group puts the IT project failure rate at an alarming 70%, and Gartner reports that 80% of unplanned downtime is the result of application and production errors, running up an average cost of nearly $100,000 an hour.

To be sure, SAP’s customer base needs the accelerated pace of business process innovation enabled by NetWeaver and ESA, and SAP’s ESA vision is both well developed and sufficiently compelling. However, SAP’s strong vision alone isn’t enough to ensure ESA success; it takes execution of the vision, which requires expert consultants to mitigate the risk inherent in any project that impacts core enterprise applications and touches on vital business processes.

Two major areas of expertise needed to drive ESA success include:

1. Enterprise architecture & global business process design

ESA is a means to an end and not an end itself. Businesses must constantly change to quickly and strategically surmount challenges and exploit new opportunities. As the foundation for ESA, NetWeaver provides an open integration and application platform that supports continual business change, growth and innovation while reducing IT costs and complexities. The key function of NetWeaver, or any core enterprise technology for that matter, is to support and optimize business processes.

To effectively and efficiently innovate business processes, ESA initiatives must begin with a thorough understanding of a business’ entire enterprise architecture—from infrastructure architecture to information architecture to application architecture to business process architecture. Enterprise architectures need to be documented, analyzed and optimized by expert consultants on an ongoing basis to realize the full potential of ESA.

2. NetWeaver, the SAP application stack & supporting technologies

To help keep ESA initiative on track and yielding maximum return, consultants must be competent with all components of the NetWeaver platform, including the SAP Web Application Server, Master Data Management (MDM), exchange infrastructure (XI) and SAP Enterprise Portal, and SAP Business Information Warehouse, among others.

In addition, consultants spearheading ESA projects must possess deep proficiency with standalone SAP applications such as mySAP CRM, mySAP SCM and mySAP ERP, etc., as these core applications will no doubt be impacted by ESA initiatives. As SAP’s NetWeaver Certification and xApps Partner programs continue to bear fruit, expert SAP consultants will be called upon to identify precisely which SAP application components make the best of what NetWeaver has to offer, and which supporting tools and technologies are best suited to create coherent, innovative and strategic business processes.