Today two SAP guys came to our school to market SAP NetWeaver. At the beginning of the seminar I asked them: "Was sind die Hauptunterschiede zwischen NetWeaver und anderen Middelwaretechnologien? Annahme, ich m�chte Middleware beschaffen, warum soll ich NetWeaver anstatt Sache wie WebSphere, WebLogic...etc. kaufen? �berzeugen Sie mich bitte!" (What are the key differences between NetWeaver and other middleware technologies? If I were to purchase middleware (for my organisation), why should I pay for NetWeaver instead of, say, WebSphere, WebLogic...? Please convince me!" One of them answered: "Die sollen Sie sich selbst ausfinden! (
You should find out (the differences) yourself!)"
I've never met any marketing people as cool as him!
So I read the material they dispatched in order to find out something interesting. The architecture looks pretty similar to WebSphere, the solution suit includes DB, application servers, portals....nothing really amazingly special to mention(I doubt whether all the middleware products from major vendors are architecturally very similar, if not almost the same). But I did find their "business process integration" might be a strong selling-point. SAP has been one of the biggest players in ERP systems for many years. They do have valuable Know-Hows of "business process" in a variaty of industries. While the other products, according to my very humble knowledge, have very powerful platform, frameworks and tools to build the business logics however one still needs to build by herself/himself. What if SAP embeds their industrial Know-Hows into their so-called "business process integration" layer? Say if an automobile manufacturer could get their process work on NetWeaver out of box (or with minimum customisation), that could be something really sweet. The presentation was kinda superficial and the printed material I got doesn't really go into technial details. Is there anyone here who had experience with NetWeaver? And I'd really like to learn what the unique strengths/weaknesses of the major middleware products are. Any input would be highly appreciated.
Regards,
Ellen
[ May 27, 2005: Message edited by: Ellen Zhao ]
