SAP's ESA strategy is on track

Convincing users to abandon software they know and trust for technology that still seems like a vision to some of them is no easy task.

Henning Kagermann, chief executive officer of SAP, uses nearly every opportunity to make a case for the company's transition away from transaction-driven software to technology powered by Web services. His keynote speech Wednesday to more than 15,000 attendees at the company's Sapphire customer event in Orlando was another one of those opportunities.

By 2010, SAP aims to have completely moved its more than 32,000 customers from the company's proven R/3 ERP (enterprise resource planning) software to its Web service-based Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA), enabled by the NetWeaver integration middleware, according to Kagermann.

ESA, in a nutshell, lets companies reuse application functions and build new applications on top of existing ones without, as in the past, having to replace them. It is designed to do this easier, faster and less expensively than conventional coding.

SAP launched ESA in 2004 and has been preaching it ever since.

Next year, the company plans to launch mySAP ERP 2007 with full ESA capabilities, Kagermann said. Also coming next year will be a new version of NetWeaver, which is to evolve into the company's new Business Process Platform, and a version of its midmarket All-in-One software on NetWeaver.

Once businesses have implemented ESA, they'll be able to connect their business processes -- and their people -- more effectively and cost-efficiently, Kagermann said.

It's a message that Kagermann has delivered repeatedly in the past and no doubt will give again as customers ponder when to make the leap to ESA.