SAP Adds Eclipse Tool, Joins OSGi

• By Kurt Mackie
• 10/24/07

SAP AG signaled its commitment to open solutions in the service-oriented architecture (SOA) space last week with a couple of announcements.

First, SAP, an Eclipse Foundation founding member, donated a memory analyzer tool to the Eclipse development community. Next, the Walldorf, Germany-based company joined the OSGi Alliance, an organization that promotes open standards and the interoperability of systems for SOAs.

The donated memory analyzer tool is currently part of SAP's open NetWeaver service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform. The tool helps analyze object retention patterns when running enterprise applications. It works with a graphical display in Eclipse to optimize memory use.

"By empowering Eclipse developers with these new memory analyzer tools, SAP will help developers to more efficiently build commercial applications on the extensible Eclipse development and application framework," explained Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, as cited in an SAP press release.

SAP also announced a "global release" of its NetWeaver Composition Environment. NetWeaver Composition Environment is a Java Enterprise Edition 5-based set of tools. It can be used to model workflows and create composite applications in SOA environments.

SAP's NetWeaver products are getting a boost from SAP's recent acquisition of Yasu Technologies, a provider of business rules management systems. The plan to acquire Yasu, and integrate its business intelligence technology in NetWeaver, was announced last week by SAP.

Of course, the bigger business intelligence news for SAP was its announcement last October 7 that it plans to acquire Business Objects for more than €4.8 billion. That acquisition is aimed at enhancing SAP's business-user market share. It also fits with SAP's broader plans to "double our addressable market by 2010," according to Henning Kagermann, SAP's CEO.

SAP's third-quarter 2007 revenue from its software and related services businesses was 13 percent higher than that figure in 3Q 2006, according to the company's recent financial report. SAP claims to have more than 13,000 SAP NetWeaver customers, plus more than 900,000 contributing developers. Recently, the company signed on Wal-Mart as a customer for SAP's enterprise resource planning solution.

SAP also recently introduced an Enterprise Architect Certification Program, which is accessible through SAP's portal here.

The certification program has three levels: Associate (basic knowledge for an SAP consultant); Professional (proven project experience and business knowledge); and Master (demonstrating expert-level understanding and vision).