Mastering Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver® and mySAP™ ERP

Foreword

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in general, and Enterprise SOA or Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) in particular, may very well be the most important evolution in enterprise architecture and enterprise systems since the advent of client/server architecture in the early nineties and before . . . well, who knows what. Client/server in itself is just a way to build applications, but a few things came together to make a “perfect storm” that paved the way for its success. The availability of UNIX and associated smaller and cheaper servers in the datacenter, together with the spread of PCs to every desktop, provided the necessary technical infrastructure. Perhaps more important, the wave of decentralization that went through large enterprises created a demand for ERP and other systems for smaller-sized companies or divisions. In large enterprises, central IT decision-making and central deployment on mainframes was succeeded by decentralized decision-making and decentralized deployment on client/server hardware.

Similarly, many factors are contributing to the success of ESA, and I personally (as well as SAP as a company) have been intimately involved in this evolution. After having led the first R/3 implementation in Sweden, I joined SAP in 1995 in application development. Working intimately with customers, I got really interested in how to use technology to support business. After the rapid deployment of R/3 and other ERP systems in the late 1990s (in part fueled by ...