NetWeaver Does Not Exist

This is a graphical depiction of the content of SAP’s NetWeaver. Study it very closely, can you see anything? 

What This Article Covers

• What is NetWeaver?
• Why does it need to be explained?
• Why do people in the industry keep using a term which does not describe anything?
• Why there is no relationship between any of the items within the NetWeaver box.
• Whey are clients and most analysts, so easily fooled by false marketing constructs?

The Nothingness of NetWeaver

For a number of years now SAP has been using the term NetWeaver, as if it actually exists. SAP has been confusing people for sometime with utter nonsense, and even other vendors that integrate to SAP have jumped on board declaring their software to be “NetWeaver Compliant.” I have been asked about NetWeaver compliance several times by different vendors (which is one of the reasons for writing this post), and told them that being compliant with something is a simple matter…if that thing does not exist. In fact, the entire SCM Focus website has been 100% NetWeaver Compliant for years now. Here is the badge to prove it.

Please don’t laugh, this certificate means as much as any of the certificates displayed on SAP’s vendor partners websites, that is they are all equally illusory.

This brings up a secondary question, which is how much are integration certifications to SAP actually worth on projects. The answer will surprise a lot of decision makers who think that an SAP certified adapter is something of value which can actually be implemented on a project. This covered in the post here.

Understanding the “Refrigerator” Diagram

When NetWeaver was “introduced” they released several diagrams to help explain (err… misinform?) to people what it was.  Because NetWeaver is not anything, they changed this diagram several times over the years, probably depending upon which marketing honcho at SAP has having which vision at the time of how they wanted to position their fake product. Here is one version of the diagram below:

This diagram, called “the refrigerator” has had different SAP applications added and subtracted over the years as SAP product marketing has tried to figure out what the NetWeaver message should be. Lifecycle management is down the right site, which is just weird because lifecycle management is distributed through different modules in SCM and ERP, and does not belong in an infrastructure slide.

So as you can see NetWeaver is made up of many subcomponents. However you will notice that NetWeaver does not seem to do anything, it is simply a container. That is one problem, that NetWeaver itself is simply composed of other products. However, a second problem is with the relationship between the products, and that none of these components are related to one another. What does knowledge management have to do with master data? If master data is meant to mean SAP’s MDM, that product is now kaput. Knowledge management would seem to be SAP’s Solution Manager, but Solution Manager is not listed here, and Solution Manager is actually going away as a document management system, and is being redirected to being a an ALM which is discussed in this post. This means that SAP should update the diagram to remove knowledge management as they don’t offer a viable product in this area (companies have pushed their documentation to Microsoft SharePoint). What do these things have to do with process integration? What does process integration have to do with the application platform? The whole combination is a logical mess. If we drill down some more, further inconsistency appears. The application platform area is quite strange. Most of SAP is written in ABAP, but some components are written in J2EE. However, a vendor’s application components are not typical listed as their “products.” Secondly, the code of a product is not a platform, it’s the application code. These are two completely different things. This may seem like a minor issue to a person in marketing, but to a person who works in solutions it is quite a big deal.

NetWeaver as a Non Product Filled with Unrelated Things

The items represented in the diagram above are simply a loose jumble of unrelated products. It’s sad that someone at SAP was paid to spend hours thinking about how to put these boxes together. The main issue is that these are separate products, programming languages and unknown concepts that are not part of any greater platform called “NetWeaver.” SAP simply adds the term “NetWeaver” in front of a real product. That is the extent of NetWeaver’s impact on SAP’s solution.

Was Anyone Paying Attention?

NetWeaver has been around for a while, no one seems to have called SAP on it. I find that strange. Analysts have been some of the most bullish people on NetWeaver. For years, analysts have been writing about NetWeaver not only as if it were a product, as if it was something really fantastic, new and inventive. As difficult as it is for me to believe, SAP has really received significant benefits from the NetWeaver construct, including a ton of positive press. Therefore, the reinforcement SAP has received from lying has been all positive, which leads to the next point…

SAP Marketing is at it Again…with “Hana”

Since SAP got away with it with NetWeaver, they appear to be at it again, this time with “Hana.” Hana has definite NetWeaver overtones, but the buzzwords used by SAP to describe it are even more extreme than what was used for NetWeaver (in memory appliances, etc…). The article which describes Hana is by Gartner, and is one of the more ridiculous articles I have read on enterprise technology in some time. I found I had to write an article on Gartner’s article which I can be read here. Gartner takes a lot of money from SAP, but they should do a better job of hiding their bias. Its hard though when someone is paying your millions every year. However, since so few people who work in enterprise software ever question statements made by SAP perhaps it is not a problem. SAP has made enormous efforts to turn Gartner into an arm of SAP’s marketing department, showing their displeasure at the slightest hints of accuracy in Gartner’s coverage of their products, particularly their problems doing anything with the Business Objects acquisition, and SAP can be very insistent and persuasive.

Questions? 

Do you have any questions. Are you surprised that SAP makes up a concept that is not real just for marketing reasons? Do you disagree, is the article mistaken? Do you think SAP is really just a super honest organization that just happens to misspeak and send out false solution documentation by mistake? If you have any comments leave them below.

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Tagged as: Netweaver, SAP