Enterprise SOA

What's the long-term adoption path of ESA? How quickly will I see ROI, and what form will it take?

Figure 2-11 shows SAP's current roadmap for ESA adoption graphed against the evolution of IT infrastructures once consolidation/composition begins and against the evolution of business process as the model-driven approach to IT begins to transform how scenarios are designed and how businesses are structured. As you can see, achieving the full potential of process innovation is still as long as two years away. And that's what you should expect.

Figure 2-11. ESA roadmap

ESA isn't a silver bullet; it's not "best of breed" repackaged under a different name with a new set of marketing materials. It's a complete architecture composed of a business process platform, standards, services, and infrastructure that become easier to use with each passing quarter. Those on SAP R/3 can create applications using services that provide value through ESA principles. This is easier in mySAP ERP 2004 and mySAP ERP 2005, and will be easier still later on. SAP and a large ecosystem of ISVs are committed to making ESA a reality.

"Process innovation" comes in all shapes and sizes, and before business analysts begin building and rebuilding scenarios the way most of us would juggle an Excel spreadsheet, there are small but important gains to be realized.

You may recall that earlier, we made the case that ESA would ...