SAP announced plans for the release of SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management and SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management. The addition of these planned capabilities will further establish SAP NetWeaver as the strategic platform of choice for customers that execute a service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy. The new tools from SAP are aimed to provide the business process flexibility needed to enable customers to turn strategic business insight into real-world execution. A vital part of SAP's robust platform offering, SAP NetWeaver allows IT organizations to drive more value by providing the agility to respond to requests from the business for new or adapted business processes. The addition of the planned capabilities will enable business process experts to design, model and execute new or adapted business processes without having to develop code. The SAP NetWeaver technology platform and its full set of capabilities allows companies to accelerate the consolidation of their IT landscapes, enabling them to enjoy new levels of the business process flexibility used to drive innovation and competitive advantage.

"The planned addition of business process management tools to the SAP NetWeaver technology platform will further establish SAP NetWeaver as the platform of choice for companies committed to a strategic approach to IT," said Klaus Kreplin, corporate officer and member of the Executive Council, head of SAP NetWeaver Technology, SAP AG. "The SAP NetWeaver technology platform and SAP's leading end-to-end business processes provide a consolidated IT landscape outfitted with the best tools to enable innovation, ultimately leading to differentiation and a competitive edge for our customers. SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management will be another innovative offering to further enable users to make changes that are aligned with business needs and ultimately drive business success."

Essential Components Enable Optimized Process Development and Execution
SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management, developed at SAP under the codename "Project Galaxy," is part of SAP NetWeaver(R) Composition Environment and is planned to feature three major capabilities:

• The process composer
• The process server
• The process desk

"Automation of complex, user-facing processes spanning various enterprise systems is a key requirement of every major project at Colgate," said Bora Uran, director, application architecture, Colgate. "SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management will offer an integrated modeling and execution environment that will improve the quality of interaction between business process experts and IT developers. With the addition of business process management, SAP NetWeaver is a more powerful and flexible platform on which to build composite applications that will increase the utilization of assets in our complete IT landscape."

Simplification, Rules Management and Execution Enable Differentiation and Innovation
For organizations looking to utilize technology to drive differentiation in the marketplace, business process management is a major factor in success. Many business processes are standardized across departments, regions and organizations. Business processes that differentiate a company from its competitors are highly customized and typically need to be changed or edited frequently to meet business needs. Creating business processes to improve business performance and increased efficiencies is best achieved when companies combine the right mix of standardized, end-to-end core processes with flexible innovative tools that enable the creation of new processes that can be immediately executed and reused across the enterprise.

SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management is planned to provide customers a standardized, unified environment for the implementation and management of complex, multifaceted business processes focusing on four cornerstones:

• Unified modeling  
• Business rules management
• Immediate execution speeds time to value
• Built-in efficiencies via Enterprise Services Repository

"As business process management is increasingly adopted by organizations as an important management practice, they are constantly looking for ways to better support process execution across people and applications," said Janelle B. Hill, research vice president, Gartner. "Integrated composition technologies, as part of a business process platform, are required to accelerate the successful management of agile business processes."

Further Strengthening the SAP NetWeaver Technology Platform
SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management and SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management are planned to be available to ramp-up customers in Q3 2008 with general availability within the SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment enhancement package 1 expected in early 2009. SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management further delivers on the SAP NetWeaver innovation road map. In the past year, SAP NetWeaver demonstrated increased adoption rates with more than 38,700 total SAP NetWeaver deployments and more than 100 percent revenue growth for 2007.

Business Process Community Enables Business Process Management Collaboration
The design and modeling of differentiating business processes is unique to each company. However, the ability to access intelligence and best practices from a pool of experts in similar industries or organizations serves to further speed time to value for customers. Launched in late 2006 as part of the SAP community network, the SAP Business Process Expert community now totals more than 350,000 members sharing best practices across 28 special interest communities organized by 18 industries, business process management best practices, and solutions such as customer relationship management and governance, risk and compliance.

Within the community, SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management users can interact with peers around enterprise SOA and business process design, access resources and learning opportunities, and accelerate usage of business process management tools. Business Process Expert community members also collaborate and address issues and trends facing IT organizations, work together on definitions and implementations of new and cross-industry processes, and accelerate discussions around emerging topics and issues among fellow customers, partners and SAP.