SAP Enhances Process Orchestration Technology to Help Customers Close the Gap Between Insight and Action

FRANKFURT, Germany and ORLANDO, Fla., May 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Reaffirming its commitment to delivering strongly integrated business process orchestration technologies that help customers close the gap between insight and action, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the general availability of the latest version of the SAP NetWeaver® Composition Environment offering (SAP NetWeaver CE 7.2). Business process orchestration technologies – which include composition, integration and real-time business intelligence offerings – help companies better integrate and optimize their business processes across application and business boundaries, and provide real-time business insights to help customers capitalize on business opportunities. The newest release of the composition environment marks a major milestone in the evolution of process orchestration technology from SAP, enabling customers and partners to easily build on top of existing IT installations, orchestrate new business processes and thus gain greater insight across their entire organization to enable more impactful business decisions. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® NOW, being held simultaneously in Frankfurt, Germany, and Orlando, Florida, May 17-19, 2010.

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SAP NetWeaver CE provides an integrated environment that allows IT professionals to quickly compose, execute, monitor and evolve business processes leveraging both SAP and non-SAP solutions significantly faster than traditional custom software development. The new release of SAP NetWeaver CE features enhancements for all roles involved in the management of an organization's business processes:

• Business analysts and process experts will have better process insight with improved reporting and monitoring, allowing for direct action by adjusting process flows or business rules, as well as better collaboration with developers due to role-specific process and rule models.
• Developers will see faster implementation cycles with automatic task user interface (UI) generation, improved rule design and rule-flow modeling, and deeper integration with SAP applications.
• Business users will have access to more UI options, including offline forms and SAP NetWeaver® Visual Composer tool screens.
• IT architects will see better scalability and reliability with clustering support and improved debugging capabilities, reduced project cycle times with common versioning and change management across all parts of a composite process.

The new release of SAP NetWeaver CE follows a successful ramp-up program with more than 30 customers – including BAE Systems Land Systems, EnBW Energie Baden-Wurttemberg AG, Gebaudeversicherung Bern, Osaka Gas, RS Components, Stedin B.V. and Unilever Asia – and 60.

Braskem Shapes Its Future With Better Business Process Management

The greater flexibility offered by SAP NetWeaver CE has fared well for customers such as Braskem S.A., North and South America's leading manufacturer of thermoplastic resins. The company used business process management with the aim of integrating disparate IT systems and gaining greater transparency and process efficiency across newly acquired companies. SAP NetWeaver® Business Process Management (SAP NetWeaver BPM) – a key process orchestration component within SAP NetWeaver CE – has enabled Braskem to save money and increase efficiencies across the company by consolidating standard processes, reducing time and effort required for process improvements and creating a more flexible process structure.

"With SAP NetWeaver BPM, we've gained greater agility in adapting our business processes and have already realized initial improvements such as faster invoice registration and payment processing," said Marcos Antonio Milani, processes and systems manager, Braskem S.A. "SAP helps us extend the value of our existing software investments by allowing us to adapt quickly to changing business environments and more easily integrate acquisitions, which is key to advancing our international growth strategy."

SAP Meets Growing Market Need for Business Orchestration Technologies

SAP has seen its sales of process orchestration solutions triple in the first quarter of 2010, when compared against the first quarter of 2009. More than 3,500 companies, with three new customers added every working day, choose to use SAP NetWeaver® Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver PI), an offering that provides centrally managed business integration and connectivity capabilities as a crucial foundation for process orchestration. These numbers indicate that SAP is meeting a critical need for a complete process orchestration portfolio that helps companies connect to any process within and outside their enterprise, extend their core business processes without breaking their underlying systems and monitor activity across all processes – whether on premise, on demand or on device.

The process orchestration portfolio currently offered by SAP includes technologies that help customers with:

• Composition – SAP NetWeaver CE, SAP NetWeaver BPM (process management component)
• Integration – SAP NetWeaver PI
• Reporting and monitoring – SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse component, Xcelsius® software, SAP® Business Objects™ Web Intelligence® software

"We will continue to expand our investments in composition, integration and real-time intelligence offerings to provide business-oriented process orchestration technologies to cost-effectively achieve process innovation that meets the needs of companies," said Herve Couturier, executive vice president, Technology Group, SAP AG. "SAP continues to differentiate itself with a comprehensive technology platform and development methodology geared not only for IT specialists, but also for business analysts, enabling entire companies to tap the innovative power of IT to evolve their processes and better meet changing demands."

SAPPHIRE® NOW

With SAPPHIRE® NOW, SAP marks the next evolution of its SAPPHIRE customer conference and networking events, offering SAP customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held simultaneously in Orlando, Florida, and Frankfurt, Germany, May 17-19, 2010, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and a newly designed online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether onsite or online, participants can gain insight on how innovative business solutions from SAP are enabling long-term, profitable business growth. For more information about the Orlando show, visit www.sapandasug.com; for the Frankfurt event, visit www.sap.com/sapphire/emea. Join the conversation via Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the SAPPHIRE NOW Social Newsroom at sapphirenow.blogs-sap.com.

SAP and the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG) are co-locating their premier events in Orlando, where the 2010 ASUG Annual Conference takes place May 16-20.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 97,000 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit www.sap.com.

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and related applications.

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