SOA and the SAP Mid-Market (Sapphire, Vienna)

Sitting in the analysts’ and bloggers’ press conference, I asked the following question: “Would you please explain the role of SOA in SAP’s plans for mid-market adoption?” When I introduced myself as being from the projectfailures.com blog, the entire hall erupted into laughter. I had to explain that despite the name, I write about good things too. You know, sometimes the name can be embarrassing.

Henning responded to the effect that mid-market customers face relatively larger integration burdens than larger enterprises. As a result, these smaller companies “cannot do business transformation without SOA.”

Business transformation has been successfully pursued by enterprises of all sizes, even before the SOA buzzword was invented. On the the hand, SAP does seem very serious about SOA at this point in time. Technologies (and their associated buzzwords) do change over time, and SOA is the mantra for today.