Sapphire Now: SAP plans Hana integration for NetWeaver platform

MADRID: SAP has revealed a roadmap for the NetWeaver platform, promising improved business process management (BPM) and integration with the Hana database.

NetWeaver is the foundation for many of SAP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, and essentially integrates the stack of SAP technology products and supports process integration, business intelligence, a portal and application servers.

NetWeaver 7.3 is the latest release, launched at the end of last year.

Bjoern Goerke, head of SAP NetWeaver, said during his keynote at Sapphire Now that an enhancement pack for Netweaver 7.3 is "around the corner" and will help customers improve BPM with a new toolset based on Eclipse modelling standards.

"This will help you do modern, state-of-the-art BPM," he said.

Goerke revealed additional capabilities in NetWeaver enhancement pack 1, including the integration of NetWeaver BPM with SAP's StreamWork collaborative cloud software so that customers can bring conversations made in the cloud back on-premise.

The update will also bundle the NetWeaver BPM, Process Integration and Business Rules Management offerings in one package, and the NetWeaver 7.3 Application Server will be updated to make use of the Hana database.

Goerke also said that all NetWeaver products will soon be integrated with the Hana database.

Vishal Sikka, head of technology at SAP, said during a press briefing that Hana will soon be the NetWeaver Master Data Management Server.

This will allow customers to consolidate data from all their ERP systems, whether SAP-based or not, as well as unstructured master data from the cloud.

SAP revealed at the event that it has 65,000 customers currently using NetWeaver products.