SAP to buy professor Scheer’s share in IDS Scheer?

This rumor is constantly spreading in SAP consulting waters for years. There is a trader’s whispering saying that something was started between one of major shareholders of IDS Scheer – Professor August-Wilhelm Scheer and SAP AG. Professor’s intention might be to sell his share in his company to SAP AG. Both companies are partnering between each other for very long time. They have reciprocal representation in theirs boards. Mr. Scheer was involved in initial database design of SAP products. He is very familiar with SAP’s co-founder Mr. Hasso Plattner. What would be a reason for SAP to buy IDS? IDS is more less SAP consulting company plus they are developing professor’s pride product called ARIS for business processes optimization. IDS is using it prior SAP implementation to map organization’s processes to optimize them and afterward to implement them in SAP software. For sure SAP doesn’t needs another consultancy. They have their own SAP Consulting division. There was another rumor spreading last year that SAP is considering to sell out this division to EDS this was really rumor, it never happened and there is no reason for that. So back to question; why would be IDS interesting for SAP? It is definitely ARIS. As it seems this product is also attractive for SAP main competitor – ORACLE. And finally why professor would like to sell it? For him as a person who achieved everything that he dreamed about there is a time get deserved rest finally. So that would be reasons for both sides? Future is going to prove it or not.

- update 20/07/2009 -
After approximately a year since talks about professor Scheer’s share sell started everything has changed. Software AG a big German's software company known for its ADABAS database system and middleware platform for B2B called webMethods announced acquisition of professor’s shares.

SAP Discovery Server

Here it is. Another initiative; coming from SDN to encourage developers to be interesting in SAP software. After SDN’s Mentorship program, SDN NetWeaver Subscriptions program another one is available. It is called SAP Discovery Server      and its purpose is similar to Subscription just there is a hosting of application included so you don’t need to install it by yourself. Cost of program is about 10k euros. You can use of course this program for non-production environment only as this is license agreement. It can be used for evaluation, test, demonstration, proof of concept, and other similar purposes only. It is necessary to consult this program with your SAP account executive or local SAP subsidiary to fit it to your specifics needs.

For list of Software Components/Development Tools/Integration Readiness/ and Content see on SDN here. Quite large scale of SAP software is provided. Starting with SAP ERP 6.0 through NetWeaver 7.0 (NW AS 7.0, NW MDM 5.5, NW EP 7.0, NW BI 7.0, NW PI 7.0) followed by Solution Manager 4.0 (SolMan), SAP GRC Suite 5.x, SAP xApps, SAP RFID all based on MaxDB 7.6.

Note that there are two versions of this program. For details see SDN.

SAP NetWeaver relabeled

That’s how life is going on. You always need to bring something new on table to stay attractive for customers and to lure your new ones. If you are not to able to bring innovations, thing they requiring you can just change the names of your existing portfolio and try to keeping selling it as a new one. That’s what I believe everybody does. At the beginning there was a SAP client/server architecture running on platform so called SAP Basis Component (BC) or just simple SAP Basis. Those were famous versions from 1.x (I guess) till 4.6D. In a year of 2001 it got a new name Web Application Server (WAS). There are 4 versions: 6.10, 6.20, 6.30 and 6.40 of WAS. Later (around year 2005) WAS was renamed to just Application Server (AS). WAS/AS became a technology foundation of all SAP software, following see what are its major releases and its former/other names:

SAP NetWeaver 2004

SAP NetWeaver 7.0 (formerly know as NW 2004s (“s” mean suite), or NW 05)

SAP NetWeaver 7.1 (or NW 06)

Along with WAS/AS renaming its components got brand new names too. See new their new names components since its release 7.0 (NW 2004s):

old:                                                 new:

SAP Basis (Basis Component (BC)) -> SAP NetWeaver (NW)

SAP Web Application Server (WAS) -> SAP NetWeaver Application Server (NW AS)

SAP Mobile Infrastructure (MI)        -> SAP NetWeaver Mobile

SAP Enterprise Portal (EP)              -> SAP NetWeaver Portal                                                      

SAP Business Information Warehouse (BIW) -> SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (NW BI)

SAP Exchange Infrastructure (XI) -> SAP NetWeaver Process Infrastructure (NW PI)

SAP Composite Application Framework (CAF)- > SAP NetWeaver Composite Application Framework (NW CAF)