Wireless Networking

SAP, Cisco Get Deeper in Bed

Apps and networking giants will jointly develop SOA-driven applications that combine network smarts with business-process workflows.

April 25, 2007

3 Min Read

This is the first time Cisco and SAP have talked about actual product development, although they formed a marketing alliance around risk and compliance in September 2006. Marketing something six months before it's even announced might seem like an odd strategy, but in this case it makes sense: The joint development is around composite applications, which customers can already put together for themselves using products from Cisco, SAP or their competitors. The two vendors are unlikely to tightly integrate their products, as Cisco will not want to jeopardize its relationships with BEA Systems, IBM and Oracle.
SAP's concurrent announcement about its NetWeaver platform's planned SOA capabilities shows that SAP and Cisco complement each other well. SAP divides SOA into four "pillars": The J2EE environment itself, rich Internet (Web 2.0) tools, a service bus (for orchestration) and a registry (for design-time governance). All four are important, but SAP leaves out three other SOA components: security, runtime management and application delivery. Not coincidentally, these are the only three parts of a SOA that Cisco provides, the first two through its February acquisition of Reactivity.
Andrew Dornan
NWC Senior Technology Editor

Building on a previously announced partnership, SAP and Cisco today detailed plans to jointly develop service-oriented business applications that leverage Cisco networking expertise and SAP business-process smarts. Another area of focus is the integration of unified communications--including e-mail, voice and podcasting technologies--into business-process applications.

Entering into what they called a "market innovation agreement," the two vendors said they plan to develop a "new breed" of business applications that make use of emerging SOA (service-oriented architecture) and process workflow technologies. Such applications would take advantage of SAP's NetWeaver enterprise SOA platform and Cisco's SONA (Service-Oriented Network Architecture), the vendors said.A bit heavy on concepts and light on specific details at this point, the vendors--each dominant in their respective market areas--nonetheless said their first offerings would include composite applications that help businesses get a better view of their flow of business data to help manage risk and ensure regulatory compliance. Specifically, the applications will combine SAP's enterprise management of risks and controls with the real-time notification, escalation and enforcement capabilities of the Cisco SONA. The initial apps will let companies manage and keep tabs of business risks in three areas: data privacy and protection; IT and network security; and service-level assurance.

The three composite aplications will be released by the end of this year and be delivered as a service that will include 24/7 maintenance and support.

In related news, Cisco said it would use its existing Governance, Risk and Compliance applications in its own enterprise.

Also today, Cisco detailed the product road map for its SAP NetWeaver integration and composite application platform, including improved Web 2.0 user interface capabilities; Java EE5-based application and process composition capabilities; high-performance service bus functionality based on Web services standards; and built-in SOA governance delivered through a services repository and UDDI 3.0 registry.

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