This Group

Wed May 5 23:15:52 EDT 2010

Hi Mike, 
Just adding the SAP employee perspective... and by the way I'm Product Lead for NW BPM in ANZ Field Services this year.

I agree currently NW BPM and Workflow should be considered as complementary.  Mainly due to existing business content and solution maturity issues.   Also yes Workflow will not be going away anytime soon. 
It is however possible to use NW BPM instead of Workflow for a new site that does not use workflow at all for scenarios that we would previously have done in workflow (e.g. purchase order approval) - provided current limitations/restrictions are understood and this is happening at some sites. 

A lot of the concepts and issues around process handling are the same.
We currently have a BPM forum in SDN, so the question for this forum is: as BPM usage grows do you want to start covering that area as well or just stick with traditional workflow?

I can't give any official details on future releases yet but I can confirm generally that we are expecting some better integration options between workflow and NW BPM when we get to 7.3 on both the backend and NW BPM platforms most likely around business event management and calling of ABAP-based applications.   We also expect some sort of import for 7.3 although I don't expect we will be translating from workflow to BPM or vice versa - more likely import of a model from business process modelling applications.  I don't expect workflow to be further developed - although I agree BPMN is easier to work with and enables better cross communication between business and IT. 

If anyone has any specific questions I'm happy to provide what information I can.  There are trial versions available on SDN if you want to have a play with NW BPM, or try out the pre-built Simple Sample Applications on the ESWorkplace site. 

Regards,
Jocelyn 

________________________________________
From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Mike Pokraka [wug at workflowconnections.com]
Sent: Thursday, 6 May 2010 1:42 AM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: Re: This Group

Hi Mike,

You'll be pleased to know that I don't consider your situation that
peculiar, most of my projects have been great supporters of workflow.

Unfortunately it's a question of commercial incentive for SAP to devote
significant resources to the workflow engine, so it's easy to arrive at
the "if it ain't broke..." conclusion when asking how further development
is going to increase licensing revenue. For that matter, I don't see a
major MM or SD revision coming out any time soon either.

What I do know is that SAP may not place great strategic value on
Workflow, but do still consider it of functional value. Of course if you
mention BOR there'll be contempt because... well you know my opinion on
it. Workflow however remains a recommended technology under SAP's Best
Built Apps initiative, now in it's third iteration
(http://bestbuiltapps.sap.com - page 18-19), and they are committed to
supporting it for a long time.

NetWeaver BPM is not designed as a replacement for workflow, but a
complementary product. NWBPM has breadth and WF had depth. NWBPM still has
significant shortcomings - a lot of them - and some won't ever go away
simply due to the opposing nature of the designs. For this reason I don't
think WF is dead for a long while yet. I see at least 5-10 years of
significant WF development in the majority of organisations. A great many
aren't even using the UWL yet.

What would be great is something in between the two, and one way would be
a shift towards BPMN compliance/compatibility in the ABAP workflow engine.
In theory not a ridiculous undertaking as the SAP-WF design is not too far
off BPMN rules (close enough that I advocate BPMN as a documentation
standard for workflows). As NWBPM is BPMN-based, it would make things a
little more portable between the two engines. In dreamland that would
allow people to design a process independent of either and deploy
different parts of it on whichever engine is most suitable.

Cheers,
Mike

develop it further, because the amount of effort required to impact
=licensing revenue?

On Tue, May 4, 2010 9:45 pm, Madgambler wrote:
> Much as I'd like to agree with you Susan, I see and hear plenty to the
> contrary from SAP's own consultants every day  here in the UK. And it
> disappoints me because I see a lot of untapped potential being
> overlooked because: a) it's considered to be 'old' so it's not being
> taught in Walldorf/Mumbai, b) it's entirely dependent on ABAP to
> function and c) SAP are trying to abandon their traditional Gui for
> Web UI / BOL / GenIL at an alarming rate.
>
> Granted our situation is a bit peculiar because of the size of the
> system and the (over)dependence on Workflow here but I feel I have to
> regularly defend Workflow as a 'workhorse' on a daily basis. And to be
> honest I'm starting to regard it more and more as an obsolete dead-end
> as that seems to be the overwhelming attitude of anyone coming in from
> the CRM and PI worlds. I don't really believe that it is dead by the
> way but I do think the bell is tolling faintly.
>
> Start talking about BOR to a CRM Consultant these days and you'll hear
> a guffaw of contempt followed swiftly by a dismissal about it being
> yesterday's tool with a limited future. Mention SBWP to the latest
> breed of Developers and  half won't have a clue the other half won't
> care, prefering to talk instead about the Web UI home page instead.
>
> Now it could be just me but I really don't see any investment in
> Workflow stuff, just a tacit acceptance that it's hanging around so
> people have to be aware of it and be backwards compatible. The only
> driving force behind Workflow now appears to come from the clients who
> use it and rely on it.
>
> As with ABAP it seems that SAP aren't dumb, they know they have cash
> cow with Workflow. So it's not like it's going to disappear anytime
> soon. But apart from the massive OO heart bypass we saw from 4.6c to
> ECC 6 little else is on the horizon as far as we know. Perhaps you
> know different?
>
> Mike GT
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 4 May 2010, at 20:25, "Keohan, Susan - 1140 - MITLL" <keohan at ll.mit.edu
>  > wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>> I have seen the decrease in traffic over the past few years.  As a
>> matter of
>> fact, I proposed sunsetting this forum in 2007 - at it's 10-year
>> birthday.
>> At the time, many subscribers asked that the list be kept alive, and
>> so it
>> is.
>> As long as someone sees benefit in it, then it is serving its'
>> purpose.
>>
>> Perhaps one way to increase traffic and pour more knowledge into the
>> SAP-WUG
>> fountain is to make a commitment to try to answer - say one question
>> a week
>> - even if it's a little time-consuming?  I'll sign up for that.
>>
>> As for Business Workflow receding and waning as a skill set - I
>> respectfully
>> disagree.  It's true there are new tools and new technologies,  but
>> I still
>> see workflow as the workhorse it is.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sue
>>
>> ----
>> Susan R. Keohan
>> SAP Workflow Specialist
>> Enterprise Applications
>> Information Services Department
>> MIT Lincoln Laboratory
>> 244 Wood Street, LI-200
>> Lexington, MA. 02420
>> 781-981-3561
>> keohan at LL.MIT.EDU
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On
>> Behalf Of
>> Madgambler
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 3:04 PM
>> To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
>> Cc: SAP Workflow Users' Group; sap-wug-request at mit.edu
>> Subject: Re: This Group
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> No point replying to other posts on this thread as the original
>> message is succinct enough to merit a direct response.
>>
>> I think the attention being paid to this forum is directly
>> proportional to the amount and complexity of Workflow development
>> being carried out and the depth of Workflow development experience in
>> the average subscriber.
>>
>> Now it could be argued that fewer 'new' Workflow issues being
>> discussed here could mean good or bad things are happening in the real
>> world. From my personal experience it seems more likely that SAP
>> Buisiness Workflow is receding as a tool and waning as a skillset.
>>
>> Granted it's more immediately accessible to the general Client because
>> it's embedded in the standard offering. But are people pushing the
>> boundaries of what it can do or have we hit them already and that's as
>> far as SAP plan to take it?
>>
>> These days the juicier Business Process Modelling projects are being
>> done in the Composite Environment (Java) arena and less often in the
>> ABAP stack at all.
>>
>> So rather than this Forum losing support I would actually argue that
>> Workflow itself has reached a plateau and stopped evolving. Perhaps
>> only for a while...
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Mike GT
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On 4 May 2010, at 16:48, Nash John <emailtonash at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> I get the feeling that this group is slowly but steadily loosing its
>>> significance as I don't see members active/willing to get involved
>>> in discussion/help as it used to be 3 to 4 years ago.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Nash
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> SAP-WUG at mit.edu
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