SAP Solutions – Product Overview

Hi Friends… In this post, we will begin discussion on Unit I – SAP Solutions of ABAP Workbench Fundamentals (TAW10_1). This unit is just a preface to newbies in SAP to give them a brief idea about the offerings of SAP to the customers. Though important, its not the most important topic to focus from ABAP certification point of view. But its always good to know about the context where you are going to work.

SAP offers a wide variety of enterprise solutions catering to different business areas for large, mid-size and small enterprises.

SAP Solutions can be broadly classified into following elements:

SAP Netweaver

SAP NetWeaver is the technological infrastructure for all SAP solutions. All other SAP solutions are built upon it. ABAP workbench and runtime are also part of this element. This can very well independently be used to develop customer applications also. This element will be dealt more in my next post.

SAP Business Suite

SAP Business Suite bundles all cross-industry, SAP NetWeaver-based SAP solutions. For example, SAP ERP (consisting of Material management – MM, Production planning – PP, Sales & distribution – SD, Financial accounting and Controlling – FICO, Financial supply chain management – FSCM, Human capital management – HCM, Human resource management – HR etc.), SAP CRM, SAP SRM, SAP SCM etc.

SAP Smart Business Solutions

SAP Smart Business Solutions are the solutions provided by SAP to small and mid-size customers which reuse certain functionalities from the SAP Business Suite solutions. However, SAP haven’t got enough success in this market segment yet.

SAP Solutions Portfolio

SAP xApps (SAP Collaborative Cross Applications)

SAP xApps (Collaborative Cross Applications) allow you to integrate existing applications with each other by accessing existing datasets and functions using open interfaces. This means that you can implement new applications based on an existing infrastructure.

Industry Solutions

Each industry segment works in different manner. In order to cater the needs of different industry segments, along with SAP Business Suite containing cross-industry solutions, SAP provides various industry add-ons. These add-ons are called industry solutions.