Category: 3rd Party Solutions

Last December I wrote about how we were dedicating 2011 to integrating Magento with SAP’s Business Suite platform (R3, ECC, All-in-One) via our b2b2dot0 service.  We’ve learned a lot in the past seven months and today, on the eve of Office Relief’s ecommerce website going live; I’m going to start to share some of our findings with the community as a whole. To begin with, as with all IT based projects, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that integrating Magento with SAP is strictly a technical exercise. It is far from it.

Unless you hang around with SAP developers or independent SAP analysts, you may not be aware that there is a conflict brewing over how SAP wants to charge for its new technology platforms. Specifically, the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) and SAP NetWeaver Gateway

To sell more product. Plain and simple.

The need for a usable catalog comes as no surprise to anyone focused on their B2C business, but why is it so hard to convince the B2B community of the value of an online product catalog?

The irony is that everywhere we turn, these B2B organizations are producing catalogs.  They have to be, otherwise how would anyone know what products to buy or materials to reorder?  Unfortunately, they are still focused on producing only print versions of their catalogs.  They are still operating in the pre-Internet model of mail them a catalog (or email, or download, or view a flash version of that print catalog) and then let them use the standard ordering channels to buy (phone, fax, email…or even an SAP disconnected webshop).

It's been a long time since my last Ruby blog...so I wanted to something nice...instead of emulate any SAP transaction, it was time for me to engage with new SAP technologies, and Gateway really looks promising...so...what's Gateway? Gateway is based on OData, which allows us to perform CRUD operations on WebService like applications...in other words...it's just awesome technology -;) If you want to find out more, please refer to this homepage on SCN "SAP NetWeaver Gateway Demo System". So...we can access Gateway using many technologies, for example JavaScript or Java for Blackberry. But for sure, I wanted to go beyond those awesome examples, and searched for other ways to consume Gateway data...on the OData SDK List I found a Ruby gem called Ruby_OData, which works awesome for services like Netflix OData, but didn't work to well for SAP Gateway services... As you may know...here on SCN, we're like family, so we like to work together on some nice project, so as you can see here...that's what we did -;) SAP NETWEAVER GATEWAY DEMO SYSTEM With the gem working, I knew I wanted to blog about it ...

You've build the next big thing when it comes to complementary solutions for an SAP product. But how do you get the word out and show prospective customers through your solution without sitting down face to face. Heres an example of an approach we have put together for SAP Business One Software Solution Partners.

APM is one of the most effective third party SAP solutions you may not have heard of. APM addresses the cumbersome and time-consuming process of security testing by providing a new level of transparency and control over security testing. Here's our review.

Duet Enterprise natively only supports flattened SAP data entities. Typically however business data exhibits a complex structure. Via custom programming against the SharePoint BCS ObjectModel it is possible to integrate complex SAP business entities via Duet Enterprise in SharePoint.

The online portal apps4erp comprises some 250 SAP add-ons and includes price information. It gives SAP partners a platform to publicize their developments and helps customers find the app they're looking for.

Prominent in both SAP's and Microsoft's technology roadmap's, the Open Data Protocol(OData) promises to break down data silos and simplify integration.

The new version of the Duet Enterprise Developer Guide now includes a chapter on how to develop Create, Update and Delete operations. Another new chapter explains how to use the Starter Services as development examples for your own development.

Northgate Arinso is fairly well-known as an HR outsourcer, particularly in Europe. What’s lesser known is that NGA also provides its own platform (euHReka) that cuts across payroll, HR administration and talent management. orthgate Arinso provides a multi-tenant, modern platform based on SAP data structures. Organisations that are looking to stay within their SAP IT strategy and leverage existing investments may find an appealing alternative.

The recently announced SAP NetWeaver Gateway enables accessing Business Suite data via REST and OData. You may wonder why we opted for OData instead of brewing our own dialect for REST service. Here's why.

The Adobe Flash Builder and SAP NetWeaver Gateway Integration project is focused on helping developers more easily consume data and services from SAP R3 implementations within Flex applications. Additional new features are being added to Flash Builder that will allow developers to introspect SAP services that have been exposed by NetWeaver. This post contains a video of the design time environment.

SAP has announced plans to interconnect its software with Microsoft's development platforms, making it easier for .NET and Azure developers to build applications that feed into SAP's fleet of business intelligence programs. The collaboration, announced on Wednesday at SAP's Sapphire Now conference in Orlando, Florida, sees the companies tighten a historical collaboration. The goal of the two firms is to make it easier for .NET developers to access SAP applications without needing a fine-grained understanding of the programs.

Using a SAPlink often? Want to squeeze out of it more? A new plugin will ease your developer's life by allowing you to add and rename objects that are contained in Nuggets.