Another critical component of ES is application platforms. Much like
the role of the operating system for your personal computer, application
platforms serve as a type of “enterprise operating system” for a company’s
ES landscape by allowing all of the various systems to communicate seamlessly
with one another as well as with systems outside the company. SAP introduced
its application platform, SAP NetWeaver, in 2003. SAP NetWeaver is now an
integral part of SAP ERP and the SAP Business Suite. It contains the SOA
capabilities needed to integrate SAP systems with non-SAP systems. In addition, it provides companies with a toolset to build new composite applications
or to plug in independent software vendor (ISV) applications on top of their
core ERP and suite applications.