Section 6.2. What is the value of the ES-Community?

6.2. What is the value of the ES-Community?

The ES-Community has a direct impact on the business requirements and technical architecture of the evolving SAP platform by fostering targeted, business-driven feedback from community members. This allows:

• Customers to create more cost-effective, interoperable, customizable, and flexible business process solutions

• ISVs to leverage the depth and breadth of SAP's platform, thus reducing development time, driving down integration barriers, and freeing resources for innovation

• SIs to reuse enterprise services, shifting their focus up the value chain from IT integration to business process integration

• Infrastructure providers to tap into SAP's cross-industry platform infrastructure and industry-specific application suites to be more application aware and adaptable to business processes

Figure 6-1 provides an overview of the ES-Community process. This figure illustrates how information flows through the Definition Groups of the ES-Community and into SAP's products, which in turn creates value for the participants of the community.

Figure 6-1. A high-level view of the ES-Community process