Acknowledgments

A book such as this one, which covers so many technical topics, must be a community effort. Actually, we produced this book with the effort of several communities. We interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside of SAP to create this book's content. Starting with engineers, product managers, developers, and solution marketers inside SAP, we then extended our research to customers, partners, and analysts. Perhaps the most inventive use of community came in December 2005, when we published early versions of certain chapters for feedback on SDN. This book at its best represents the wisdom about ESA harvested from all of these people.

And of course, many people deserve our thanks.

First, this book would not exist if Shai Agassi, Peter Graf, Ori Inbar, and Peter Zencke did not believe in the project and provide their enthusiastic support. Thomas Balgheim, Pascal Brosset, Archim Heiman, Franz Hero, Peter Kabuth, Klaus Kreplin, Jürgen Kreuziger, Carsten Linz, Nimish Mehta, Doug Merritt, Dennis Moore, George Paolini, Stefan Schaffer, Rolf Schumann, Emiel van Schaik, Vishal Sikka, Jim Hagemann Snabe, Klaus Weber, and Jason Wolf gave generously of their time and made valuable resources on their teams available to us.

Several people made especially large contributions to the book, and we would like to offer our sincere gratitude. Scott Feldman, Claus Fruehwein, and Isabell Jaeger helped us obtain the customer case studies. Scott Jones and the SDN team set up the SDN public review. The writing team at Evolved Media Network, including Greg Lindsay, Noah Robischon, John Verity, and Deb Cameron, produced enormous amounts of clear copy.

We are also indebted to the SDN community members who provided feedback that significantly improved the book and enhanced our understanding of how to write about ESA: Richard Andrulis, Asher Benbenisty, Theo Bolta, Shashank Date, Jean-Jacques Dubray, Robert Eijpe, Mark Frear, Lucio Frega, Wenning Gao, Andy Heldt, Vladimir Hert, Christian Hissler, Andreas Huppert, Sujesh Kc, Shehryar Khan, Michal Krawczyk, Cedric Laridon, Raghavendra Pothula, Srinivas Reddy, Luis Rincones, Ivan Schreter, John Showers, Kamaljeet Singh, Srikanth Soundappan, Holger Stumm, Ramesh Suraparaju, Paul Taylor, Tarun Telang, Alexey Telitsin, and Raj Vuppala.

Many SAP customers generously provided their experience with ESA in the form of examples, which helped bring the book from the theoretical to the real world. We are thankful to each and every one of them: Eric Brabänder (IDS Scheer AG), Thomas Büsch (LHI Leasing GmbH), Jason C. Childers (Whirlpool Corporation), Manish Choksi (Asian Paints), Carlos Cruz (Agile Solutions), Kevin deKock (CSA Group), Michael P. Friess (Day & Zimmermann), Timm Funke (syskoplan AG), Andy Heldt (Kimberly Clark), Michel Hellmann (Arcelor), Alexander Hildebrand (Wacker Chemie AG), Brian J. Moore (Raytheon), Guiseppe Pagnotta and Mauro Tedesco (Elsag Domino), Claus Qvistgaard (Arla Foods), Andreas Schachtner (TRW OSS Engineering Europe), Holger Schloermann and Lutz Schwiedernoch (Nordzucker AG), Christian Stoecklmayer (SupplyOn AG), Masaki Takahiko (Mitsui & Co., Ltd.), Frédéric Tribel (Solvay), Richard Vinches (Manchette Publicité), Frank Wegner (CSC Ploenzke AG), and Alexander Wüest (Zuger Kantonalbank).

Two analysts, Randy Heffner (Forrester Research) and David Smith (Gartner), also provided valuable insight for which we are grateful.

We authors needed support through this difficult project, and three people helped us beyond measure. We owe special thanks to Matthias Haendly for believing in this project and playing a major role in making it happen. He is a paratrooper and a gentleman. Tobias Weiblen, our intern on the project, was a godsend who made project management a joy rather than a difficulty. Only great things are ahead for Tobias. Uli Golle, our intern for the final stages of the project, came up to speed quickly and was of enormous helpwe thank him heartily.

Finally, we would like to thank the expertsthe enterprise architects, developers, solutions managers, product managers, solutions marketers, field staff, NetWeaver advisors, and those from industry development. Their thoughts make up the message we crafted in this book. Without them, we would have had nothing to say. They are: Werner Aigner, Thomas Anton, Sheejo Arvind, Michael Augsburger, Koby Avital, Oliver Bahner, Fritz Bauspiess, Michael Bechauf, Joerg Beringer, Frands Bennetsen, Karol Bliznak, Jochen Boeder, Carsten Boennen, Martin Botschek, Carsten Brandt, Rainer Brendle, Claus Bruckner, David Brutman, Ruediger Buck-Emden, Roman Bukary, David Burdett, Eugene Cherny, Kevin Cox, Matthew Czwikla, Gerd Danner, Massimo D'Attoma, Till Dengel, Thomas Ellenberg, Marty Etzel, Timm Falter, Wolfgang Fassnacht, Mark Finnern, Claudius Fischer, Georg Fischer, Kevin Fliess, Andreas Frank, Franz-Josef Fritz, Sindhu Gangadharan, Holger Gockel, Sidney Goodman, Alexandra Gorman, Thomas Grassl, Claus Gruenewald, Sunil Gupta, Stefan Hack, Thomas Hassing, Christian Hastedt-Marquwardt, Ariel Hazi, Christopher Hearn, Lothar Henkes, Franklin Herbas, Stephan Herbert, Martin Hermes, Patrick Hildenbrand, Ramin Hummel, Jennifer Huntington, Martin Huvar, Hanif Ismail, Achim Ittner, Lutz Jaeger, Susanne Janssen, Michael Joergensen, Stefan Kaetker, Robert Kapanen, Karl Kessler, Margret Klein-Magar, Panagiotis Kokkalis, Nir Kol, Stefan Kraus, Jewgeni Kravets, Juergen Kremer, Hardy Kuhn, Andre Labahn, Jennifer Lankheim, Peter Latocha, Sven Leukert, Bernd Lober, Salvatore Lombardo, Kaj van de Loo, Phong Ly, Holger Mack, Marina Marscheider, Peter McNulty, Paul Medaille, Nimish Mehta, Holger Meinert, Helge Meyer, Atsushi Minakuchi, Frank Mittag, Gordon Muehl, Christoph Nake, Harald Nehring, Arnold Niedermaier, Gerard O'Neil, Gilad Parann-Nissany, Bill Pataky, Bao Huong Phan, Gunther Piller, Rainer Pochlatko, Thomas Pohl, Georg Rau, Michael Redford, Christine Regitz, Claus von Riegen, Ralf Rieger, Susanne Rothaug, Gunther Rothermel, Ingo Rothley, Dieter Scheerer, Eric Schemer, Michael Schenk, Stephan Schindewolf, Christian Schloegel, Andreas Schmidt, Horst Schnoerer, Ulirich Scholl, Christine Schroeder, Martin Schroter, Lothar Schubert, Manfred Seidel, Jeff Sharpe, Stefan Sigg, Sue Spaulding, Sebastian Speck, Lisa Strizzi, Bernhard Teltscher, Peter Tillert, Johannes Tulusan, Udo Urbanek, Tzvetomir Vassilev, Thorsten Vieth, Christian Violi, Andreas Vogel, Thomas Volmering, Udo Waibel, Marcus Wefers, Andreas Weiskam, Aaron Williams, Joerg Wolf, Brian Wood, Richard Yim, Renato Zadro, Gerlinde Zibulski, and Martin Zurmuehl.

We hope we have not left anyone out, but if we have, we thank you as well.

Dan Woods and Thomas Mattern, April 2006