SAP Unveils SDN Subscriptions Program for Developers

SAP Unveils SDN Subscriptions Program for Developers

Delivering on its commitment to help independent software vendors (ISVs), systems integrators (SIs) and SAP customers experience the business value of enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA), SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced plans to launch an online program via the SAP Developer Network (SDN) site for granting annual, individual user subscriptions to SAP software for development, testing and evaluation, including development and composition tools for the SAP NetWeaver® platform. This offering aims to make it easier for developers and consultants across the SAP ecosystem to gain and expand development experience as well as to test and evaluate SAP NetWeaver. The announcement was made at SAP® TechEd ’06, being held in Amsterdam, Oct. 18 – 20.

The SDN subscriptions program is planned to be made available through the SAP Developer Network site (sdn.sap.com), the central resource for the technical community within the SAP ecosystem, and is intended to include the lean, standards-based SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment, which is already offered as a preview to partners for building and running composite applications (see related announcement from SAP TechEd ’06 Las Vegas, titled “SAP Previews Next-Generation Composition Capabilities for Partners”). In addition to SAP NetWeaver development and composition tools, the subscriptions program is intended to include access to technical support, premium content and online access for testing enterprise services. This is planned to be in addition to the tools, forums and resources available today at no cost to all registered users of SDN—including free trial downloads of SAP NetWeaver.

The SDN subscriptions program is targeted to go live in 2007. Additional uses of the SAP software, including commercialization and production use, are subject to additional agreements. SDN is the central resource for developers, consultants, IT architects and technology experts within the SAP ecosystem to collaborate, share ideas and create solutions on the SAP NetWeaver platform and to contribute to the pool of shared knowledge among customers, partners, ISVs and SIs. The SDN community has grown rapidly since its launch three years ago, with nearly 600,000 members today.

Related to the new SDN Subscription program, SAP plans to make the price of the SAP NetWeaver developer user license more attractive to help existing customers and partners to continue to strengthen and grow their practice around SAP NetWeaver. The SAP NetWeaver developer user license is primarily licensed by entire IT organizations, whereas the new SDN subscriptions program is expected to be used by individuals and includes an annual license and value-added services shaped to bring individual developer subscriptions to the masses.

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