SAP Asia-Pacific chief technology officer Simon Dale presented the results of an internal survey of SAP's 150 largest global customers which suggested that almost two-thirds had now committed to the NetWeaver architecture.

Of those customers, 35% had already embraced NetWeaver as their main enterprise architecture, another 21% intended to do so by 2008, and a further 5% expected to move to NetWeaver by 2010.

While impressive, that still left 34% of customers undecided about NetWeaver's merits.

In an interview, Dale suggested that many of those enterprises continued to hold a "traditional" view of SAP as purely an ERP applications provider, rather than one which also offers development tools and an underlying SOA platform.

Balancing the demands of those customers with SAP's ambitions to extend its reach required careful planning, he said.

"Our core business is delivering finished products -- customers still want that."

SAP's push towards mid-market customers with its BusinessOne product also requires it to sometimes tone down the technical aspects of the NetWeaver architecture.

"We don't push the SOA story towards the mid-market because more and more they just want a service that works, and they don't care about the technology," Dale said. "But they still get the benefits."

Disclosure: Angus Kidman travelled to Melbourne as a guest of SAP.

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