Microsoft Services has no concrete advice or guidelines on when to apply SharePoint versus SAP Enterprise Portal within a customer situation

At the last Microsoft Application Platform congress, Harry Tolsma gave a presentation on 'Optimizing your SAP-based business processes with the Microsoft Application Platform' (audio, slides). At the end of his talk, a question popped up from the audience on whether Microsoft has a decision matrix when to utilize MOSS, and when to hold on to SAP Enterprise Portal. At that moment, Harry could not give a conclusive answer on whether such a matrix is available at Microsoft Services. A time later I asked him whether he had more news on this.

The answer is that Microsoft Services does not have a concrete generic decision matrix and guidelines. The rationale is that each customer situation is specific, and requires a custom analysis and tuned advice. I intend to agree with this idea. With an important addition: for larger enterprises their specific customized advice and guidelines ought to be applicable across the entire enterprise, and should therefore be integrated within the enterprise referential architecture.
Reuse and application of the architectural guidelines and decisions is possible within the enterprise for unlocking and integrating of various SAP business functionalities and processes. My advice is to mandate this.

The blog of Kristian Kalsing contains 2 interesting posts related to the subject: ‘SharePoint versus NetWeaver Portal‘ and ‘EP/MOSS portal technology strategies’.

Tags: SAP NetWeaver Microsoft SharePoint integration interoperability architecture guidelines roadmap