SAP Research RoofTop Marketplace

The process of development of Web-based business applications in companies follows usually the typical process of software development involving first assessment of user requirements followed by a long process of development and testing by IT experts. The functionality of the resulting application is actually a compromise of user requirements, as not all user requirements can be considered. As a result, there is a long tail - a term first coined and popularized by Chris Anderson - of many specific and heterogeneous user requirements or dynamically changing user requirements that are not covered by the IT department. A possible solution for this problem could be a new development paradigm which integrates the users from the business units characterized by no or limited programming skills in the software consumption and development process.

In this context, a new trend for software development and reuse paradigm known as Enterprise Mashups, has been gaining momentum. At the core of the Mashup paradigm are two aspects: first, empowerment of the end user to cover ad hoc and long tail needs by reuse and combination of existing software resources; and second, broad involvement of users and developers based on the peer-to-peer production concept. According to Yochai Benkler, who coined the term peer-to-peer production, "it refers to production systems that depend on individual action that is self-selected and decentralized rather than hierarchically assigned". Thereby, the creative energy of large number of people is used to react flexible on continuous dynamic changes of the business environment. Instead of long-winded software development processes, existing and new applications are enhanced with interfaces and provided as user friendly building blocks.

Driven by the consumer market, upcoming tools and forecasts of market research institutes like Gartner, Forrester, as well as leading management consulting firms like McKinsey show the practical relevance of the Enterprise Mashups paradigm. In particular, Forrester predicts that Enterprise Mashups will be coming to a $700 million market by 2013.

The SAP Research RoofTop Marketplace prototype is a Web-based application based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). It represents an inituitive environment to create Enterprise Mashups without any programming skills.

You find at YouTube.com a video demonstrating the underlying principles and features of the SAP Research RoofTop Marketplace prototype.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtc_ulwimYA