NetWeaver Portal as EFP

[Former Member]

These questions are for the people with hands-on experience with using the NetWeaver Portal as an External Facing Portal. I would think that a EFP would be costly to implement using NetWeaver Portal due to the level of customization. Has this been your experience? It seems that there is little support from SAP regarding this arena. I have gone through many of the resources on SDN and help.sap.com but I don't see a lot of new recent information.

In the industry, does NetWeaver Portal jump out as a front runner for implementing an EFP? What is the front runner? SharePoint?

I would like discussion and not a bunch of links. Thanks.

Edited by: Mario Morales on Aug 19, 2009 12:27 AM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear

EFP is nothing but a normal NetWeaver Portal exposed to internet with fantastic facilities to reduce the weight of your content. As far as the number of customers running SAP EFP are concerned to my knowledge most of them are running a website with 3rd party applications that talk to SAP backend for the requested information by the users (with authorization in place of course) while their SAP Portal runs only as an intranet portal or a self-service portal. Now this is more costly than using NetWeaver Portal itself obviously by adding more and more 3rd party applications to your IT landscape rather than keeping it homogenous.

Here is an example of EFP:

http://b7prt05.iclfertilizers.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.portal.navigation.portallau...

Lufthansa is also running NetWeaver Portal but I am not sure if its website is a NetWeaver EFP or not but what I am sure about is if they are not using there SAP Portal as EFP they are incurring more and more cost of handling a 3rd party tool.

Regards,

Muhammad Abdul Qawi

Senior Managing Consultant, SAP Portal Team Lead

Abacus Consuting (Pakistan Army Project Blue Bird)

Edited by: Abdul Qawi Muhammad on Aug 19, 2009 6:39 AM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I guess the advantage is the cost savings from supporting another web platform. Thanks.

[former_member222658]

Hi,

we are using NW as EFP, though for limited number of registered users. it is for our distributors and vendors all over the world. There is not open content (without authorization). The first page is login page. So I dont knkow if you consider this as EFP (though it is - you can reach it from all over the world, with HTTPS, not just from intranet).

We are using normal (not light) framework. No complaints up to now.

I alone was able to build reporting system (using VC and WD ABAP) with less that 9 months (also using KM). Complex screens for entering lots of data, working extensively with backup ERP system (FI, SD, MM ...), etc. Quite number of advanced online functions (PDF reports, automatic emails with links, attached PDFs etc).

I had experience with ASP.NET and can compare.

It would take years to do the same with ASP.NET (or lot on programmers, not just me alone now doing everything - from project management to development and master data maintenance...).

If you are interested, we can discuss more.

Dmitry.

[Former Member]

Dmitry,

Thanks for your response and your insight especially in comparing ASP.Net vs NetWeaver. There's a lot of information on .Net interoperability but not much on industry experience and implementations. My current employer is researching how they can leverage the .Net on NetWeaver. Your insight is very helpful.

Thanks,

Mario