OutSystems, which provides an all-encompassing, SaaS-based component-based software development and deployment environment, has achieved certification from SAP for its framework that extends SAP apps. Specifically, it has been certified for integration with SAP NetWeaver for its Transparency Services for SAP.

The impetus was that, not too surprisingly, a large number of OutSystems customers have SAP systems, with most of them clamoring for a simpler, more flexible, more ready-to-use alternative to SAP catalog offerings like xApps.  For instance, OutSystems provides its own renditions of targeted solutions, supplier self-service and e-sourcing proverbially out of the box.

The Portuguese company, which has several hundred mid-large size customers across Europe and is beginning to get a beachhead in North America, is one of a wave of new entrants that provide variations on the platform as a service idea. Its SAP offering provides a way of extending SAP apps through a data services layer that abstracts data interfaces with SAP (and non-SAP systems) and provides back end services such as data caching and synchronization to avoid overloading your SAP back end servers. It also offers an application services layer that provide base services like auditing and logging or user management analytics and reporting.

It’s a newly carved out category for which Salesforce.com (and its deep marketing war chest) is best known. But depending on how you draw the net, there are other entrants that provide some form of on-demand development and deployment service. Some focus strictly on providing a safe, adult-supervised sandbox for mashups (e.g., Serena Business Mashups), while others like Coghead provide starter environments with rudimentary business components. Of the developer-centric offerings, there’s Bungee Labs, which has drawn plenty of attention courtesy of exposure via Web 2.0 conference kickoff, which provides an environment for SOAP, Restful, and XML service-level integration.

OutSystems has distinguished itself by sticking more to a business components- rather than strictly a service-oriented focus, and it has done so with a development and deployment environment that is heavily base on agile development mechanisms. As such, their SAP integration may not be terribly trendy, as it extends to legacy constructs like BAPIs rather than SAP’s more recent Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (ESOA), which at this point, is not as thoroughly flushed out as the older, ABAP-oriented counterpart. Of course, OutSystems claim to fame is that it obscures that complexity, and it is the interfaces to SAP’s APIs that has just gotten certified.

A closer look at the SAP services that OutSystems exposes shows a laundry list that range from basic plumbing (e.g., modify help pages, dialog boxes for question or query screens, logging APIs, etc.) to higher-level business services from SAP R/3 modules such as FI (financials), MM (materials management), SD (sales), or HR. Examples include synchronization for customer accounts documentation; vendor profiles; purchase orders; materials grouping; goods movement; billing documents, and so on.

The result is that developers can deliver new web business applications that can interoperate with SAP asynchronously in a store-and-forward manner where necessary to shield SAP back end systems from demand spikes; user and role management; a centralized document repository for collaboration; analytics and reporting, including capability to generate charts dynamically; portal templates; and generation of custom surveys.

Release of SAP support comes in conjunction with a new push from the company to establish a beachhead in North America – a move underscored by recent addition of a new VP of worldwide marketing, Mike Jones, as part of a new sales and marketing operation based on the west coast.

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