The pace of change and the need to maintain competitiveness mean that enterprises today are constantly looking at ways to increase the adaptability and flexibility of their application landscape in order to drive innovation and reduce their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). One way in which this can be achieved is by reducing development and deployment times for new applications, thus bringing greater flexibility to business functionality. A key tool in this respect is the SAP Composite Application Framework (CAF). It is also the tool SAP uses to develop its own composite applications such as xPD.

The CAF provides the tools and the environment for the design and use of composite applications that comply with the Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (eSOA) concept. Composite applications offer flexibility and the fast redesign of business applications and processes, delivering many significant benefits including:

• Reduced development and deployment time for new applications
• Composite applications can "snap on" to any existing SAP landscape
• Users are able to make ad hoc modifications to the business process more efficiently and effectively

This site explains the Composite Application Framework (CAF), the use of Callable Objects, why you should use CAF and a section on how to build composites. And so that you can see exactly what this can mean for your enterprise, Atos Origin has also developed an on-line demonstration that shows you exactly how this works in a real scenario.