H&T

A development comparison

One of our clients (a risk advisory consultancy) recently asked us to develop a prototype of case management solution that they want to deploy at  one of their clients. Of course, SAP has a case management solution, but the licensing, infrastructure and implementation timeframe immediately excluded this option. 

We spent some time looking at various solutions (custom Rails app to 3rd party solutions) and decided to prototype the solution using the Force.com development platform. Here is an overview of what it took:

• Initial prototype took 8 hours to build (7 Custom objects and relationships)
• Used the standard Salesforce UI (no custom CSS developed)
• Developed approval workflows for case assignment and approvals
• All the Salesforce security features were provided "out the box" - see image below

I was impressed with the speed in which we could build out the solution, and think the Force.com platform is excellent for applications that support the database metaphor (structure applications). The licensing is reasonable straight forward at $15 per named user a month.

So how is this different to developing a custom SAP solution?

Of course having a SAP development DNA, I would have preferred to to build this in a custom SAP based solution, here is what we considered:

1. SAP Netweaver Neo - still in beta
2. Custom WebDynpro via Floor Plan Manager
3. Custom BSP solution

Of course options 2 & 3 above would require us to figure out the hosting, licensing and deployment mechanisms. But in my estimation it would have taken around a week to develop the equivalent initial prototype (including workflows). The reality is that a SAP development approach is not feasible.

Deployment advantage

Should the client decide to go the Force.com route, it is also possible for them to list the application in the Appexchange and market the solution through the Salesforce AppStore. The development choice in our opinion is no-brainer. But the reason for this blog post would be to open up the debate to other application developers for their opinion?