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SUMMARY: The SAP Service Marketplace extranet, web content hosted on the service.sap.com platform, is being replaced by modern alternatives. The majority of content sections have already found a new home; others are being migrated or have become obsolete. The most important links will continue to work.
The SAP Support Portal and SAP ONE Support Launchpad – including its support applications – are not affected, nor is any other SAP website.
It feels like "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...": In 1998, SAPNet for Customers & Partners first saw the light of day. The Internet was still in its infancy. Connection speeds were slow: Most people used dial-up access; modems reached peak download speeds of around 56kbps. And perhaps you were amongst the almost 60 percent of non-Internet users who said that they wouldn’t worry at all about missing out on something by not going online.
Well, the times they are a-changin'. Twenty years later, and we all know which tremendous impact the Internet has had on our societies, our way to communicate, to consume and share information.
SAPNet for Customers & Partners evolved into the SAP Service Marketplace. In its various manifestations, it featured a lot of previously unknown functionality (like “my” pages or personalized widgets). Though it tried to keep up with modern SAP websites, there is no denying that the train of time has swiftly moved and left the technical foundation of the site far behind. Therefore, it’s time to say goodbye:
The SAP Service Marketplace will soon be retired.
What exactly does this mean?
There is sometimes confusion about the term “SAP Service Marketplace”. When using it, I am referring to web content hosted on the service.sap.com platform.
The following will not be affected:
- SAP Support Portal. Yes, many years ago, it had the address service.sap.com/support. But already in 2014 it was migrated to a modern alternative, support.sap.com, and nothing is left on the SAP Service Marketplace platform.
- SAP Support applications, for instance the Software Download Center, the Incident Wizard to report problems with your software, the SAP Notes & KBA search. Almost all of them found a new home in the SAP ONE Support Launchpad launchpad.support.sap.com.
- SAP PartnerEdge, SAP Help Portal, SAP Community, … All these are websites that were never hosted on service.sap.com or, like the SAP Partner Portal, moved to a modern infrastructure far, far away from the SAP Service Marketplace.
So, what will be retired?
Actually … – not much! If you enter the URL service.sap.com into your web browser’s address bar, you will end up on what’s left of the SAP Service Marketplace after the huge content migrations of recent years.
Apart from the many links to other websites on its homepage, it’s a portal that offers information about SAP products and services. Well, at least that’s what it used to offer. I am sure returning visitors have noticed that many of these content sections were already migrated: to SAP’s public website SAP.com, to the SAP Help Portal, which houses the entire library of SAP product documentation, to the new SAP Support Portal.
What remains, for instance information about legacy products, is only a distant reminder of what the SAP Service Marketplace used to be. No one is going to miss this content once SAP Service Marketplace has been shut down.
And afterwards?
A few remaining content sections in the SAP Service Marketplace are still being migrated to other websites. Once this has been completed, the website will be an empty shell. If you somehow end up in a migrated content area, for instance by following your bookmarks, overlays will inform you about the move and route you to the new location. You can already see them in action for many, many content sections, for instance http://service.sap.com/crm.
Eventually, the underlying platform will be switched off, and the address service.sap.com will no longer have a target. But don’t worry: SAP will then make sure that the most commonly used URLs will be redirected, so they continue to work.
UPDATE: All content areas that can be reached through the SAP Service Marketplace navigation (under Products, Early Adoption, Industries & Solutions, Customer Involvement, or Services & Support) have been migrated to other SAP websites. The navigation will therefore be removed on June 26th, 2018.
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