SAP hopes to attract new blood to its software development community by launching an online subscription service for individual developers to create new applications on its NetWeaver integration platform. But the company is mum on what the subscription will cost.

"We can talk prices when we get closer to launching the service next year," said Rolf Schumann, director and CTO of solution sales for SAP NetWeaver in the European, Middle East and Africa region, on Wednesday.

SAP announced the new subscription offer Wednesday at the opening of its TechEd developer conference in Amsterdam. The offer is aimed at "attracting really new people" who haven't been able to develop applications for SAP in the past, largely due to the company's closed platform and the cost of acquiring licenses for its software products, Schumann said.

SAP's move to an open service-oriented architecture (SOA) and its planned subscription service should overcome previous hurdles for the vendor to create a thriving community of developers in addition to those already employed by the company and its customers, Schumann said.

The offering, which includes development and composition tools for SAP's NetWeaver middleware, will be available through the SAP Developer Network site (www.sdn.sap.com) some time next year.

The site is a central resource for developers, consultants, IT architects and technology experts to collaborate on applications for the NetWeaver platform and to share their knowledge with customers, partners, independent software vendors and systems integrators.

At TechEd, SAP also announced a range of new consulting services aimed at customers migrating to the company's Enterprise SOA.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.