Category Archives: Blogosphere

SAP Mentor !

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I was completely flabbergasted when I heard the news today that I had been awarded SAP Mentorship. Let me first of all congratulate all other new SAP Mentors, namely:

  • Srini Tanikella
  • Leonardo de Araujo
  • Vijay Vijayasankar
  • Shabarish Vijayakumar
  • Martin Gillet

I can’t deny that I was -and still am- surprised about the appointment, because I’ve never exactly been backward in coming forward as far as opinions on most things SAP are concerned. I’ve been working with SAP software since 1997 and since 2004 I am freelancing as SAP Development Consultant. Naturally, all changes and movements in the SAP ecosystem will affect me and my work sooner or later, so I try to keep up to speed as good as I can. More importantly: I try to feed back into the “SAP Land” to my best knowledge and ability.

One thing that I’m constantly trying to distill out of the feeds and blogs that I read or the podcasts I listen to is to emphasise the “real SAP consulting world”. By “real” I mean the world that most SAP consultants face at their clients, implementing the stuff. And that’s one reason why I am so glad to be part of SAP Mentors now, because that’s what most of the mentors do on a day-to-day basis: we’re in the trenches, using and developing SAP, experiencing the pros and cons first hand. Make no mistake, our opinions and views are not the be all and end all, but they are ONE important facet of a complex ecosystem.

Looking ahead, I hope that SAP Mentorship will enable me to contribute to an even larger audience with a stronger voice. I also hope that my contributions will help new and aspiring SAP consultants by giving them down-to-earth advice.

Thank You for appointing me !

value of current SAP certifications?

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Certifications and SAP’s aim to improve quality of implementations by getting more consultants certified continue to stir a lot of conversation in the SAP Blogsphere. We have yet to see more reports and details coming out of the SAP Mentor Webinar that was held yesterday. SAP’s Mark Yolton posted a blog on SDN yesterday to which I posted a comment on. Please find my comment below :

Hello Mark,
I am a UK based freelance SAP Development Consultant with 12+ years experience. In the past I have participated in many of the SDN discussions and Twitter conversations that you have mentioned in your blog.
Let me first of all start off by emphasizing that SAP customers’ needs for better, more efficient, more reliable and faster implementations are completely understandable. Whether in the past that’s always been entirely skills related is debatable (but that’s also slightly beside the point).

With regards to your blog I was surprised to see that no feedback of today’s SAP Mentor webinar was included. This group, as Dennis Howlett recently pointed out on “Enterprise Geeks” podcast, is an important factor as far as a buy-in into new certification ideas is concerned. Almost none of the SAP Mentors are actually SAP certified, yet are able to do outstanding day-to-day work in SAP-land.

The SAP resource gaps that you have mentioned in your blog are very often filled by experienced SAP experts such as me who work on a contract basis. This is not something that will go away in the short term. My impression (based on working experience in UK and Germany) is that for experienced freelance consultants certification currently is not a guarantee to land that next contract. And I can’t see this changing in the short to medium-term. Why?

  • most clients I work for want me to produce examples of real work and value
  • agents and end clients are not interested if I am certified in the next hot topic, but without previous experience in it (believe me, I’ve tried it)
  • certification courses and admission to TechEd (except Bangalore) are expensive for one-man-bands
  • certifications are just a snap-shot. (If you’re CRM 3.0 certified, what use is this for CRM2007 implementations? re-train every 1-2 years?)

Actually, as far as my first 2 points are concerned, partners and SI’s are in a similar situation, because even if their consultants are certified in a particular new area or topic, they still need that first hands-on, exciting project to implement it. In my experience, I have seen a lot of customers who have suffered from being “bleeding edge”, being the first to use new technology in their area.

With regards to the value and depth of SAP certification in its current offering, you said: “Come join us this year in Phoenix, Vienna, Bangalore, or Shanghai … get your hands on the technology via workshops, hear from experts, and sit for the exam soon afterwards.”. If this means that a few workshops and seminars at TechEd are enough to sit (and pass) an exam that makes someone within up to 3 months a certified consultant than I feel more than confirmed in my doubts. I also feel there is a “get them while they’re hot” attitude which doesn’t help to raise the profile of certifications.

What would be a far better idea is if SAP would improve the way how consultants can acquire skills themselves (I mean beyond the current offerings), especially for those without access to partner or customer systems. Why not introduce a 1-consultant subscription scheme for BS7 or ECC6, sitting on top of the SDN subscription scheme, for example? Why? Current offerings for SDN Subscriptions or by 3rd parties such as www.sidmembers.com don’t reach far enough as these either
a) not offer the application stack or
b) can’t offer cross-client code changes.

You can only improve the quality of your work if you have access to hard- and software at any point in time, not just in a SAP training center. In my mind, this would be a much easier solution, which could potentially feed into a different kind of certification approach for the future, with help and ideas from mentors & community.

Kind regards,
Michael Koch

An Entirely Virtual SAP TechEd?

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image from Craig Cmehil's Rantings blog

image from Craig Cmehil's Rantings blog

A tweet by Capgemini’s solution architect Lee Provoost today got me thinking about the future and potential of SAP TechEd conferences:

how is SAP going to deal with the fact that lots of companies have now “no travel” policies for cost cutting?

Very aptly Lee pointed to the current economic climate which forced a lot of SAP customers to put a ban on traveling and expenses for conventions such as TechEd. This will be a problem that SAP will have to address when planning and organising the next wave of TechEd conferences taking place later this year and beyond. A while ago Chip Rodgers tweeted about the complications of figuring out the number of potential participants for TechEd given the current economic circumstances (“in this economy, how do we estimate attendance?“). TechEd attendances have been going from strength to strength in recent years, and quite rightly so. On my recent visit to TechEd Berlin in October 2008 I was very impressed with the level of organisation that goes into these events. However (and I sincerely hope otherwise)  2009 and maybe 2010 could be tough years for SAP’s main developer conference. Essentially, this got me thinking of ways out of this and thereby also making a move towards a greener way to cope with traveling as well as a smarter usage of energy.

“The biggest virtual developer convention in the world”

OK, brace yourselves! What if SAP would create an entirely Virtual SAP TechEd conference? Similar to the recent PKOM (Partner Kick-Off Meeting) and also the Business Suite 7 launch, would it not be a fantastic and mindblowing idea to entirely hold a big conference such as SAP TechEd in the virtual space? A combined use of video and microblogging could give an event such as this the feel of true collaboration. Granted, the devil is in the detail here, but there are only a few software companies on the planet that could pull this one off. In my view, SAP is one of them. The benefits and opportunities for such an idea:

  • real savings for customers
  • a truly green event
  • bigger reach to even more developers and BPXers
  • great extension to the current Virtual TechEd format
  • real online collaboration
  • target group for this already used to the web format

Now I can hear some people shouting “Bah Humbug” already, argueing that for example the organisational effort for an event such as this would be phenomenal. Another one: “What about face-to-face meetings, networking and collaboration ?”. Well, maybe, but would not tools such as Twitter (to some degree) prove these critics wrong? There could potentially be small compromises. For example, similar to the break up of SAPphire EMEA into smaller, more regional events, TechEd could go an analogous route by hosting one small main event with speakers/mentors and several satellite venues which would provide web video links to the main event, yet still giving participants a face-to-face option to network and collaborate locally.

Now, I can imagine that clever TechEd people such as Chip Rodgers, Amir Blich, Marylin Pratt or Craig Cmehil (Second Life?) have already been hatching a “Virtual TechEd Masterplan” such as this… or at least I hope they have.

This Week in SAP (#3)

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Interesting SAP related news links from the last 7 days:

  • SAP’s worker’s council wants job guarantee (Achtung, German! – english translation here, albeit Leo Apotheker translated as “pharmacist”). via, @rwang0. Isn’t the worker’s council trying to square the circle here?
  • “Never.” SAP US boss Bill McDermott interview predicts a SaaS disillusionment. A fairly misjudged and badly interpreted interview, or, as @jonerp put it: “SaaS true believers portraying SAP as legacydinosaur“.
  • SAP and SaaS: SeekingAlpha’s Jeffrey Kaplan sees SAP in denial. I thought this article lacks real insight into what products such as BBD deliver. Also, what’s wrong with being cautious about ERP in the cloud? For instance, the idea of SAP SaaS snap-on’s to work toegther with SAP ERP is a good one, as it could ease customers into SaaS.
  • this week also saw the go-live of the Enterprise Geeks website with interesting contributions from Craig Cmehil, Dan McWeeney, Ed Hermann, Rich Heilman and Thomas Jung. I’ve certainly subscribed to their feed.
  • This doesn’t come as a big surprise, as SAP customers had to continue facing the music: a survey by Panaya Inc showed that 75% of all SAP upgrade projects are still going ahead as planned, some with lower budgets. Main driver appears to be support cost avoidance.
  • SAP confirms it has won UN implementation project. Might just be a drop in the ocean financially, but bums on seats is always good PR.

This week’s Twitter Picks:

  • @jonerp: As of January 1, 2009, Business Objects is no longer “Business Objects, an SAP Company.” It is now: “SAP Business Objects.” Noted. 🙂
  • @dahowlett: “When SAP asked me how I felt about eSOA last year, I retorted something along the lines that I’d rather have an anal probe by Rosa Klebb“
  • RajeevTrikha: “India’s outsourcing revenue is $50B and Satyam’s take was $2B. But definitely the impact on India’s reputation seems to be bigger than 4%.”
  • @rooreynolds: “Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you’d like to know better”

a future for SAP in hardware ?

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Hardly anyone in the news and blogsphere commented on Apotheker’s outlook statement at the end of the Rose interview last week (exept Dennis Byron from ITBusinessedge.com). Maybe that’s because it’s too far fetched a statement or maybe because 10 years from now is an eternity in IT business terms. Nevertheless I find his thoughts worthwhile exploring.

Rose: “What business might you be in in 10 years time that you’re not in now?”

Apotheker: [looks surprised] “That’s a good question! Maybe we could even be in hardware. It depends.”

Rose: “Really?”

Apotheker: “Yeah, it really depends. Not making them, but shipping complete appliances (that’s another term for you).”….

Rose: “… Routers?…” [laughs]

Apotheker: “…Yeah, if you can make them intelligent with software, why not?”

One thing that really surprised me about Apotheker’s answer is that he did not opt for the obvious future scenarios, namely cloud computing, social media and enterprise 2.0. It could have been so easy! Instead, the first thought that springs to his mind appears to be along the lines of a vertical integration of commodities and services before and after the deployment of SAP software.

A very interesting idea, I find, as it would put SAP closer to a model that has been one of the main reasons for Apple’s success within the computing and entertainment market for years now – having control over the hardware and software together. Apotheker did emphasise that he can’t envisage Walldorf to churn out hardware themselves, agreed, but if SAP had more control over the hardware that their software runs on, their end product will be a faster, more stable and reliable. This might even be a neat solution for on-premise versions of a BBD release, who knows? The funny bit: After big mainframe (IBM, Digital, Wang, etc ) and later on office solutions (for example AS400) in the 70s and 80s IT would once again have come complete circle again. In those days software and hardware were also both wielded under the same roof, for different reasons, but it’s a similarity nonetheless.

But let’s keep it in perspective: Even if Apotheker’s ideas have no meaning whatsoever, at least they prove that he is willing to think out of the box.

This week in SAP (#2)

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This week’s top news/blog posts:

SAP Twitter Picks:

  • @scobleizer: “(…) Enterprise 2.0 is a new range of services that build social collaboration in from the start. SAP? No. socialtext? Yes.”
  • @ITSinsider: “ironically, SAP “gets” e20 better than most, as evidenced by its large communities. just hasn’t incorporated social into its sw.”
  • @jonerp: “While SAP is asking for a jury trial, still expect settlement. SAP and Oracle in high stakes card game, Oracle with better hand this time.” (on Oracle-SAP lawsuit)
  • @erickimberling: “Downward trends in ERP sales require software vendors to prove the measurable value of their solutions.”
  • @MyCustomer: “Could SAP cause a rift in its customer base by exempting Germany and Austria from it’s pricier support programme?”
  • @thomas_jung: “(…) SE16N (despite the N) was created by FI and not Basis – so not intended as a replacement for SE16” (on a question regarding SAP’s data query transaction SE16)
  • @yojibee: “(…) but not that I would want to give SAP my open source code to maintain” (with regards to Leo Apotheker’s  open source statements during the Charlie Rose interview)
  • @vchalana: “heard that Satyam is one of the biggest SAP consulting shops in India. India SAP job boards are flooded with resumes of Satyam employees.”