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How to get started in SAP

The demand for SAP technology and functional consultants is near an all-time high. However, if you don’t already have an SAP job, building an SAP career remains a difficult undertaking.

SAP certification and training is one way to prepare yourself for an SAP job, but recently readers are asking us how to choose between the various options available. One way to begin is by taking two classes directly from SAP:

SAP NetWeaver is SAP’s technological foundation and the core of all SAP foundations. As such, it’s a good investment to take SAPNW and SAPTEC classes directly from SAP. SAPNW is a three-day course, offered in dozens of countries, that will introduce you not only to the NetWeaver interface and fundamentals, but also to SAP’s service-oriented architecture, exchange infrastructure (XI), portal infrastructure (PI), enterprise portal, application server, Run SAP and business intelligence (BI). Aspiring SAP consultants who take this course might find that their classmates are actual SAP end users, so there is an opportunity to network.

After taking SAPNW, sign up for SAPTEC, a three-day course that digs more deeply into the SAP NetWeaver Application Server (SAP NetWeaverAS). Perhaps the most valuable part of this course is it overview of the SAP development process, an indispensable skill in the SAP world.

Together, these courses are comparable in cost to the money third-party SAP certification providers are charging for certificates in countries such as India, and add more value to an SAP job seeker’s resume.

Once you’ve caught up on NetWeaver, whether on the basis of SAP training or self-study, don’t forget to ask us your more targeted questions about developing an SAP NetWeaver career in particular or an SAP career in general.

Demir Barlas, Site Editor

SAP ABAP: Dead or alive?

Veteran SAP career expert Jon Reed has fielded quite a few questions from ABAP developers concerned about SAP’s apparent focus on Java over ABAP. Indeed, things have had a distinct Java-flavor lately, which Reed discusses in depth in his most recent guest column, What SAP says about the future of ABAP.

As a follow-up, he asked Thomas Jung, who presented “ABAP Development: Update Your Skills to SAP NetWeaver 7.0” at TechEd Las Vegas this year, to take a look at the column and add any clarifications. Here is what Jung had to say:

Jon, nice article. I did see one thing I thought was interesting. You said, ‘But there’s no question that when it comes to designing new enterprise services, Java is the language of choice in most cases.’ You might want to ask someone at SAP what nearly all of Business Suite and Business by Design Enterprise Services are written in. You will find that the answer isn’t Java. But you make an excellent point in this article: does it really matter if the Enterprise Services themselves are written in Java or ABAP? No, not as long as the results are ‘open standards based.’

Jung went on to add:

Yes, to the outside world, it really doesn’t matter if it is ABAP or Java, since either way, the services are exposed via open standards. That is true. But at the same time, it is important to note that we continue to leverage the investment SAP, its partners and its customers have already made in the business logic written in ABAP.

Our eSOA strategy doesn’t mean that you have to discard that investment. Quite the opposite. You can continue to gain benefit from that investment while also extending it to new and open opportunities.

Perhaps the most important point Jung wanted to get across to us, and to the readers of this blog, is that the question of whether Enterprise Services are written in ABAP or Java is not the most key issue. Jung wants us to remember Vishal Sikka’s message that the underlying programming language is not as crucial as understanding how SAP is “wrapping” the code and exposing applications via Enterprise SOA.

So how do we summarize the question of whether ABAP is dead? We can start by saying that you can’t answer it completely in one blog entry. We’ll return to this topic frequently as more information comes to light.

But for now, we can safely say that ABAP is not going anywhere. It’s also becoming clear that whether you’re an SAP ABAP person or an SAP Java person, if you don’t make a commitment to understanding the latest generation of modeling tools (CE, Visual Composer, Aris for NetWeaver, etc.), and how they fit into the emerging Enterprise Architecture, you’re going to be left behind.

As of this writing, the final word on “is ABAP dead?” is not “yes” or “no.” The answer is that we’re asking the wrong question.

Jon Reed & Matt Danielsson

H1B visa update: No increased fees

H1B visas have remained a hot button topic for SAP professionals for some time, and we’ve covered it quite a bit over the years. Last we heard, there was legislation put into motion to more than triple the H1B application fee, from $1,500 to $5,000. The influx of money would be used to fund new scholarships for U.S. students to the tune of $15,000 annually for qualified computer science students.

Well, that probably won’t happen after all. InformationWeek just reported that the amendment is most likely about the get the boot, which comes as good news to Microsoft, Sun and others who have gone on the record to support easing and increasing H1B visas. They view the H1B visa program as a key component of staying competitive and adequately staffing projects with the best and brightest in the world.

Not surprisingly, American IT workers and consultants beyond the SAP world are less than thrilled. Steven Ashley observed that:

“…By depressing the IT salaries, the H1B program has had an unforeseen effect, depressing the enrollment of students in IT training programs in U.S. Universities. Qualified students, seeing that IT positions no longer carry the prestige, high demand and salaries they once commanded have chosen more prestigious, higher paying, or less demanding majors.”

Ashley also quoted anti-H1B crusader Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) from a speech earlier this year:
“The H1B program was intended to fill jobs for a temporary amount of time while the country invested in American workers to pick up the skills they needed [...] Unfortunately, the H1B program is so popular that it’s now replacing the U.S. labor force.”

Clearly, the H1B battle rages on with no signs of slowing down. We’ll continue to track the developments in the months ahead.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

How will SAP’s BO acquisition impact SAP BI consulting?

In this two-part guest column, veteran SAP expert Jon Reed sounds off on the recently announced Business Objects acquisition.

Coming back from TechEd Las Vegas, we were all taken by surprise when the big TechEd announcements were trumped by the news of SAP’s Business Objects (BO) acquisition. This purchase was a major development for many reasons, not the least of which was because it marked a significant shift in SAP’s “build, don’t buy” development strategy. The biggest question off the bat was a simple one: Is this a good or bad move for SAP?

Matt Danielsson’s Editorial Blog ran a series of entries which provided a very useful assessment of the pros and cons of the BO acquisition. Featured among the entries was Naeem Hashmi of Information Frameworks, who provided a well-balanced look at the impact of the BO purchase.

After Matt posted his initial features, a follow-up question appeared: How will the BO acquisition affect SAP: How will the BO acquisition affect SAP consulting in the BI/BW area? To get a handle on this issue, I asked Naeem Hashmi to share his thoughts on the impact of BO on the careers of SAP professionals. I then placed his comments in an overall context of how I look at the issue myself. Here is what I had to say:

Almost as soon as SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects (BO) was announced, the emails started pouring in. All kinds of SAP consultants, including those who were seriously involved in BW/BI or those who were looking to get involved, were concerned: How would this acquisition affect their career path? To be honest, I never truly understood these concerns.

Let me clarify: I do grasp that the BO acquisition poses some potentially dramatic changes in the SAP BI consulting space. Certainly the “skills profile” of the BI consultant of the future will change as a result of SAP’s BO purchase. But I saw the BO acquisition, which was a major departure from SAP’s “build our own code base” strategy, as a signal of the strategic importance of BI to the product line. And that can only be good news to the SAP BI consultant in the long term.

This certainly jibes with the sense I got from TechEd 2007. On the lookout for hot skills, what I saw was that the “eSOA skill set” would eventually be very much in demand, but right now, BW/BI skills were considered the most sought after of any skill, certainly any technical skill.

So it’s hard for me to see a serious problem for BI folks here – if anything, the BO purchase indicates the huge value SAP sees in BI going forward. And that means that SAP’s own customers are committed to implementing this technology. SAP would not have gone after BO if they had any doubt about that.

In order to get a better handle on how BO will truly impact SAP BI consultants on the skills level, I asked Naeem Hashmi, Chief Research Officer of Information Frameworks, if he would like to share his take on how the BO purchase will impact SAP professionals.

Read his thoughts on the matter in part two of this column.

SAP’s BO acquisition impact on SAP BI consulting, part two

In the first part of this column, guest expert Jon Reed expressed confidence in the future job prospects of SAP BI professionals. But what does our other expert voice on the Business Object acquisition think? Jon Reed sat down with Information Frameworks Chief Research Officer Naeem Hashmi for a job growth reality check.

“From an SAP BI professional growth perspective, SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects (BO) brings a great opportunity,” Hashmi said. “Business Objects offers a superior and flexible presentation environment. However, whether the back end ends up being BO, SAP BI 7, Oracle, MS SQL, DB2, etc., you still need data warehousing skills to construct a data access environment regardless if you use the SAP BI or BO front end. For that reason, if I am an SAP BI consultant, I do not worry about the BO acquisition by SAP. If I was only a BO consultant, I would be concerned, however.

I see greater hardship for BO consultants learning and becoming fluent in SAP BI. Under NetWeaver, BI training and skills are very important. SAP BI consultants will find it much easier to learn BO and become fluent in BO technology quickly.

Note that the heart of BI usage is not really the technology, but the business side of “business intelligence” and here is where I see the BO acquisition will bring a wide array of good knowledge about building user-friendly business intelligence solutions into SAP (and to SAP BI consultants).

I do not see much of an impact of BO on SAP BI consultants. SAP BI is going to grow. Perhaps there will be a robust RFC (or other high performance data exchange method) to build BO universes automatically, and synchronize them easily from a backend SAP BI broadcaster or other method.

This way, enterprise BI users would still enjoy access to clean SAP and non-SAP data and have the ability to analyze data through a powerful BO user front-end using local universes. At this point, the SAP-BO integration plans are still on the drawing boards, so we’ll have to see how the future BO roadmap will evolve towards disappearing within the SAP Solutions. But at this point, the outlook for SAP BI consultants looks promising.

So what can an SAP BW or BI consultant do to prepare for the SAP BI profession for the future?

1) Take some BO training for your short-term competitive edge. Learn the business intelligence language of non-SAP business users. SAP BI consultants need to become “enterprise bi-linguals.” Learn the BO Data Integrator (which is the Acta ETL tool), which could eventually become the SAP ETL tool for non-SAP data sources without coding ABAP.

2) Get some training in Enterprise Architecture (EA). This will help you understand the actual business processes that span across SAP and non-SAP solutions, how people use information and when/how/why they make decisions that pertain to the BI side. You will be a better BI consultant with some EA understanding, and this will enable you to diversify your profession as well.

3) I would also suggest BO consultants start learning SAP BI and get used to the SAP BI lingo. The BO universes will disappear from the SAP universe sooner than you may have imagined. Prepare yourself with SAP BI.”

I think Naeem has summarized this situation well, both in terms of the big picture of SAP BI and the next steps SAP consultants can take. In addition, he’s shared some useful pointers for BO experts in the midst of this big corporate changeover.

However, there is one other aspect to consider, which Naeem brought up in his original SearchSAP commentary on BO:

“The bad news is, we’re now seeing a momentary confusion among SAP BI customers and consulting partners. We have many different products with different infrastructures, usage and life cycle management environments. Just a few month back SAP acquired OutlookSoft, a corporate performance suite, and before that we saw the Virsa acquisition.”

This is an important point. Naeem is correct that the BO acquisition has definitely created some short-term customer confusion, for understandable reasons. It’s possible we could see the immediate demand for SAP BW/BI expertise go down as SAP customers put the breaks on certain BI initiatives until they determine the best way forward, what their BO options are, and how the two frameworks will be integrated.

However, there are so many ongoing BW and BI projects, covering so many different kinds of initiatives, that I don’t expect a big adverse impact on BI consulting demand. For consultants trying to break into SAP BI, this may create yet another avenue, by mastering the tools on the BO side and approaching SAP from that direction.

The confusion we see in the shorter term about BI should be cleared up for the longer term. I expect in the end, we’ll see even more demand for BI consultants as a result of this acquisition. It’s never ’smooth sailing’ with SAP for any consultant, and the BO acquisition could create some choppy waves for some, and make it a little harder for junior-level BI folks to push ahead. But I see some promising shorelines ahead for the BI consultants who realize that this development is, more than anything, a recognition of the strategic value of their work.

As SAP shifts from a transactional system to a business process platform that leverages transactional data, BI is in a crucial product position. That strikes me as very good news for the BW/BI consultant.

Bottom line: SAP BI professionals have little reason to worry, but Business Objects experts would be wise to start cracking the SAP books sooner rather than later. Do you agree? Are there factors in play Reed and Hashmi are missing? We want to hear from you — please send your comments to mdanielsson@techtarget.com, where one random submitter will receive a free copy of “SAP System Landscape Optimization” courtesy of SAP Press.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

The keys to SAP forms success

Our latest guest column on how to get your SAP career started comes from Mark Smithson, President and Principal Consultant, MHS Systems Consulting, Inc.

Know your ABAP
What does a beginner need to know in order to get started on the right foot as an SAP forms developer?

Well, I don’t think I need to explain here how to break into the SAP, or ABAP world. By the time you start working with SAP forms, which fall into a specialized sub-area, it is likely you have already done that. Besides, there is a lot of excellent advice already posted elsewhere (such as on this site) on the basics. So the following assumes you’ve already positioned yourself to start working as a developer on an SAP forms project.

Manage expectations
First off, manage expectations. If this is your first forms project, you are swimming in foreign waters, so don’t start acting like a lifeguard — you’ll only be setting yourself up to fail. Be honest and realistic with yourself and with the rest of your project team. Expressions such as “please bear with me — I’m new to this” will go a long way. If you are in over your head, do not be afraid to ask for help. Stuck on a Zebra label? Thrown by a requirement to create a ‘new hire’ form in HR? Need to print a multi-language form — with double-byte characters — from scratch? Think of this as an exciting opportunity to learn something new. Tap resources both within and external to your organization. If you feel that you need to take a class or schedule some one-on-one time with an expert, tell it to your manager. And don’t just tell it - sell it. Explain why it makes sense for your company to make that investment in you, how it will benefit them long-term.

Understand the context
Next, as you get deeper into the project requirements, be sure to understand the context. Different functional areas were created by different folks at SAP. ‘Messages’ in one module will be ‘Output’ in another and ‘Correspondence’ in yet another. Thus, there is no single unified approach to populating forms and generating test data. However, there are a few things you can do to improve your chance of success. Take the time you need to properly identify the relevant print structures, tables, preconfigured forms and driver programs available, and study them. Then pick the most advanced forms tool which will support your objective, leveraging any existing code you can. Generally speaking, the newest tool available is Adobe forms, followed by Smart Forms and then SAPscript.

More SAP forms tips
Here are a few other miscellaneous tips: Get a hold of a decent forms ruler, and map out the coordinates of your form off-line ahead of time. In addition, you should make it a priority to learn how to trouble-shoot; know the various debugging tools available and how to use them. Ideally, you also ought to be proficient in ABAP, as typically an ABAP driver program is wrapped around a form.

Finally, be proactive as you encounter challenges. It’s all right to admit “I don’t know the answer”, so long as you follow it up with…”and so I will find out.” A positive attitude will carry you a long way to shore.

Mark is our resident expert on SAPscript and Smart Forms. Please submit SAP forms-related question here, while career-related questions should be directed to Jon Reed.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Thought the H1B ruckus was over? Think again.

H1B visas, the golden ticket for foreign IT workers wishing to join the American workforce, has had a turbulent year. On one side, industry heavyweights like Bill Gates pushed hard to increase the number of H1B visas, while IT unions and local politicians pushed back to preserve jobs and decent salaries for U.S. citizens. We covered this quite a bit earlier this year, but as spring gave way to summer, it all seemed to fizzle out into the old status quo.

Well, not quite. You may have caught an eWeek article last week about how new legislation is set to bump up the cost of H1B visas significantly, from $3,500 to $5,000 per application, and a slew of new measures to protect American IT workers’ interests.

Today, InformationWeek reported that 13 state governors have banded together to lobby Congress and Senate for — you guessed it — increasing the number of H1B visas. This is a new level of escalation we have not seen before. Time will tell what impact, if any, this will have, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the last word on the issue has not been said yet. Whichever side you root for, stay tuned as we watch for the next move in this high-stakes chess game.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

The keys to ABAP success

We recently ran an article where ABAP expert Rehan Zaidi shared some best practices for breaking into professional SAP application development. But more information is always better, so we checked in with Matthew Billingham, our resident ABAP guru on the Ask the Expert panel, to see if he had anything to add. Here’s what he had to say about ABAP job prospects, certification programs and getting your foot in the SAP door.

ABAP certification
ABAP certification only demonstrates that a certain level of knowledge has been achieved. It does not give any indication of how to apply that knowledge, and certainly does not demonstrate that the certificate holder has any ability at the generic art of programming. If I was recruiting a trainee developer, then certification would be a plus, because I’d have some assurance that they at least could talk using some of the same terms as me. But the value of real-life experience quickly overtakes any certification; if you can show two or more years of good results, whether you have certification or not is completely irrelevant.

Breaking into the field
That leads us to the next issue: Getting your foot in the door. As you probably know, this is and always has been the hardest part of the SAP world. The best bet as a newbie is to go through a consultancy. Or, if you’ve already got some commercial skill, finding a company that uses that skill but also uses SAP, and angle for some cross training. ABAP is different from many programming languages in that it doesn’t just sit in a vacuum, waiting for applications to be developed. The applications are already there - in the shape of the classic R/3 modules, BW, SEM etc. Our job is to make those applications do more than originally designed by SAP. That requires understanding of those applications; the data structures, the flows etc. And you only get that through hands-on experience.

Business vs. technical SAP
Historically in SAP, the technical side and business side have been seperate. This is unlike much of the rest of the IT industry, which spawned such roles as the “Analyst Programmer” to have people who could do the technical side, and yet still communicate with the business. A programmer who doesn’t appreciate commercial concerns won’t go far within SAP. An understanding of business processes - or at least, a willingness to understand them - is key to be able to provide the customer with what they need. For clients to productively use the newer tools, such as Visual Composer, they’ll need people with development skills (programming is programming regardless of whether you use a GUI or an editor to write the program) - but these people will have to have business knowledge. I think the paradigm of “Analyst Programmer” has finally made its way into SAP!

Two distinctive traits of good ABAP professionals
In the past five years, I regret to say that while the number of developers has increased in the SAP world, my experience is that the percentage of those that are “good programmers” has declined. And so have the expectations from the more business-oriented part of the industry. Generally, I think we developers don’t have a good reputation. The tendency is to write code that works on day one. Few care what happens on day two. If you want to make a career out of SAP development, rather than just using it as the entry to becoming a functional consultant or manager, then I think you’ll need some distinctive traits to put you ahead of the majority of your programming colleagues. The first of those traits is a deep understanding of business, commercial realities and processes. The second trait is knowing the art of careful program design, so that when your programs need to be changed, you can do so quickly and easily, without introducing more bugs. Keep your focus on these traits, get as much real-life experience as you can, and you’ll be on track for a bright ABAP future.

You can submit development-related questions to Matthew here, while SAP career-related questions should be addressed to Jon Reed.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

The keys to SAP workflow success

We recently ran a news article called “ABAP development done right” that focused on how aspiring ABAP developers should take those first, crucial steps towards a fulfilling career. Well, there’s also a number of people looking to break in as a workflow consultant. Indeed, skilled workflow experts have excellent prospects and may be less in the crosshairs for being outsourced in the years ahead, making this an attractive career option.

We checked in with veteran workflow expert Alon Raskin for some quick tips using the same approach: What does a beginner need to know in order to get started on the right foot as a workflow consultant?

First off, you need to really master the SAP workflow engine. There are many different ways to implement the same thing in SAP, and each approach comes with distinct implications. An ‘under the hood’ understanding of the way the SAP workflow engine does things can be very valuable when deciding how to model a particular business process.

Secondly, a strong technical workflow consultant should also have a strong functional understanding. It may sound strange, but as a workflow consultant, you spend a lot of time modeling business processes so an understanding of those processes is key.

Finally, don’t sweat the certification programs. It’s simply not worth the money and effort. Real-world experience is what counts out there.

Bottom line: Hit the books, make a conscious effort to straddle the technical and functional sides, and above all — do whatever it takes to get your hands dirty as soon as possible.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Now taking BI/BW questions

You’ve probably seen the new guest expert feature called On The Spot we launched last week. First out was SAP jobs expert Jon Reed with his words of wisdom on topics like the next big thing in ABAP careers, how to become a techno-functional consultant, and how a U.S. developer can ask for a raise without getting the pink slip.

We’re now taking questions for next month’s installment, this time featuring BI/BW expert Gary Nolan. Gary just released his latest SAP Press book: Efficient SAP NetWeaver BI Implementation & Project Management, and he is a frequent conference speaker with many years practical experience. Read his bio, then submit your toughest SAP BI/BW questions.

Matt Danielsson
Editor