Onwards with Duet

About a year ago, SAP announced its first Duet customer, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC). This company is the operator of a 532-mile-long toll highway system with $580 million annual toll revenues and 2,300 employees.

The PTC purchased Duet from SAP but the business solution Duet is a collaboration of SAP and Microsoft and Duet can be bought from both giants. This application enables SAP back end systems to connect with Microsoft Office front end products like Outlook.

Any company wanting to implement Duet needs to meet certain pre-requisites. They need to have a running implemention of mySAP ERP 2004, NetWeaver, and Microsoft Exchange Server and Windows Server 2003. If any of those mentioned is not present, then Duet cannot sing.

As was proven by Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC), they have experienced benefit from implementing Duet and they are still foreseeing long term benefits coming. But for those who are just starting to implement Duet from scratch, it could be a daunting task just like any other solutions intended for long term beneficial effects. Many of the SAP customers who have been joint customers (both SAP and Microsoft) have already been using Exchange Server and Windows Server so implementing Duet could be an incremental investment. Duet exposes employees using certain scenarios to data which have been pretty difficult to get to or hard to be trained on during the past.

For SAP customers who have been considering an upgrade to mySAP ERP, there might be certain incentives if they want to include Duet but the product is still sold separately.
The Duet Version 1 and the upcoming value packs contain several user scenarios that can be easy to access without having to leave the Microsoft Office environment.
The Time Management scenario is designed for employees needing to record work and corresponding billable hours with the help of Microsoft Outlook calendar and the appointments will then be automatically synchronized and updated with mySAP ERP.
The Budget Monitoring scenario is for managers who want access to financial decisions so they can make sharp moves. They can use the budget monitoring, alerts for budget variances and postings, transfers of budgets and posting adjustments functionalities for doing their responsibilities.
The Organizational Management scenario is for all employees and managers to work on HR related tasks and get connected through Microsoft Outlook.

Other business scenarios include Leave Management, Travel Management, Reports and Analytics, Sales and Management, Purchasing Management, Demand Planning, Recruitment Management and Contract Life Cycle Management

I hope this beautiful duet can move on for many years. Perhaps one may ask which vendor to buy duet from (SAP or Microsoft). Well, customers can of course buy Duet from either company. But potential customers are encouraged to discuss with both vendors so they can be advised based on their other existing products from SAP and Microsoft and they are totally have their choice of procurement of the products through whatever channel they really want. They should also know that both vendors are giants in the industry and support can be easy to come.

SAP wins over Oracle

When gigantic companies decide to purchase or upgrade a new enterprise resource system, the buzz usually does not just get confined inside the executive boardroom. It goes straight into the IT industry and spreads like wide fire on the internet

Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) is one of the largest networks in the United States and one of the four remaining transcontinental railroads. And when the company decided to replace its old legacy systems, the buzz instantly spread dragging with it two names. As can be expected, it dragged giant names too with the familiar question: SAP or Oracle?

According to Jeff Campbell, BNSF's vice president of technology services and chief information officer, "Both have good products, and it was a very extensive search. But for BNSF, there were some specific drivers for SAP."

With China as a rising economy comes Chinese manufacturing creating a bigger demand for transporting of goods from some ports in the US west coast going to other areas and this further translated into strong growth for the rail industry. Added to this reality are situations such as skyrocketing gas prices, aging roads and congesting highways. This growth as been affirmed by many external studies showing a potential 67 percent increase in transportation volume over the next 20 years and this is what has driven BNSF to invest in band end ERP systems whose financial and HR systems were mainframe-based almost 20 years old. .

Accordingly, the reason for choosing SAP over Oracle has ranges from total cost of ownership (TCO) and systems compatibility to other minimally measurable factors.

BNS has more than $15 billion, about 45,000 employees and has operations in 28 states and two Canadian provinces making it the second biggest railroad company in the Unite States. Every year, it transports enough coal to power one in 1 out of 10 homes in the United States.

Many have speculated that the reason for going SAP is that many other companies in the railroad industry as being serviced by SAP. According to Rod Strata, transportation and logistics industry principal for SAP, five of the seven Class 1 railroads in the U.S. are SAP customers. If one closely examines, would find out that in the railroad industry, there are very few companies one can count and with most these companies going with SAP, this is a big thing.
Campbell further said: "When we looked at the long-range roadmap for future functionality and the ability to levy demands on SAP for functionality we wanted, we felt like being with SAP would align us with the majority of the industry and therefore we'd be in better stead. BNSF also felt that SAP would operate better with its existing technology products, especially IBM. SAP will play with anybody."
Oracle has been on tight competition with SAP. And now that SAP is in "Duet" with Microsoft, Oracle will have to work harder. This current deal with BNSF and SAP shows the flexibility and power of SAP and how it has solutions for virtually all kinds of industries.

When you have got the hang of ABAP

In yesterday's blog, I mentioned about getting the hang out of ABAP. As it is a fact that SAP professionals are some of the best paid IT professionals in the world, many programmers from different disciplines are jumping into the bandwagon and discovering that coding skill alone is not enough to be a good ABAP programmer but knowing about the ins and outs of ERP is as important as having the programming skill itself.

Okay, so in yesterday's blog, I mentioned that ABAP certification is not enough. To make it clear, what I meant was, according to my friend who has been working with SAP for almost ten years in Graz, Austria, if he was the screening personnel, he would not immediately jump at hiring a person who shows an ABAP certification right in his face. He said he does not get impressed with the piece of paper. But that is from his perspective. An ABAP certification could be an indication of certain level or proficiency or certain degree of knowledge that has been achieved. But then, this knowledge may only be in theory if most highly likely, there will be a hands-on screening (and an intensive one at that) to determine the deserving candidate.

So for anybody who has jumped into ABAP from another discipline but no real life experience, what would be the best way to get started? Well, if you are not that confident with passing an intensive human resource screening, the best way may be to start with consultancy. It does not matter how the small the client is to begin with. The more small clients you handle, the more collection you have under your belt transforms into an impressive portfolio. It is not uncommon for newly trained or newly certified ABAP programming with no real life experience to have difficulty in breaking into the SAP field. ABAP in particular is very different from mainstream programming language as the applications it is designed for are already in the mold of the classic R/3 modules, BW, SEM and many others. An ABAP programmer needs to have intensive knowledge on commercial or enterprise processes. Remember what the acronym ABAP means - Advanced Business Application Programming.

So, if you are really determined to form your niche in ASAP, make good at ABAP programming. Persevere in learning deeply on commercial and business realities. Remember that SAP is one of the biggest solutions for business applications and the biggest supplier of enterprise resource planning applications. Make your code work for long term uses and ensure that they can strictly follow all business rules.

You should bear in the mind that the competition is not just between two or more programmers from different disciplines learning ABAP. Other competitors are coming from business degrees trying to learn IT and programming. So try to weigh and ask the question: is it easier for an IT guy to learn business intensively or is it easier for a business guy to learn intensive programming? Never be complacent.

New Battle Foe for SAP?

In the general field of enterprise resource planning, SAP and Oracle has been on very tight competition for the last five years. Despite the very close competition, SAP has always remained number one.

But now, in the particular field of customer relationship management (CRM), SAP has meet a new and smaller but nevertheless fierce competitor in Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com has built its niche in selling of on demand customer relationship management software applications and other development platforms for enabling partners and customers to develop add-on applications which includes enterprise resource planning that can integrate with the development platform of Salesforce.com.

Similarly, SAP also plans of selling in as early as year 2008 an integrated suite of ERP and CRM software which ultilizes a a development platform for building add-on composite applications.

Both Salesforce.com and SAP are rolling out their new applications and platforms and yet they have denied any competition. But take this: During the week of September 17 when Salesforce.com unveiled Force.com as its new development platform's name in San Francisco during its Dreamforce user conference, SAP as also launching at the same times its on-demand suite Business By Design, which as the former A1S code, in New York.

SAP Deputy CEO Leo Apotheker said: "It is comparing a little hors d'oeuvre, an appetizer, and a complete three-star meal. Salesforce has a CRM application. It happens to be that the vast majority of businesses on this planet do a little more than just CRM. Our attempt is to get rid of all these acronyms. Businesses don't really buy acronyms, they buy a processes flow, a business model. We provide a complete solution and we provide a complete suite, lock stock and barrel, which is Business ByDesign] You don't need CRM from Salesforce any more. It's superfluous. No wonder Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is worried. It is disconcerting. He has every right to be concerned."

The final piece of the Force.com platform will be the VisualForce which can let developers build any user interface for any application. Salesforce.com also announced that it will add two more new applications to its CRM portfolio. These two new applications will be called Content and Ideas and will be designed to appeal to a broader user base. Content will be more about Web 2.0 technologies while Ideas is move of a service for building communities where people meet and post and vote ideas.
On the other hand, SAP has been dominating the ERP software industry and is not new in full ERP integration with on-demand. Although not yet available, SAP's Business ByDesign will be able to deliver suites for common back-office functions such as finance, human resources, CRM, supply chain management, supplier relationship management and corporate governance.

SAP and Salesforce.com have been reaching the midmarket with the latter more aggressively looking for inroads leading to enterprise markets. SAP, well, has of course built a niche on the enterprise markets.

Whoever wins in this battle, if ever there is a battle, will benefit two entities: the winner and the consumers.

Getting the hang of ABAP

In my last blog, I did a comparative picture of the salaries for SAP professionals and while the salary rate varied from one SAP specialization to another, it has been shown that in general, SAP professional are earning a lot higher compared to other IT fields of specialization. It is no wonder that many programmers and IT specialists have been planning to jump into the SAP bandwagon.

But today's SAP has become more sophisticated than ever and with that comes a more powerful ABAP too. This means that programmers from other disciplines may think that just because they have mastered the basic programming constructs, learning ABAP would come as a breeze.

Getting the most out of ABAP requires a lot more than just having an knowing coding and even having an ABAP certification. ABAP works with SAP and SAP is dealing with business solutions and the business world is full of complexities greater than any non-business programmer could ever expect.

For those who want to go ABAP, and SAP professionals say advance programmers are the most preferred, understanding the complexities of enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the key. According to ABAP trainers, most people who into training were Visual Basic and Java programmers and one the basic problems they have encountered is in making them understand the complex architecture of SAP based on the three-tier design.

The three-tier client / server design is composed of the database, the applications and presentation logic. All these components are ran on three separate physical computers. Both the database and the applications components function in extracting and pushing data through the presentation logic tier.

When programmers become more and more familiar with SAP ERP, the step is focusing on the ABAP reports generation. In this step, these programmers need to have an in-depth working understanding of the ABAP dictionary which handles all of the processes pertaining to system data. Under the ABAP dictionary which is an interfaced part of the ABAP Development Workbench can be found the definitions of user all data types including the user defined types such as data elements, structures and table types. It is extremely important to know the dictionary by heart as this is the core of ABAP development where almost all the data are filtered through it.

After learning about SAP ERP and taking the ABAP dictionary by hear, the new developers must learn proficiency in performance optimization and upgrades. ERP is all about data and systems integration and it is critical to have a seamless integration of various data sources and disparate systems. As SAP is a world leader in business solutions, its ERP is top of the line with solutions for all types of industries including some in which people have never dreamed of to be possibly addressed by SAP.
Constant practice makes perfect. A certification is not enough because the theory just slips away. Hands-on, like in any other fields of IT, is what makes ABAP developers master the area of ABAP language in particular and ERP implementation in general.

The SAP – Informatica Relationship

The SAP – Oracle competition to be the top business solution in enterprise resource planning continues.

And while Oracle does its part in the competition by going on a shopping spree acquiring other software solutions companies and products, SAP is not just standing and watching. Of course we know of SAP's in-house innovations, but it does not stop at its lawn. But unlike Oracle, SAP is not acquiring, it is partnering.

A current development is SAP's partnership with Informatica to include the latter's management tools with some of the former's enterprise resource planning and analytics products. This new tie will definitely give business enterprises better tools for analyzing data stored in legacy systems (yes, it is hard to get away from legacy system with today's prohibitive costs of installing a new system) and third party systems.

Informatica Corporation is a niche owner in the field of data integration software and services for various businesses, industries and government organizations, including telecommunications, health care, insurance, and financial services while SAP, well, who does not know that is the number provider of enterprise resource management solutions?

This deal is sort of a symbiotic relationship: this will boost SAP's marketing campaign because Informatica's applications will help the company sell into larger enterprises with heterogeneous environments while Informatica can take on the exiting popularity of the SAP as an industry giant an all of its 40,000-plus installed client base. This deal will also make SAP have easier access to sales into large client accounts without having to, uhhm, bruise is ego by partnering with Oracle.

The deals includes embedding Informatica's PowerCenter, PowerExchange and Metadata Manager software into SAP's performance management and business analytic applications and the NetWeaver platform for master data management and business intelligence. The last two mentioned applications are among the fastest growing products of SAP. This growth is indicative of the trend in handling high data volumes with increased fragmentation of data sources.

For years, dealing with huge bulks of data coming from disparate data sources have posed a constant challenge for data warehousing and business intelligence systems. But this collaboration of two industry leaders can help problems related to disparate data management by correlating isolated data stores in meaningful and efficient ways. For example, manufacturers can have a better tool in correlating error rates for a particular product with batches from various raw materials suppliers. Data mining cannot do what-if analysis but the SAP – Informatica collaboration can. Another benefit to be derived is the advantage of a metadata management application which can make it easy for companies to have an audit trail of data sources and changes to the data.

While this partnership is hinted at warding off competition from SAP's closest rival Oracle, they are not the only ones in the arena of business enterprise and the many other are not just standing by cheering for either SAP or Oracle. HP is also building a similar software solution. IBM has also partnered with Oracle in coming up with yet similar products.

All Around Enterprise Portal Management with SAP

In today's information driven world, the business sector is one of the biggest users of data from various sources. That is why it not uncommon for business organizations to invest in costly data warehouse infrastructures.
And what good is an expensive, ultra sophisticated data warehouse with exposing the data inside it to data consumers?
Enter enterprise portals.

An enterprise portal is a software system which can provide for a single point of entry (hence the word portal) to the rich repository of information for a business organization which is often presented in web-based interface. In theory, this is a framework that integrates information, people and processes across organizational boundaries.

The SAP Netweaver is both SAP's technology platform as well as the very foundation for all of SAP's solutions. And of the functions it does best if managing and efficient enterprise portal.
There two main variants for implementing SAP Netweaver. The first is implementing a federated portal network so that business organizations can share contents between portals by integrating non-SAP WSRP-compliant content into an SAP NetWeaver. The second method is implementing an external-facing portal used for a wide array of purposes for different business scenarios and handling of anonymous and registered users.

SAP Netweaver's support platform gives the enterprise portal system administrator a Web AS environment where it is easy for them to get plug ins from other sources or from his own coding. This modularization can make the system more flexible and this method is fast become today's standard due to its ubiquity. The platform also makes it easy to the system administrator to check and troubleshoot problems on one or more server nodes. The platform, in close coordination with the PDC inspector which is a support tool for content development and administration, can perform very thorough analyses of objects within the system.

One of the biggest benefits to be derived from enterprise portals is also one of the biggest challenges for the administrators. And this aspect is on activity reports. But SAP Netweaver has an Integrated Activity Reports for Administrators tool which can make the system gather and present information about the portal through an iView interface. This reporting tool can give information including those about users who logged on to the portal and about the content that was viewed and many other tiny details.

XML Technology has become indispensable in information system and SAP Netweaver leverages on XML by having features for import and export of portal content based on XML scripts which can enable PCD-object creation automatically.

Web services are also fast becoming ubiquitous with various large companies like Amazon.com and many others already exposing them for various purposes. SAP Netweaver has great support for web services so that the enterprise portal can make web services interaction very easy wherever the sources may be.

Managing an enterprise portal is undoubtedly a big challenge but using the right tool like SAP Netweaver makes the experience easier, educational and a very fulfilling.

SAP and Linux

More and more large enterprises are moving into Linux and other open source software because they are a lot cheaper as they are robust and stable. The popularity of Linux used to be predominant in the field of servers. But today, Linux is ubiquitous as it had gained support from mainstream giants such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Novell.

SAP and Linux has a particularly tight relationship with the SELinux distro. As a short backgrounder, the SELinux distro was developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). No wonder the SE stands for Security Enhanced. This distro was originally developed as a research prototype of the Linux kernel as well as some utilities for security purposes. Now, the SELinux distro has already been integrated into the mainline Linux 2.6 kernel series.

This blog is meant to focus on the Solution Manager 4.0 SR1 system with MaxDB and how it can be securely deployed with SELinux, whose modules are compiled binaries having many hard coded directory names. SAP generally is not shipped with any precompiled policy that can be employed by all SAP customers.


Before SAP can be installed in on SELinux, the following SELinux rpm packages should have been installed already: selinux-policy, selinux-policy-targeted and selinux-policy-devel.

When all the above mentioned packages are in place, we need to check the contents of /etc/selinux/config and make sure the two variable are present:

SELINUX=enforcing
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

We then need to start to build the new policy with SAP Solution Manager 4.0 SR1 by going to the directory that contains the needed tools: cd /usr/share/selinux/devel

We need to build our policy from scratch so we called the policygentool script along with policy name and the binary belonging to the policy.

./policygentool sap /sapmnt/LSM/exe/R3trans
[..some information..]
Return to continue

If the module uses pidfiles, what is the pidfile called?

If the module uses logfiles, where are they stored?
>/usr/sap/LSM/DVEBMGS00/workIf the module has var/lib files, where are they stored?

Does the module have a init script? [yN]
y
Does the module use the network? [yN]
y

After the execution, the procedure will have created the following files as the source of the new policy:
# ls -la sap*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 265 May 3 17:41 sap.fc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 463 May 3 17:41 sap.if
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1539 May 3 17:41 sap.te


There are many tutorials you can find on the internet. I think the collaboration between the Linux and the open source world and SAP applications in particular as well as ERP in general will be a great benefit to the business world especially for the small and medium size enterprises. This will mean a big cut in expenses as Linux is basically free so the savings can be rolled into other investments. And since open source is a collaboration of thousands of coders around the world, more developments are definitely coming their way.

Oracle and in the face of the planet

Oracle has long been a leader in global business solutions. But when one mentions the words Oracle and ERP, the idea that easy comes to mind is all those shopping spree that Oracles has done in the past few years in a desperate move to outshine its closes competitor SAP as the number provider of ERP solutions. But as I blogged in the past, I do not see anything wrong with these shopping sprees. My thing is that if Oracle can afford it and the potential acquisition gets a good deal, then fine. This healthy competition between SAP and Oracle will result in the consumers benefiting in the end. This is what business competition is all about.

Perhaps the United Nations thinks the same. There is nothing wrong with Oracle's moves. The important thing is the quality of the products. So much so that the United Nations development Programme (UNDP) has deployed and implemented an Oracle ERP module on a mass scale spreading out to all continents. This partnership is getting stronger with new efforts in trying to increase the user base and penetrating new segments in the market. It has been reported that UNDP has saved about 10 percent in time and money and has decided to embark on a new campaign of using PeopleSoft.


The romance between Sun Microsystems and Oracle has served greater benefits to the consumer public. New developments spring from the partnership include some products designed to benefit organizations in all aspects from economical to procedural. One of these benefits is the an implementation of ERP which does away with so many servers at the local level. Small and medium sized companies can install a smaller number of computer servers to facilitate their operations and thus save money.

An example of the "beneficiaries" of Oracle is a hospital company in Ohio City. Because of better hospital resource management, there has been an increase in the number of lives saved or reduced extent of loss or intensity of injury incurred on people. But along the way to the hospital's success in better management, the encountered problem with an Oracle implementation failed. But the mistake was not mainly due to the inefficiency or Oracle but in the people implementing it who depended heavily on the software as a magical cure it all remedy even to basic problems requiring only a simple common sense. In social speak, this incident is called an area for new lessons learned. Oracle ERP softwares are simply mechanical instructions and for now, they cannot totally "think for themselves".

Oracle's easy adaptability to local markets has greatly helped smaller companies in poorest countries. In Brazil, Oracle has fast become a favorite ERP application as many companies have experience the benefits. Because of globalization, many companies from poorest countries and smaller economies have to face the industry giants from the industrialized nations. But with the help of ERP solutions, the competition may not be as tough as could be expected.

ERP Job Salaries

I remember that in my blogs a couple of days ago, I mentioned that SAP professionals should get security certifications in order to get a higher raise. Yes, a higher raise despite the fact that SAP professionals in particular and ERP professionals in general are some of the best paid people in the computing industry.

While surfing the internet today, I came across this salary range for ERP Project Manager www.salary.com which reflected that as of April 2007, the median rate is at $114,194 per annum. And this rate is just for base salary; this does not even include yet other benefits and bonuses!


The website of Salary.com has a neat sort of search engine for determining salary. I tried to get specific salary for an ERP programmer in the business services industry in New York, New York for a company with $5M - $10M in revenue. I learned that the salary for the specific ERP programmer is around $100,000 per annum. This is really a neat feature and you can try it yourself and see where you stand and what you want to achieve in an ERP career or any other career not just within the information technology industry!

And then I got a detailed ERP job salary range in UK from this site www.itjobswatch.co.uk. Oracle ERP over the last 3 month to 14 September 2007 with a comparison to the same period last year shows the Average Maximum Salary for Oracle ERP guys is £56,365 compared to the same period last year's rate of £49,263. General Business Applications professionals in the UK has Average Maximum Salary of £58,058 compared to the same period last year's rate of £57,153.

During the past six months, the same website determined the Top IT skills in the UK and the top 10 are the following:

1. Oracle tied with General ERP
2. Finance
3. Oracle applications
4. Oracle EBS
5. SQL
6. Oracle Financials tied with Oracle 11i
7. Project Management tied with Degree
8. Oracle 8/8i
9. Oracle 9i
10. SAP ERP


I also came across http://answers.yahoo.com with someone asking the question: "What's average salary in the USA for SAP ERP functional consultant with more than 8 years experiences?" This question was posted some time in March 2007.

Two guys answered. One said more generically: "You can earn around 100 000$ per year." Another guy who claimed to have 10 years of experience with SAP gave a more specific answer: "I can't talk about someone with 8 years experience, but ten years will get you $90,000 to $120,000. Big 5 firms will look in the above-mentioned range. $100,000 would be a good target for 10 years experience. The good old days before Y2K are long gone."

In most of my searches, I have discovered that certification is indeed important in order for one to get a higher rate. Yeah, many people may raise their eyebrows but this is a reality. But above all, experience is still the biggest gauge for salary rate.

The SAP Web Application Server Architecture

As I promised in yesterday's blog, I will tackle more on the internals of the SAP Web Application Server Architecture.

Just like any other web servers, the basic function of the SAP WAS to dynamically create web pages on the fly depending on the preferences specified by the end user. The SAP WAS is high end commercial application meant to manage the complexities and rich features of most of SAP's business software solutions. The SAP WAS integrates the J2EE environment with parallel support for Java and ABAP using a common database in one server.

There are four major blocks representing the main functions of the SAP Web Application Server:
The Internet Communication Manager (ICM) – the component is an independent process that takes care of all communications between the Web Application Server and external supporters over intranets or the internet. It supports many standard communication protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). The ICM is built on a stable and robust infrastructure and communication is being carried out over a communication channel named memory pipe which is of high performance and memory based. This components anticipates huge bulks of enterprise data as SAP is basically designed to scale to any company size. The ICM can improve a website's performance significantly by using an active and dynamic caching technology.

The Business Environment – this component takes care of all business contents and the enterprise' underlying logic which is published with the use BSP/JSP. All existing components like business object can be used for the business logic. Both the ABAP Environment and the J2EE Environment are in this component.
Connectivity – this component is used for integrating third-party products, tools, and applications in the Web Application Server and makes sure that there is intensive support for many open connectivity standard. Because of the Connectivity building block, the Web Application Server can provide for a comprehensive technical interoperability across all SAP and third-party components. For exchanging information across disparately platforms, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML-based protocol, is employed by the Web Application Server.

Relational Database – Relational database are everywhere in the SAP suite of applications. In fact, most of SAP is about data and databases. Anyway, the Web Application Server can use an exhaustive repository in exchanging all sorts of enterprise data, including the sensitive ones. It also offers a sophisticated set of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) tools for successful deployment of web services.
So there it is, the architecture behind the SAP Web Application Server. But don’t get me wrong, it may look like four simple blocks but when you dig deeper into each of the details, you will be amazed with all the sophisticated functionalities that they can offer. You must bear in the mind that this is the most important component of the SAP Netweaver and the Netweaver is the very foundation of all of SAP's applications.

Until tomorrow, I look forward to having a fruitful weekend today. Thanks to the internet, I can monitor my business while lying on the beach.

Let's get to the core first

For the past few weeks, I had been blogging about SAP and all its applications such as those tiny xApps for specialized industries. I figured to understand all those, we need to dissect the very foundation where most of these applications run on.

Enter SAP Netweaver.

SAP NetWeaver is the technology platform of this ERP giant. It is also the very foundation for all SAP solutions ever since the SAP Business Suite and is marketed both as integration technology and service oriented application as well. Most of the development and runtime environment for SAP applications are taken cared of by Netweaver systems integration and custom development.

SAP NetWeaver is built on open and de facto standards in the industry. As such, it could be quite easy to extend and interoperate with other technologies coming from other developers such as IBM WebSphere, Java EE and even its competitor Microsoft .NET (Well, Microsoft offers ERP applications too).

Having a business enterprise run on a single and integrated platform can greatly boost performance. For one, it could be easy to manage all enterprise data so that a company can get an accurate picture on the strong and weak points of the operations. From that, business decision makers can take appropriate actions and innovate for the weaker aspects of the business in order to keep up with the competition. Netweaver has been referred by ERP professionals as a type of "applistructure", referring to "applications + infrastructure". This is not really exclusive to SAP in general or Netweaver in particular as other vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle are into this technology as well. Some of the advantages of "applistructure" include operations flexibility (such as the ability to manage various industries operated by one company), easy applications integration (ability to integrate different modules from a software suite) and open standards (integrating different business solutions coming from different vendors).

SAP NetWeaver platform is composed of the following core components anchoring on an active professional SAP community and SAP Development Network (SDN) knowledge repository: SAP NetWeaver Application Server , SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management, SAP NetWeaver Process Integration, SAP NetWeaver Mobile, SAP NetWeaver Portal, Knowledge Management and SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment.

SAP has been the world's top Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions vendors. Its influence on the business applications industry has resulted in team ups with top hardware vendors like IBM and HP for the development of appliances – technically hardware + software – which are geared towards simplification and enhancement of the deployment of SAP Netweaver components.

The SAP BI Accelerator is one such appliance. This technology is preinstalled on a particular hardware and is used in speeding up Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) queries and in eliminating the need for aggregations.

SAP NetWeaver is just one of the products in the SAP stack. Tomorrow, I will try elaborate on the run time environment for all SAP applications, the SAP Web Application Server.

Until then, have a profitable day!

Enhancing SAP ERP 6.0

The competition for ERP applications has always been stiff among SAP, Oracle and Microsoft with many more coming in such as Salesforce which is currently in team up with the gain Google.
SAP, the world leader in ERP application, of course does not want to be outdone. To further push its products, SAP released a second enhancement product last month. This enhancement is targeted for large enterprise customers.

The enhancement package encompasses as lot of applications with the vast SAP Enterprise Resource Planning Suite. Upgrades include both horizontal and industry specific components as well as those for the core application and web services which are derived from SAP business solutions.

SAP intends to release these upgrades progressively about two upgrades every year. I think this is a good strategy so as not to overwhelm users with both expenses and learning about new upgrades. Also having to progressively release updates breaks up the massively expensive and time consuming cycle that may IT shops go through in order to have upgrades.
SAP announced its strategy in 2006 and its continuing effort to keep the ERP 6 platform stable until 2010. But for now, the problem that SAP will have to tackle is how customers will scamper to get the upgrades.

It is still hard to say how these upgrades will be accepted by customers. Although many of them say that the strategy of SAP for maintaining a stable core for several years at a time have a good effect, many customers are unsure whether they want to spend some more money or not. Those who have been implementing MySAP ERP 2004 will need to upgrade to ERP 6.0 so that they can get the switch framework functionality which is a required in order for the system to be able to utilize the enhancement packages.

SAP introduced MySAP 2004 two years ago, and SAP ERP 6.0 was introduced just last year in 2006. As of today, there are about 2,800 customers for SAP ERP 6.0. Compared to the approximately 33,000 customers that the company has on its roster, this is a tiny number. As for the MySAP ERP 2004 platform, there are about 6,000 customers.
According to Judith Hurwitz, an analyst with Hurwitz & Associates, "It's always better to have software that is more modular and easier to upgrade, absolutely. That said, these [SAP] implementations are really large. Customers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I remember talking to a customer who said that to do even a point release is six months of work, and that's just a point release. Upgrading an entire system, you have to check and recheck every area you've done customized work to. You have to test it all."

But for my part, if it was my company that gets confused whether or not to get upgrades, my first consideration would be if my company desperately needs. I am aware that companies need to evolve. If getting SAP ERP 6.0 is beneficial to the evolution and my company can afford it without sacrificing other aspects of the business process, I would acquire it.

Better wage for SAP professionals with security certification

Nobody can dispute the fact the SAP professionals are some of the best paid people in the industry. And they can made their wages even better when they get themselves certified in the area of security.

It was in the early 2000 when certified IT professionals were getting premium value compared to those who were non-certified. But in the years of 2004 and 2005, the ground started getting leveled for both certified and non-certified IT guys.

But there was an exception – and this exception was in the area of security.

It does not take a genius to figure out why. With today's business processes getting more diverse and complex, and data warehouses are springing up to serve business organizations operating in different countries, companies will surely get paranoid with data security.

According to David Foote, CEO of New Canaan, Conn.-based Foote Partners LLC, is research showed that over the last six months, there was an increase of 2.2 percent in pay for security certification. If you look at the figure, it may seem so small but security certification was the only aspect in IT certification that got an increase in value. So many administrators and technology staff are starting to consider investing in security certifications.

Says Foote "To get a CEO or head of a line of business to pay attention to security, you don't say, 'We need to invest in security as an insurance policy.' You say, 'Our customers are unhappy'. The moment they hear customers are unhappy with service or a product, they tend to move -- this is what's been moving security."
While there are many security certified IT professional clamoring to get into SAP jobs for better pay, SAP professionals getting into security certification can get a better edge in the competition. Security certification for SAP professional specializing in roles such as basis administrator can get optimum advantage with security certifications because companies prefer to hire only one staff instead of having a separate SAP administrator and a security professional to handle a certain aspect of the enterprise. I think this integration of SAP and security career is part of the whole integration going on in the ERP world.
This security certification thing will make sense if a company understands how complex SAP integration is. SAP is the world's largest business software company and in terms or revenue, it is the third largest independent software provider It focuses on six industry sectors - Process industries, Discrete industries, Consumer industries, Service industries, Financial services, and Public services making its solution very diversified. And now with the offering of its xApps that can be deployed online, security will all the more become an increasing issue.
As more and more companies using SAP are moving some of their critical business processes exposed to the internet, investing in security certification to complement a SAP skill set will definitely mean higher pay for a professional. Now is the time to start considering a certification.

SAP xCQM

Today's blogs will still be about SAP xApps. Yesterday, I had been blogging about on the xApps, Resouce and Portfolio Management (xRPM), an application used to manage company portfolios.

For a lot of companies operating in many different industries, quotations make up a large chunk in the many factors affecting a business' success.

SAP xApp Cost and Quotation Management (SAP xCQM) is a software that makes possible the aligning of disparate functions of design, sourcing and costing so that a profitable decision making endeavor can be achieved.

Just like the xApp in general, the SAP xApp Cost and Quotation Management (SAP xCQM) is also a composite application to help business organizations turn quotes into profits.

Many people in the manufacturing industry know how still the competition is between winning and losing a customer in the quotation process. Having a very high quote could affect the company's ability to secure new business partners while having a very low quote affects the company's bottom line. SAP xCQM can help avoid these problems by helping estimate internal and external costs and coming up with accurate quotes.
The SAP xCQM facilitates the streamlining of the quoting process for Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) providers and contract manufacturers. SAP acknowledges that one of the cores of a business process is the acquisition of revenues through responding to Requests for Quotations (RFQ) from customers.
Most of today's companies not using automated ERP software are experiencing grat challenges in RFQ processes. Some of the problems they experience are extreme labor demand, more prone to error and not having very updated and relevant information.
SAP xCQM automates the many processes involved in RFQ like effectively screening incomeing RFQs, creating a quote through the upload of Bill of Materials (BOMs), automating pricing of components and streamlining e-RFQ of new components.
Because xCQM is by very nature an xAPP, it can easily do integration with disparate systems such as those of production, sales and outsourcing. A user friendly and graphical interface dashboard in the xCQM application allows Account Managers, Quote Team Leads, Quote Team Members, and Reviewers easy access to information and analytical reports.
SAP xCQM is a role based application. As such, the software is tailored according to the roles of the users within the business organization. A standard SAP xCQM allows for five roles namely Administrator, Account Manager, Document Controller, Quote Team Lead and Quote Team Member (generic). To ensure security within the system, these roles must access the application with corresponding authorizations and usernames and passwords.
In summary, SAP xCQM allow a company to do the following important quotation related tasks: Opportunity screening, Data cleansing, Flexible cost assignment, Retrieval of prices from multiple sources, Sourcing with suppliers, Team management and Attachments handling and storage.
SAP xCQM can help companies in having more visibility into cost information resulting in streamline quotation managements. With this streamlined visibility, company's can achieve improvement in internal and external cost estimates.
SAP has several more xApps and there will always be one that suits your business. More xApps blogs tomorrow!

SAP xRPM

Yesterday, I blogged about SAP's Collaborative Cross-Applications or xApps which is a collection of products from SAP and a range of software applications where are targeted to every specific industries. As promised, I will blog today about one of the popular xApps, the SAP xRPM.

SAP sees that most of the successful business organizations, whether small, mid size or multinationals, have achieved their relative successes because of the strategic optimizations of business values, activity balancing and aligning of overall portfolio with the objectives.

So SAP developed xRPM which is composite application meant to help manage company portfolios. The xRPM can manage a wide range of strategic and operational portfolios like professional service portfolios, product innovation management (PIM), and enterprise IT. Having xRPM in the business makes it have greater control over processes, products and services in their life cycles. As a result, it could be a lot easier for a company to innovate products.

SAP xRPM is powered by SAP Netweaver (I will blog about SAP Netweaver one of these days) and easily bolts in with existing IT setup in the company. It can even leverage with data from disparate systems from as relatively diverse as project management, and desktop systems, human resource and financial systems.
SAP and non-SAP can be have a pre-built integration that can provide out of the box transparency into project cost actuals, baselines, forecasts and other KPIs across the entire business portfolio.

The SAP xRPM has an easy to use GUI dashboard filled with sophisticated analytics with data sources from disparate systems. This can generate nicely formatted reports enabling the company to have continuous monitoring of the its portfolio performance.
Also in SAP xRPM’s dashboard are relevant project data with include key performance metric. These metrics relate to a business' essential processes like scheduling, staffing and budget aspects. Some at risk elements which are very critical for enterprise wide portfolio management can be seen with a centralized view making it easy for business decision makers to get bigger picture of the company.
SAP xRPM ca n allow users or managers to group projects together under a master project so that different reports in different areas of the business can be made easy to evaluate. At the same time, individual organizational projects can also be easily evaluated using key performance indicators like net present value, risk project schedule, expected commercial value and project budget performance.

In order to foresee any pitfalls which may occur in the future, SAP xRPM has a feature where portfolio managers can define critical success factor. This can further be detailed by simulating business activities of by varying project attributes and applying what-if scenarios.

SAP xRPM Portfolio Monitoring capability can help the company monitor all proposed, active and inactive initiative so that the right action can be taken. Staff in the company can share their views and important information in threaded discussions.

Overall, SAP xRPM can help the company spot the right people suited for particular tasks and employees can have initiatives in order for them to advance their careers.