The product that the company has out there and the image of that company in the market, it's called "affiliation." A lot of people in IT are in it for the affiliation (which is the company they work for), for the money, or they're in it for the content of their job. It's always one of those three things, but if you can get two of those, that's really super and it shows up in your work, too.

There are all kinds of places you can go, but you have to really take stock in what you want and then choose the company you want - the industry - and you can always add a number of different technical specialties later. But the most important thing is you've got to have fun on the job, you have to like where you're working and who you're working with.

Reed: We're starting to run out of time on this podcast already, and there's so much more to cover. I want to see if I can combine my last two questions into one. I wanted to ask you about certification, which you hit on a little bit already. SearchSAP not too long ago initiated a discussion about the value of SAP certification; they got pretty heated, so that raised a question about the value of certification. You referred to this a little bit in your conversation already, and it ties in with another push SAP is making to flesh out the so-called Business Process skill set and the soft skills of the BPX community.

You have noted in your certification comments that one of the reasons certification is not as powerful is because there's this whole other soft skill set or industry skill set or Business Process skill set that I think SAP is still trying to define, as we all are. How do you see those things mixing together and the value of SAP certification in the midst of all that?

Foote: I can tell you that the certification industry has largely been an infrastructure industry created by a number of vendors to support their product. Certification divisions in companies are typically in their sales and marketing departments, for instance. It's heavily been about networks, computer systems, security - deep, technical areas. And they continue to be, but, as you know, the internet created this whole wave of IT jobs having to do with applications and customer facing jobs. All of a sudden, to be a good application developer or maintenance or support person didn't require that deep, technical, in-your-face knowledge that security, networks and all of that required; it required a lot of brilliance in other areas.

That's one of the reasons why I could show you going back 10 years, looking at the applications, the database, the networking, the security, the web development, every different category - we have about thirty different categories - and how they all have reacted to economic conditions, to trends with vendors, trends with jobs: I can show you that certification will always have a play in certain areas of IT jobs, but so many more IT jobs have been created that are not in these infrastructure areas. They're in applications, architecting, project management, business intelligence, analytics - and these are all possibilities for people in SAP right now.

SAP is just a microcosm of the rest of IT, and to this point we haven't been following SAP certifications because people haven't asked us for information about SAP certification. They've pretty much been wanting to know more about SAP skills. We have 1,400 customers for our research and we have 2,000 research partners that provide all of this great information for us, and we pretty much go where they want us to go. They haven't been asking for SAP certification - yet. That could change.

Reed: Makes sense. Demir, do you have any questions you'd like to pose to David that we haven't covered?

Demir: I'd like to talk a little bit more about the competitive scenario. Certainly one ramification of the skills shortage, or potential ramification, is that SAP's momentum might slow down a little bit, especially in the U.S. where SAP is already struggling a little bit. Is there any way you can speak to the way in which the shortage might transfer some momentum over to Oracle or maybe even Salesforce.com and offer as a service front, or are these issues really separate from marketplace momentum?

Foote: They're both: They're market and they're separate. Don't forget, Oracle is not divorced from SAP. There's a lot of Oracle in SAP initiatives and implementations and stuff like that, which is true of all vendors: they're your friends, they're your enemies, they're your friends, they're your enemies. It all depends who's merging what and who's trying to buy what company out there.

I can tell you my experience when I was at Sapphire. When I was speaking to representatives of SAP, they distinctly were not talking to me about the United States. They talked about Canada, they talked about Latin America, they talked about Asia Pacific, but there wasn't much talk about the United States market. So I know that from a shareholder point of view - which is where I think good management goes with decisions - it looks like they're looking at growth in Latin America and some other countries right there.

And they want to make sure they get that right because it's hard to fix things and it's much easier to start. Like architecture: It's much easier to start architecting from the very beginning on a clean sheet of paper than it is to come in after something is in place and re-architect it.

So I'd say now, for the most part, I get a feeling SAP is paying more attention to other continents right now, which isn't to say that they're not paying attention to the United States as well.

But the other part about competing companies: Oracle also, as an example in other companies, they're having talent war issues, too. These are not specific to SAP. Right now, you've got a Consumer Price Index that's up 3.9% in April to what it was last year (it's better than it was in February, by the way). You have a Consumer Confidence Index that was at 105 last year - where 100 means things are pretty good - and it's at 62.3 right now. You've got crude oil at $98.00 a barrel in February, now it's up to $127.77. The elephant in the room is not competition so much as it is the economy.

As a vendor, you can understand that customer purchase decisions are going to be very much based on limitations, on budgets that are going to be cut, on head count that's going to be cut, and you're going to be doing a lot more with what you've got. And that helped SAP tremendously in the last recession. A lot of people just made the decision to just keep rolling with 4.6 and upgrade and not to add new products and stuff like that - that's always good for vendors to stick with what you've got. So they're going to be digging their heels in and looking to continue to sell in the markets they've got. SAP has a huge market, Oracle has a huge market; they're in a pretty good position.

Reed: Well, David, I think we ran out to time, but you certainly gave us a lot to think about and I want to wish you best of luck with Foote Partners. We'll definitely look forward to having you back for an update on your research and some more exploration of these findings.

Foote: Thanks very much. You can get information on the document that we've spoken about today that researchers call the IT Skills and Certification Pay Index, that's primarily what we've been talking about today. You can get more information about that by going to TechTarget or our site.

Reed: Great. I'd like to thank our listeners for joining us today for this podcast interview on SAP skills trends. This podcast was a joint venture between SearchSAP and my site, JonERP.com, bringing you career answers for SAP professionals.

Editor's Note: This interview is not a verbatim transcription of the podcast. It was edited for clarity and readability; however, no content from the podcast conversation was removed.