Trout: I agree with you, Jon. To say that all future development will move to a Java-centric approach is, I think, a little bit of a limited view of the market. Certainly, all of what you’ve been talking about, that flexibility you mentioned - the heart of that is really predicated by the Web Application Server piece of NetWeaver. Because what you’ve got is a Java stack and an ABAP stack that can be layered together to create a seamless interoperability.

As for SAP customers who want to take inbound transactional information from Portals and other locations and drive that through the enterprise, you have XML messaging logic that will let you push that into your ERP or SAP environment. All these messaging systems can be ABAP-based, and using IDOC conversion processes, you can update the appropriate tables.

I would say the amount of lucrative ABAP work out there at high dollar rates has minimized itself for several reasons: first, the commoditized offshore approach to customers trying to handle reporting tasks and other code maintenance tasks in more cost effective ways - that’s obviously changed things. Plus, there are a lot of code automation techniques that lessen the need for hand-coded ABAP, such as LSMW for data migration. There just isn’t as much need for as many developers as there was to handle tasks on the ABAP level as there was in the past.

But there needs to be an acknowledgement from today’s ABAP coders that there are some new things to get a handle on. One: that object-oriented logic is so prevalent in today’s development world. If you haven’t made that shift and understand object-oriented coding techniques like inheritance and polymorphism, things of that nature that are staples of object-oriented development approaches, then you need to learn those.

Subsequent to that, you need to get your hands dirty with Java, and feel comfortable with that, because this blend of different application environments is certainly going to continue. If you look at Enterprise Portal, everything is Java-driven on the front end. You have Business Server Pages, SAP’s version of JSP, but largely, everything is Java-centric. SAP has addressed this with their Java connectors and so forth. Look no further than SAP’s partnership with RSA in 2003 as an industry leader in online single sign-on authentication. SAP was serious about being mainstream in the business portals environment, and that trend has continued.

So, from a developer’s standpoint, there are a lot of diverse things you can get involved with, but I’m seeing more and more of the most successful SAP developers have a blend of Java expertise to deal with Portals development. They have a prior ABAP development background, they understand workflow-related techniques and development, and they understand the inner workings of IDOC RFC communication as it pertains to forward-reaching Portal-based technology.

Reed: I think that’s an excellent summary of where the ABAP programmer needs to go, that hybrid model. It’s not so much that ABAP is disappearing, but that it needs to be combined with other skill areas. And I did talk with an ABAP course instructor who felt very strongly, as you just mentioned, that one of the keys was the object-oriented ABAP experience, which not all ABAP programmers have, but that is seen as vitally crucial if you’re going to move forward with the market.

The one final piece I feel we shouldn’t neglect in our "state of the market overview" is essentially the transition SAP is trying to make, and has been for a number of years now, from what you would call a core transaction-based system to a system that leverages those transactions for the purposes of higher-level analytics and better reporting.

We’ve seen the Business Warehouse product come a long way and with the new BI 7.0-release in the context of NetWeaver 2004s, BI is now operating on a whole new level. We’re seeing a lot more embedded analytics and reporting in all the screens users are working on. I just wanted to ask you, Brian, and also in terms of the Master Data Management functionality that’s now getting a little bit of traction, it seems like SAP is succeeding in its mission of delivering this kind of functionality to clients. Would you agree with that?

Trout: Jon, you and I have touched on this many times in our off-line discussion, about the fact that originally there were many customers that felt that when they captured all of their transactional data with SAP ERP in the R/3 days in the ’90s, that all of a sudden all of this magical world of top-down executive-level decision-support systems, and EIS, and global decision-making capabilities, would be right at the executives’ fingertips.

Well, as we all know, that certainly was not the case. There were a lot of canned reports that R/3 provided, but people were still grasping for the real holy grail of integrated decision-making. I think we’re still not there at this stage. But, as you touched on with BW, the evolution of the product has been amazing. I think some of your listeners can probably remember the old BW 1.0 days when you had just basic FI/CO and SD/MM InfoCubes, and if memory serves, there were less than thirty cubes of standard business content with the 1.0 version.

We’ve gone from that to a significantly more robust and intelligent architecture for capturing data, massaging that data, providing relevant data marks and output devices for global customers that want to see distributed report information, and really a much more flexible way to deliver meaningful data.

You touched on the MDM component of NetWeaver. In my view, this is still the least mature segment of the NetWeaver offerings, but quite honestly, at the end of the day, it’s the most important. Because when you talk about consolidating, cleansing, and normalizing data and providing it in an enterprise-wide capacity, you then have a foundation to provide the type of data marks and Portals-based, role-specific information that end users really want.

Let’s face it: the SAP user doesn’t really care where the data comes from, as long as it’s relevant, it’s accurate, and it’s timely. That’s ultimately what they’re looking for. At an executive level, the more of a handle we have on what is now a digital age, with rapidly changing access to information by the minute - if we can have access to all that data, consolidated and captured in one central repository that can then be tapped and reported against and used for decision-making capabilities - that capability is paramount.

That’s definitely one of the most important things that SAP needs to continue to try to strive to meet for customers. And with SAP, I think you see the beginnings of that more dramatic change with the BI 7.0 architecture. SAP is now following the advice of its customer base and offering more of a flexible development architecture for distributing reports in a web-based type of environment, versus the older Excel-based engine, as everyone is familiar with from the BW infrastructure. A lot of exciting things are coming down the way in the reporting and overall management reporting arena with SAP.

Reed: Definitely. I think most people intuitively know that both the Basis and the ABAP skill sets end up touching on BW-related projects frequently. So, as a way of kind of closing out the discussion on Business Intelligence, I wanted to ask you, Brian, if you could advise, the functional SAP folks: Say you’re a Financials consultant, or an HR consultant, or an SD consultant--does it make sense for these folks to think a little bit about how their skills are going to connect to BW and the overall analytics and reporting infrastructure?

Trout: Sure. I mean, ultimately, you’re doing one of two things, right? If you’re a functional consultant, you’re designing an environment to capture transactional data. But, more and more, as you go through that exercise, if you’re implementing SAP’s ERP-level technology for a new customer, at the beginning of that requirements analysis, the customer ultimately wants to know, "What data is going to be delivered to me? Am I still going to be able to get information the way I get it today, and what new things are you going to be able to provide to me?"

More and more, the answer to that question is going to be provided, not by the integration of data at a transactional level for the client, but by what the BI engine can provide through, more than likely, a role-based Portals design, specific to what those particular key users are looking for.

So, absolutely, Jon, as a functional consultant in the sales arena, or finance or what have you, you need to understand where the ultimate reporting content is available, what’s available, and how these tools will be able to be used flexibly. You’ll need to be able to create functional specifications that BI developers will be able to utilize to ultimately give your business users the type of data in a flexible format that they’re looking for.

Reed: Brian, that makes a lot of sense. I think on that note, we’ll wrap up our overview of the changing SAP Consulting market. The one enduring point from this discussion is that the opportunities in the SAP market seem pretty tremendous during this upgrade phase. But it’s also going to require a lot of smart, pro-active thinking to make sure your skills line up with where these new trends are going.

Hopefully in our future discussions, Brian, we can continue to offer people insight into how to make those transitions, and maybe even share some good stories from folks who have shown how to make those moves from one area of SAP to another. Perhaps we can establish some best practices in this area that all consultants can learn from.

Trout: That sounds great, Jon. I look forward to getting into that level of discussion down the road.

Reed: Great. Well, thanks for joining us today, Brian. We’ll wrap up this industry pod cast. Our guest was Brian Trout, B2B Workforce SAP Practice Manager, and this is Jon Reed from JonERP.com, "Career Answers for SAP Professionals."

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

Download Now (Must be Registered and Logged In!)