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Back from Tech Ed Sounding Cool: A Guide to the Latest SAP Terms in Use at Cocktail Parties PDF Print E-mail
Article Index
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“SAP OCM Toolkit” - SAP OCM stands for SAP “Organization Change Management.” I’m probably the only one who is into this particular term, so be careful tossing “OCM” around if you expect someone else to understand you. The reason I am including it here? First, because I was impressed to learn that SAP’s Solution Manager now ships with a complete, step by step, OCM Toolkit to follow throughout the implementation. This is an incredibly helpful roadmap for how to address the “human side” of an SAP installation at each step of the way where changes in roles and organizational structure may be encountered. I also included this term because Solution Manager itself is becoming a key part of the SAP landscape, so by getting a handle on the “SAP OCM Toolkit,” we’re also getting a firmer grip on Solution Manager - a product anyone with a stake in SAP needs to stay on top of.

“Switch Framework” - SAP’s term for the new ability customers have, as of ERP 6.0, to turn on the industry solutions they need. As of ERP 6.0, all of SAP’s 25+ industry solutions ship with ERP 6.0. One of the genuine “gee whiz, that is kind of neat” moments at TechEd came with a live demonstration of how to turn on and tweak an industry solution in real time. The average SAP professional won’t be encouraged by their company to fool around with the Switch Framework, but it’s still pretty nifty. The big deal is that SAP is shipping all the Industry Solutions at once, allowing companies to activate the functionality without having to track different release schedules.

“Web 2.0” - SAP uses this term so much we’re all forgiven if we temporarily thought SAP had created it. “Web 2.0” is the ultimate technology cocktail term because everyone knows what it means yet nobody can define it. Be on the lookout for “Enterprise 2.0,” a sister term implying the use of “Web 2.0” in the corporate enterprise. That term should start making more appearances shortly. Since Web 2.0 has more definitions than any other term in use, we’re not going to define it here, except to say that the idea of leveraging the web for the purposes of building intelligent communities is something that SAP has probably done a better job of than many of its customers. How many of SAP’s own customers have a community with almost a million members obsessing over its every move and providing valuable input, much of it on a volunteer basis? But if SAP has a head start over many of us on Web 2.0, they’ve been gracious enough not to point it out. What’s more interesting is this crucial question: how does Web 2.0 fit into eSOA? That’s a topic for a longer article, and you won’t find everyone has the same answer anyhow. As a general rule, we can say that the Web 2.0 concept of “mashups” has definitely impacted SAP’s own Enterprise Services vision. We can go further and predict that the integration of third party “best of breed” content services, such as the “mashup” of external demographic trends with internal customer data, is one of the “killer apps” of the eSOA era. For now, we’re safe in using the term “Web 2.0” even if we don’t know exactly what we’re talking about, because nobody else does either.


SAP Terms That Aren’t Going to be Cool for Much Longer

You might be able to get away with using some of these terms for a while longer, but pretty soon, it will be time to transition them out of everyday use.

“A1S” - SAP’s placeholder name for its on-demand software for the lower mid-market, now called BBD. We barely had time to use A1S before it was replaced.

"Business Warehouse (BW)" -  The functions that BW performs for SAP are becoming more important, not less. But it’s been decided that “intelligence” is more appealing than a concept of a “warehouse,” so we’re shifting from BW to BI. Part of this shift is surely due to the way that SAP is embedding analytic and reporting functions into all aspects of its software. Therefore, the “Warehouse” term isn’t really a good reflection of a product that in increasingly integrated with all aspects of operational SAP, as opposed to being used and perceived as a standalone warehouse. So BW as a term is on the way out, but the product is on the way up.

“Configuration” - “Configuration” within the SAP world typically refers to the key task performed by functional consultants, configuring SAP’s tables. More precisely, “configuration” refer to the configuration adjustments functional experts make to whatever pre-shipped configuration has been activated. And therein lies the rub: as SAP becomes more and more pre-configured according to best industry practices, and as SAP becomes easier and easier to compliment via add-on enterprise services, we can expect the role of the “silo functional specialist” who configures tables in one particular area to be reduced. Right now, of course, there is plenty of this type of configuration work out there, but even though the term still appears on a lot of job orders, “configuration” is not a term that is emphasized by SAP itself.
 
“NetWeaver XI” - XI, we hardly knew ye. A term headed for the SAP terminology scrap heap. PI takes over from here, with apologies for all those who were used to using it to describe Process Industry functionality. From here on out, the prime use of PI will be for NetWeaver Process Integration.

“Programming” - I’m putting this on the list as a joke, but there’s no question that SAP is emphasizing modeling tools over hands-on coding more than ever before. Speculation is that modeling tools that generate automated code could eventually replace up to 70 percent of today’s hands-on development work. I expect that this change is a bit overhyped - there will always be room on a project for an ace developer - but the emphasis on the automation of development work, as well as on re-usable “composite” applications, should not go unnoticed.

Summary

SAP’s terminology is too vast to attempt a comprehensive guide. In this piece, I touched on the terms that were central to the product announcements SAP made at TechEd 2007. As this guide to what is trendy and what is not indicates, use your favorite terms as much as you can today - they may not be part of the product line tomorrow.

Site Manager's Note: This article originally appeared on SearchSAP.com in an edited and abridged format. What you have just read is the complete and unabridged version, released for the first time for readers of JonERP.com.

 


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