There was a lot of buzz about the upcoming NetWeaver 7.1 at Sapphire the other week. Releasing in Q3 this year, it’s positioned as the springboard for really getting into SOA in the real world. NetWeaver 7.1 is a major milestone for SAP that packs plenty of juice, with a full Enterprise Services Repository which enables users to dig into ES composite use and creation, as well as laying the groundwork for SAP’s business process initiative.

Simply put, SAP’s Enterprise SOA bandwagon is on the move. But at the same time, SAP’s A1S on-demand ERP solution was one of the other big stories of Sapphire. Given the luke-warm reception of SAP CRM on-demand last year, it may seem a bit puzzling why SAP would double down on both sides of the fence. That’s why it was interesting to read Brad Shimmin’s take on the SOA vs. SaaS debate.

Conflict entertains, he said, but the sensible thing is to use SOA as a foundation for SaaS.

“Using an Enterprise Service Bus, SOA solutions can transform disparate data formats, mediate different protocols, and orchestrate transactions. Imagine if an enterprise that employs SOA internally were also to use a SaaS application, say Salesforce.com. That enterprise could use its ESB to connect Salesforce.com to its ERP or CRM systems. Salesforce.com, of course, has been shooting for this goal since 2005. But the real bang won’t come until SaaS customers themselves maintain a SOA infrastructure internally.”

In other words, these concepts are hardly mutually exclusive. That’s certainly food for thought in light of SAP’s stated goal of chasing both rabbits simultaneously.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Additional pay for IT certifications and non certified skills is being incorporated into workers’ base salaries, according to the latest research from New Canaan, Conn.-based job research firm, Foot Partners. David Foote, CEO of Foote Partners, said such salary-based tech skills pay allows employers to pay employees for skills that match actual on the job responsibilities.

Foote is well known for his firm’s hot technical skills and certification pay index. So far, 51% of 54,000 IT pros surveyed  are receiving technology-related skill pay in their compensation packages, according to Foote’s firm.

Every category of non certified skills showed positive annual growth, according to Foote. The firm’s latest quarterly research covers the period of April 1 through July 1.

Among the fastest growing non certified skill areas:

• Enterprise business applications
• Application development tools
• Networking and communications

Some specific areas that are hot: NetWeaver; SAP modules: Payroll, PS, HR, SD, CA, CO, FI; and Oracle enterprise applications. WebSphere, SUN Java System Messaging Server and Microsoft .NET skills were also big performers.

Certifications are also paying well according to Foote. “Certifications continue to be worth more on average for IT workers who choose to make the effort to obtain them,” Foote said in his report.

Among the fastest growing certified skill areas:

• Apps development
• Security

Non certified skills are growing at a faster rate than certified skills. Still, employers are looking at how an applicant has used his or her skills. To get that job, you have to demonstrate you can use the skills you place on your resume.

SearchSAP will be covering Foote's research over the next week or so. Stay tuned.

-Rob Westervelt
News Editor

A number of job recruiters and SAP consultancies say they are having trouble finding their clients the right experts to manage SAP projects.

Activity is picking up with some SAP customers choosing to upgrade to take full use of NetWeaver and mySAP ERP 2005. Other SAP firms are adding a variety of SAP applications, fueling a need for SAP pros with customer relationship management knowledge, master data management expertise and SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP XI) skills.

The result could be costly project delays for some companies, according to AMR Research.

Some firms thought they could rely on India to fill in the gap of qualified experts, but a job recruiter and SAP consultant told me the number of qualified personnel in India is also limited. Another job recruiter said that SAP projects seem to come in waves throughout the year, making tracking down the right qualified applicants for positions all the more difficult.

I’ll update this post with a link to a news story on this issue at SearchSAP.com.

I’m interested in hearing your experiences here. Has the SAP job market for consultants made a full turnaround? What areas are hot? And why do SAP pros appear to be falling behind the latest SAP technologies?

****Update: Check out the latest news story: SAP firms struggle to find experts

-Rob Westervelt
News Editor

I had the opportunity to chat with Craig Cmehil, an SAP employee who developed what’s becoming a popular scripting environment. Cmehil developed the product on his own time and focused on putting together a package of scripting tools that support developers in SAP environments. Called Scripting in a Box, the development environment supports Perl, PHP, and Python and Ruby and support for Ruby on Rails will be released as early as this week in version 1.0.

So what’s all the hype about? Well, Cmehil said that most SAP customers are using Java or .NET, but a growing number of developers are moving toward open source programming languages. PHP, Perl and others take up much less space doing with 20 lines of code what 100 lines of code will do in Java.

For a long time, developers have had a hard time convincing upper level managers to move forward with scripting projects. Often many pieces and correct versions of various tools are needed in order for the whole project to work. The process seemed too complicated. Scripting in a Box solves that and also includes test applications that can connect with SAP back-end systems.

This blog is now into its second month of existence, and we'd love to hear what you think of it so far. Is it helpful? Is there something you wish we'd talk about more? Could we do something better? We're especially interested to hear what kind of topics are interesting enough to make you consider chiming in as a discussion participant.

Please either reply to this post or send an email to mdanielsson@techtarget.com and let me know what you think.

And here's the kicker: one random reader will receive a free SAP book bundle, courtesy of the friendly folks at SAP Press, for the trouble. The bundle consists of:

• SAP BW Data Modeling by Norbert Egger, et al. (click here for an excerpt)
• SAP R/3 System Administration by Sigrid Hagemann and Liane Will
• SAP NetWeaver Roadmap by Steffen Karch and Loren Heilig

So send me your comments between now and April 30, 2006, and don't forget to include your contact information in case you win. Good luck!

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Have you dreamt of becoming your own boss? Tempted by the fat rates a good independent consultant can command? You're not alone, that's for sure — consulting remains one of the hottest career-related topics on the site year after year. The most common question is the obvious one: "How do I break into consulting?", usually followed by: "How do I ensure success?"

Well, we decided to address these questions once and for all. In these two new special reports, we get the advice from veteran SAP career guru Jon Reed from SAPtips.com as well as research analyst Bill Scheer from Kennedy Information, Inc.

The topics of the first report, simply entitled: Breaking into SAP consulting, include:

• How much experience you need before you're ready to make the leap.
• Mapping your current skillset to your chosen niche.
• Identifying and getting on track towards the Next Big Thing.
• Dealing with offshore outsourcing.
• How to best capitalize on the upcoming R/3 4.6C to mySAP ERP migration wave.

Of course, there's more to successful consulting than this. That's why we have a companion piece entitled: Tips and tricks for SAP consulting success. This report covers issues like:

• Picking the "right" projects — looking beyond monetary compensation.
• Self-promotion and networking.
• The pros and cons of getting gigs through intermediaries.
• Recognizing your limitations and avoiding biting off more than you can chew.
• The benefits of partnering with an offshore firm.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

One of our sister sites, Search400.com ran a story about a company that is dropping vendor support of its JDE World applications. The firm is choosing a third party provider for support services. I’d like to hear your comments about this. What are the advantages and drawbacks of choosing a third party support provider? If a company isn’t going to upgrade, is there still a sense of comfort in keeping vendor support and maintenance?

Oracle Corp. has a mantra about the associated risks of choosing a third party support provider. Information Week ran a story on third party application support providers. The story focuses on TomorrowNow, the PeopleSoft support provider that was later acquired by SAP.

-Rob Westervelt, News Editor

In our premier podcast, we discuss the latest SAP news including an update to SAP's supply chain management software, SAP's adaptive computing initiatives, and a discussion about SAP On-Demand and SAP-Microsoft Mendocino software. Download the podcast here.

You may not have time for a vacation, but that's no excuse for making every work day a monotonous chore. Today, take a few minutes out of your busy schedule for a fun yet educational quiz. Check out SAP Basis troubleshooting in the field, a brand new test from site expert Giovanni Davila. Giovanni's first quiz, A 360 in SAP Basis, was such a success that we are rolling out new quizzes every month this year.

Think about what other kinds of quizzes you'd like to see on SearchSAP.com. These tests take just a few minutes, yet provide you with valuable feedback on your SAP progress. Send me an e-mail to let me know what you'd like to be tested on next.

Until next time,
Lauren
Assistant Editor

SearchSAP.com reader Stan Shuralyov had a short but sweet submission for our winter tip contest. His tip, "Fast deletion of SAP tables" is exactly what it sounds like — a brief code snippet that can eliminate millions of records in seconds. The code works on SAP 4.6C, WAS 6.20 and WAS 6.40 systems (i.e., all currently suppported SAP platforms). We picked it because of a combination of positive user feedback, high peer ratings, and plain popularity on the site.

Having said that, we got some strong runner-ups. To give them all some time in the limelight, we rounded up the winner along with the 10 best runner-ups in this week's Featured Topic. Do you agree with the choice we made? Think you can offer up something even better? Then submit your best stuff to us and get a chance to win another 60 Gb video iPod!

Regards,
Matt Danielsson
Editor