SAT is the new ABAP Runtime Analysis Tool of the SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP2 (successor of the SE30 transaction). This demo explores the SAT tools and shows how to use SAT for typical scenarios of ABAP runtime analysis, such as searching for performance bottlenecks, program flow analysis or memory consumption problems.

Watch the Demo (20 min)

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1. Best SAP SDN Blog Posts from 2010
2. Caffeine – ABAP to Go
3. SAPLAB Version 2.0 is on-line!

SAP StreamWork is now available as a mobile application for the Apple iPhone. Users can keep collaborating with their teams and driving activities forward, even while not at their desks.

The SAP StreamWork mobile application is delivered with settings to access your internet-based SAP StreamWork application, and also has prebuilt integration to your device. With the SAP StreamWork mobile app, you can manage SAP StreamWork from your mobile device so that method content such as notes, pro/con, discussion, decisions, quick poll, and consensus can be easily shared and securely administered among all SAP StreamWork participants.

This application has many exciting features, such as the ability to view team member profiles directly within an activity, to start a phone call or send an e-mail, taking advantage of iPhone native functionalities such as easy use of media files and voice notes. Below ate a few screenshots of the SAP StreamWork mobile app for iPhone in action:

Extend SAP StreamWork to your entire organization: Enterprise Edition

The enterprise edition of SAP StreamWork promises to bridge the gap between people’s demands for easy-to-use, quickly available software and access to enterprise information, and IT’s challenge in delivering enterprise data to cloud applications securely. SAP highlights this framework as being secure, quick to install, easy to manage and easy to extend.

It includes all the teamwork capabilities of the professional edition and adds advanced security, automatic provisioning, and a foundation for integration with your enterprise applications. It’s an affordable enterprise solution that works with your existing IT investments – and provides the flexibility to allow your business users to work the way they want and be productive immediately. Compare all editions.

Further reading and Download links

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ARE3 Consulting is the result of an innovative idea towards market approach and recruitment areas, specifically for SAP ERP implementation projects. With more than 10 years in the market, ARE3 specializes in SAP recruitment giving response to their clients that are more and more demanding in terms of SAP skills and qualifications. ARE3 operates on sound judgement and that for the company counts on specific market consultants, to cover markets such as the Portuguese and Spanish.

In 2009, ARE3 acquired a CRM platform and hired additional experienced senior recruiters to respond to market demands. The result was a turnover above 250m Euro. In the beginning of 2010 ARE3 invested on the ARE3 Job Board, which is already well known in the SAP job market. ARE3 is also investing in social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, the SAP Club magazine and also advertising in specialized SAP websites and SAP blogs such as SAPLAB. In the first semester of 2010 ARE3 has almost doubled it’s turnover comparing the whole 2009.

In what relates to the future, ARE3 started a partnership with SAP and with a gold partner, assuming itself as an EBM (Extended Business Member) for small and medium businesses.

Click here to access ARE3 website or access ARE3 Joboard directly

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Each month in 2009, SAP presented a set of white papers and research reports designed to give all of us a wealth of practical knowledge about business and technology issues that support our client’s organization’s key business objectives.

This collection of documents are really useful, not only allowing us to gain insights from industry experts, but by also explaining how to get more out of SAP solutions and services. The papers also discuss best practices, lessons learned, and the subjects that matter most to the businesses. Topics include:

• Making faster and better decisions and sustaining growth through IT
• Business agility and organizational readiness
• Supply chain, sales and marketing, and human capital management strategies
• Operational excellence and end-user performance
• Improving customer relationships and creating superior client experience
• And much more.

Beginning today, all of these valuable resources are available at the Best SAP Content of 2009 resource page. But you can also download them directly from SAP’s website here in SAPLAB.org. Please look at the descriptions and links below:

Forrester evaluates four methods you can use to measure the business value of IT. Learn how you can account for more than simple financial metrics like ROI, IRR, or NPV. See how you can capture valuable, intangible benefits like revenue potential, strategic fit, and improved customer satisfaction.

Source: SAP6VX4QNQPY67F

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1. SAPPHIRE 2009 Free Brochures

Following the 2009 edition of SAPPHIRE, SAP gives us the opportunity to download some free brochures. You can find your way by browsing by Solutions/Services or by Industry. Use the  search tool to look for brochures that provide additional insight into topics covered at SAPPHIRE 2009. In case your attended the event, you’ll be able to download full and complete content. To do this, SAPPHIRE 2009 badge number and visit the SAP Literature Kiosk.

Instructions:

• Enter a keyword or select options from the pull-down menus.
• You can use both keywords and menus to make your search more precise.

Link/URL:

Click here to download SAP Solution and Industry Brochures

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In the beginning of last week, SAP released 12 Simple Sample Applications for Enterprise Services Consumption (Simple Sample Apps) using the SOA rollout platform Enterprise Services Workplace. These Apps are use cases for the most commonly used Enterprise Services, based on several SAP consumption technologies. These Apps are ready to to use and run in the ES Workplace environment. They also include technical information and documents, programming code, implementation models and demo data. SAP customers and partners can also download and install these Apps locally, in order to test-run them using the backend system of the hosted ES Workplace that they’re using.

SAP announced the Simple Sample Apps in the beginning of 2009 and already the SOA community responded well. Beta testers from all around the world gave their feedback, saying that the Simple Sample Apps are the proper way to take the first steps towards the Enterprise Services consumption, using a comprehensive and straightforward manner.

The initial 12 Simple Sample Apps cover 35 of the most popular Enterprise Services, as well as 16 business objects currently shipped by SAP. They include  several business use cases from various industries. For each Simple Sample App, the following items are available upon download:

• An online demo version
• A detailed documentation on how to use the application
• An archive ready to be imported in an SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment 7.1 EhP1 (SAP NW CE 7.1.1)
• A list of the enterprise services consumed by the App
• Sample testing data

Each download sample also include a detailed guideline on how to install SAP NW CE 7.1.1 on your local PC and how to import an run the application archive.

According to SAP:

Simple Sample Apps provide several benefits. First of all, you can take them as a starting point and accelerator for own SOA projects, just by lowering the hurdle to deal with new technology. The apps demonstrate end-to-end what it takes exactly to build a little composite application, using enterprise services that SAP delivers today. Secondly, they are instantiated Best Practices for testing and quality assurance in SOA projects, since a running Simple Sample App is the final proof point that an enterprise service does what it should do. And last but not least, Simple Sample Apps are a great tool for demo and training purposes, as they help everybody explore and understand the essentials of enterprise services consumption in a nutshell.

Additional links and resources

• Get started with the Simple Sample Apps by downloading them in the Enterprise Services Workplace

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With a global crisis ongoing, things have changed quite a bit in the IT and Information Systems scenario, it what concerns to employment and career development. These are good times for us to assess our own skills and check if some adjustments need to be done. Typical questions of an aware SAP Consultant can be: “Am I getting too specific in my area? Am I missing a bigger picture?”. On the other hand: “Am I too generic? Do I need to elaborate and deepen my knowledge in a specific area?”. And finally: “What will be the outcome of my actions? Will I be able to get a better job or position? Will I perform better in my current job?”.

I guess that at a given point, anyone working with SAP has asked himself these questions. As a matter of fact, anyone working in technical areas will ask these questions from time to time. My opinion is that it’s good to be aware and wanting to make changes when necessary and if the opportunity arises. Of course there is the idea, but you also need to put it in practice… we really must develop our areas of expertise if we want to survive in a “hostile” world as it is nowadays.

Anyway, by browsing around the web and talking to people from the area, there are some conclusions to be analyzed. Independent SAP analyst Jon Reed, for instance, has written an interesting post regarding what he classified as Hot, Warm and Not-so-warm SAP areas.

The first consideration is that a “hot” skill might be “torrid” to person A and totally dull to person B. Jon Reed shares his thoughts in a very clear way:

I’m not a big fan of recommending “hot” SAP areas. The skills chase often leaves a crazy career path behind it. What makes sense is not to chase what’s hot but to add a new skill that logically builds on core experience. There’s a big difference between a natural extension of skills (which looks good on a resume) and the mad pursuit of something new (which tends to look frantic). With that disclaimer in mind, here are some hot (and not so hot) areas that the folks I talked to singled out. Keep in mind that when we say “hot,” we don’t mean that these skills were mentioned in a PowerPoint at a trade show. For our purposes, “hot” means that we’ve seen these skills on actual job orders and placed people with these skills.

Hot Areas

• Core Financials, HR, and to a lesser extent SD/MM on the ECC 5.0 and ECC 6.0 versions of SAP in particular. On the mySAP Financials side, the ECC FI New General Ledger is “very hot.” On the mySAP HCM side, beyond the core HR functions like Payroll and Benefits, advanced HR functionalities like Performance Management and LSO (Learning Solution, e-Learning, etc.) are also in demand.
• NetWeaver and BI: XI/PI installation, ECC systems upgrade from R/3, BW upgrade from 3.5 to BI 7.0, MDM 5.5.

Warm

• mySAP Business Suite (SRM, CRM, PLM)
• Some industry verticals, in particular the retail solutions (IS-Retail and IS-AFS)

Not-so-warm

• ABAP/Legacy Skills and Supply Chain Planning (APO component of mySAP SCM)

Surprising trend: Has the power of certification returned?

One thing that comes as a bit of a surprise: For the first time in years, I’m hearing firsthand stories about folks who managed to break into SAP armed only with a certification. Recently, I heard from two lucky people who have done it: one on the Financials side and one on the CRM side.

At this point, I haven’t seen enough broad confirmation on this point to recommend certifications again as a way of breaking into SAP, but we can say this much: When folks with only certification are getting consulting jobs, that means the demand for SAP skills is as high as it’s been in years. Just remember that it’s still a “winners and losers” market and that the demand for skills is most likely focused on particular niches, most of them on the functional side of SAP. “Research before you leap” still applies.

Are these bad times for freelancers?

Freelancers in SAP are known for their high daily rates. The more experienced and more full-cycle implementations they have in their resumes, the more experienced they are, therefore, the more expensive they are. But clients aren’t paying for nothing, most of the freelancers I know start producing the minute they touch the systems and due to their large experience, they solve problems.

An important sign that the SAP market is on the move is the number of companies that are looking to bring in more permanent employees for their in-house SAP teams. SAP customers now want to bring quality SAP resources in-house that they can rely on, to reduce costs and promote those people solid careers. Having a permanent SAP job can also be an opportunity to develop your skills. There are also companies who offer training as a fringe benefit, whereas a freelancer will have to pay any specific training from his own pocket.

Conclusion

In case your having doubts, always choose to develop your skills instead of thinking and molding your career in terms of the rate you wish to accomplish.

Read Jon Reed’s full article here

• SAP Consulting Trends in SearchSAP.com

Additional links and resources

• IT Jobs Watch, Tracking the IT Job Market
• Payscale salary reports
• Jon Reed on SAP Consulting

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Recently SAP announced a new buzz word: “Alloy”. So what is Alloy? It is a partnership between SAP and IBM over a new product that ties the SAP back end with the well known Lotus Notes interface. Some critics have already dug deep and think that Alloy will prove stronger than Duet, the equivalent initiative and collaboration between Microsoft and SAP.

As with Duet, Alloy enables users to start end-to-end processes within Lotus Notes, as well as complete normally SAP tasks using Lotus Notes as their front-end application. one example could be the approval of aprocurement transaction using an e-mail to trigger the action. This feature has obvious advantages – what currently needs two different users to complete a process, now can be done by a Lotus Notes user, at a distance of a mouse click, without having to change UI environments. The new product follows Duet, a Microsoft and SAP collaboration that enables SAP to Office products like MS Excel, MS Word and MS Outlook. Alloy is due anytime this month (March).

Duet was released with a great market effort, both from Microsoft and SAP. At the beginning, there was an apparently growing interest but soon it lost it’s early boom. According to some analysts, this was mainly due to both companies have similar objectives, i.e., they sell applications which compete with themselves.

Also according to some specialists in this area, Alloy will potentially have a greater success than Duet because a large part of IBM Lotus’ costumers are also SAP’s clients in the ERP. Most of them are planning or even ongoing in an ERP Upgrade process, which makes it easier to plan or induce improvements and new features. According to specialists, the Alloy partnership is also less “tense” and clearer that the one with Microsoft, since IBM and SAP don’t sell directly competing business applications.

Alloy Landscape

The following components have been highlighted in Alloy:

• SAP Alloy Gateway: the SAP Alloy Gateway is a SAP NetWeaver Application Server Java Stack 7.0. It provides the interface between the SAP (ABAP) and IBM (Notes) world;
• IBM Alloy Gateway: in addition to the Lotus Domino Server a IBM Alloy Gateway is required, which is responsible for the communication with the SAP world;
• Meta Data Repository: the Meta Data Repository contains information about how SAP data should be displayed in the Lotus Notes Client as well as additional information like links to Reports or other sources (like travel rules);
• Sideshelf: the Sideshelf is a part of the Lotus Notes Clients. It displays additional information like reports, links, open points and management summaries.

Alloy Inbox

This figure shows a typical task in HR received by a Manager as an e-mail message: the approval of a Trip Request by an employee. This can be done via SAP Portal and the result goes directly to the Manager’s Inbox in Lotus Notes.

Create a Trip Request

Trip requests load information which is coming directly from SAP in real-time.

The first version of Alloy, which will go into Ramp-up anytime this month (March 2009), will contain the following functionalities and features:

• Create a Leave Request
• Approve a Leave Request
• Create a Travel Request
• Approve a Travel Request
• Workflow Management
• Report Management

Additional links and resources:

• Product information in SAP.com
• SAP’s official product tour
• Frequently Asked Questions About Alloy Software by IBM and SAP
• Product information in IBM.com

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