Sap And Enterprise Trends Podcasts From Jon Reed (@jonerp) Of Diginomica.com

Sometimes in the glitz of Sapphire announcements, the ASUG part of ASUG/Sapphire gets less attention. To learn more about why the ASUG part of the conference matters - not only to SAP users, but to industry analysts - I invited Gretchen Lindquist, SAP Mentor and stalwart ASUG volunteer, to share her views on ASUG/Sapphire 2009 and the pros and cons of co-location. I also had the opportunity to ask Gretchen about trends in SAP Security from the vantage point of her work as chair of the SAP Security Interest Group (SIG) for ASUG.

In the first installment of his "Sapphire in Review" podcast series, Jon Reed of JonERP.com welcomes special guest Michael Krigsman, President of Asuret and popular ZDNet blogger and Tweeter. Michael's focus is evaluating the keys to IT project success and failure, so during this twenty-eight minute podcast, Jon gets Michael's take on how project failure applies to ERP vendors and SAP specifically. Jon also gets the skinny on Michael's investigations of Business ByDesign at Sapphire, and why he sees SAP's focus on UI improvements and BI enhancements as important to ERP project success. In closing, Michael shares an inside view on what it's like to be part of SAP's Blogger Relations Program, mixing it up with SAP executives.

In the second of two live Sapphire podcast recordings, Jon Reed of JonERP.com interviews fellow SAP Mentor Dick Hirsch to get his impressions of Sapphire 2009. Listen in as two self-described "BPX geeks" discuss the themes of Sapphire from a BPX perspective. Jon gets Dick's reactions to the Sapphire keynotes, and also gets his view on how Twitter is changing the experience of live events, both for virtual attendees and the actual participants. Dick also offers tips for how SAP professionals can move their skills into a BPX direction.

In the first of two live Sapphire podcast recordings Jon will issue this week, Jon Reed of JonERP.com sits down with Ajay Vonkarey of Alpha Sirius to discuss his views on Sapphire, his impressions of the SAP market, and in particular, his views on Solution Manager - a topic you could not get away from at Sapphire where Ajay has deep expertise. In this 24 minute podcast, taped in a classroom as Sapphire closes out, Jon asks Ajay for his views on the pros and cons of Solution Manager from a customer perspective, how Solution Manager fits into BPM, and how SAP skills needs are evolving in the era of BPM and "end to end process" management.

On March 20 of 2009, I spoke with Vijay Vijayasankar, Senior Managing Consultant at IBM and fellow SAP Mentor, and conducted one of the most important podcasts I have done since I started doing them almost two years ago. On my mind during the taping: my theory that SAP consulting is not just being impacted by the economy and will come roaring back later. I believe the changes in SAP consulting that are underway now are permanent in nature, and have implications for all SAP professionals. There was no one better to ask about these shifts than Vijay, who has broad market experience and has seen many of the changes I am talking about. Disclaimer: please keep in mind that the opinions Vijay expresses during this podcast are entirely his, and do not represent the view of his employer, IBM.

In this special SAP community podcast, Jon Reed of JonERP.com speaks with an expert team assembled by SAP's Ecosystem Workforce Group to assess the SAP skills trends that are relevant in today's economy. Joining Jon on the call are: Peter Russo, leader of PAC's SAP Services Research Practice, and Rob Fiddaman and Deepak Jaiswal of K2 Partnering Solutions. Rob is K2's North American Partner and Deepak, who called in from India to participate in our global call, is the CEO of K2.

In a sluggish economy, SAP professionals want to know where the action is. One area that looks promising in 2009: RunSAP and Solution Manager. But there's a problem: many SAP consultants (and project teams) are not yet clear on how the two products relate, nor are they clear on the skills needed to implement them. To shed light on this topic, Jon interviews Ajay Vonkarey, President of Alphasirius, a company with deep experience in both RunSAP and Solution Manager. Jon specifically invited Ajay to do this podcast because of Ajay's innovative thinking around RunSAP and Solution Manager skills trends.

What's the latest on the SAP Business Objects roadmap? How can BI have a positive impact for SAP customers in a difficult economy? And what are the skills needed to implement NetWeaver BI products? To get to the bottom of these questions, I had the opportunity to interview Franz Aman, VP of Intelligence Platform Product Marketing for SAP Business Objects. In this podcast, Franz speaks frankly about the challenges SAP customers are facing and how BO tools can help.

In Jon's first podcast ever on SAP MDM, Jon interviews Mike Kerrigan, Vice President of Business Technologies with Laurus Technologies, on SAP Master Data Management (MDM), SAP Analytics, and the skills (and management approach) needed for SAP project success in a down economy. In this twenty-five minute podcast, Jon and Mike touch on the following topics: - How today's SAP market compares with other down cycles Mike has seen during his fifteen years in the SAP field, including comparisons to the pre-Y2K and the post-9/11 markets. - The relevance of analytics to today's SAP implementations, and why ERP customers expect more from SAP now than transactional efficiency. The SAP Business Suite is full of systems (CRM, SRM) etc with data that must be cleaned and managed before it can be utilized. leveraged.

In the last installment in Jon's "Tech Ed in Review 2008" podcast series, he speaks with Dennis Howlett, SAP Mentor and "Enterprise Irregular" ZDNet blogger. During this trans-Atlantic podcast session, Dennis shares his experiences at TechEd, his views on SAP's co-innovation strategy, and how he balances participation in the SAP community with his role as an independent analyst. One highlight of the podcast? Dennis' take on an important TechEd Berlin meeting between the SAP Mentors and SAP executives regarding the future of SAP development.

Recent SAP TechEd Shows have emphasized NetWeaver BPM and the importance of the Business Process Expert. To get a sense of why SAP is so committed to building a true "Business Process Platform," and whether or not BPX skills are still relevant in this struggling economy, Jon Reed spoke with Puneet Suppal, the SAP SOA Solutions Leader for Capgemini North America. (Puneet also writes on SOA trends in his "Cafe Innovation" blog for SAP SDN/BPX.) At the time of the podcast taping, Puneet had just returned from giving a presentation entlitled "The Business Process Imperative" with Global BPX Head Marco ten Vaanholt at TechEd Berlin. He also shared plans to head out to TechEd Bangalore to deliver a similar talk. Having done this presentation at TechEd Las Vegas as well, Puneet's views on this podcast are informed by his recent SAP Community experiences. The result is a focused conversation on how project teams and individuals should approach "BPX skills innovation" during challenging economic times.

In the second podcast in the JonERP.com "All About SAP Training" series, Jon Reed asks Tom Michael of Michael Management  about the state of SAP training and the range of training and certification options available to SAP professionals. Picking up where the last podcast on SAP training left off, Jon and Tom jump right into the topic of SAP online training: - Tom goes back to the beginning: 2-3 years ago, Tom began to get more and more requests for online SAP training. In the past, there were very few options, and while sending folks to the SAP Academy can be very effective, it's not always an affordable option when you are continuously tweaking people's job roles. Meanwhile, the project documentation is useful to a degree but is not really the perfect training tool ("you can't learn SAP from a few screen prints and a PowerPoint presentation.")

In the first podcast in the JonERP.com "All About SAP Training" series, Jon Reed asks Tom Michael of Michael Management  about the state of SAP training and the range of training and certification options available to SAP professionals. The podcast begins with an overview of Tom Michael's background and his role with Michael Management's SAP training and consulting practice. In addition to Michael Management's consulting work in Asset Management, Project Systems, Investment Management, and related areas, Michael Management has become one of the largest online SAP training sites today. As Tom explains, this was an organic process where clients asked Michael Management about the training side of their implementations and Michael Management began rolling out more and more online SAP training courses. In this first podcast in their "All About SAP Training Series," Jon and Tom dive into the hot topic of breaking into SAP. Michael reviews some of the free options available online, such as SAP's own help documenta

In the second podcast in my TechEd in Review 2008 podcast series, I spoke with BPX Community Evangelist Marilyn Pratt and got her honest take on TechEd Las Vegas 2008. This podcast has an interesting interactive twist - at a few points in the podcast, Marilyn turns the tables on me and gets my own reactions to what we saw in Vegas. Themes of this podcast include: the increasing importance of BPX themes at TechEd, an assessment of BPX Community Day, and the "greening of SAP," one "bottom up" idea at a time. In the first section of this thirty five minute podcast, we get into what a "BPX Community Evangelist" is all about and why authentic conversations are so much more powerful than "marketing messages."

There's a lot of talk about "SAP Business Process Experts." SAP even has an online "BPX Community" set up around this emerging skill set. But what does this really mean to the individual consultant? For the first time ever, Jon speaks in-depth with a senior functional consultant, Samantha Gammill, President of Osiris ERP Consulting, about her pursuit of the "SAP BPX skill set." In this podcast, we get the story of why a certified MM/PP functional consultant with a broad SAP background and 14 years of SAP consulting experience decided to pursue the BPX skill set, how she went about doing it, and what the reactions of her team members were to this skills transition. During the podcast, Samantha talks about her efforts to move into her role as "future functional business process expert." In the process, she gives listeners a view into her approach to self-education. Samantha funded her own attendance at the TechEd 2008 Las Vegas BPX Community Day, and brought what she learned about that day back to her team.

SOA is having a major impact on how SAP professionals look at the skills they need going forward. But why does SOA matter to SAP in the first place? Is SOA SAP-manufactured hype, or is SOA going to be a real factor on SAP project sites. What skills will be needed in order to succeed in the NetWeaver and eSOA era? And how does NetWeaver BPM fit into the picture? In this SAP-SOA skills podcast, Jon Reed shares his take on these issues with Demir Barlas of SearchSAP.com.

In this thirty minute podcast, David Foote of Foote Partners reviews his firm's latest 2,000-employer benchmark survey data on trends in pay and availability of SAP enterprise application skills. Hear what's hot (and by how much), including which SAP skill has seen a 57% increase in market value over the last 12 months. Also included: strategy advice for employers deploying SAP applications, and career advice for IT professionals building SAP careers over the next two years. Kicked off by Demir Barlas of SearchSAP.com, this podcast begins with David Foote's overview of his latest SAP skills findings, including what's hottest in 2008. Jon Reed of JonERP.com weighs in toward the end of this podcast, asking David several questions about how SAP professionals should apply his findings to their own skills transitions.

Gas prices have been flirting with $5 a gallon recently. But as Krishna Kumar of Enterprise Horizons points out in this podcast, when most SAP customers implemented their first SAP systems, prices were closer to $1 a gallon. This massive change in the cost of energy has created both a crisis and an opportunity. On this podcast, we look at the opportunity side of the equation. Jon and Krishna are joined by Paul Kurchina, Director of the Kurmeta Group, and author of the recently released book In Pursuit of the Perfect Plant. The three of us take a closer look at the intersection between the corporate "Green Movement" and eSOA, and how these converging technologies are having a beneficial impact on the bottom line, while charting a better course for global energy consumption. Paul and Krishna also explain how SAP professionals can get more involved in the Green/eSOA space - a potentially great way to mix skills expansion with purposeful work.  

What is at the root of the customer frustration with SAP's maintenance fee increases? And what does RunSAP and Solution Manager have to do with it? To get at these questions and many more, listen in with Jon Reed and SearchSAP.com Site Editor Demir Barlas as they interview Robert Max, ASUG Evangelist for ASUG, Americas' SAP Users' Group. Formerly the SAP Infrastructure Manager for a Fortune 500 Company, Max has played a leadership role in many ASUG groups, including serving as as the Chair of the ASUG Solution Manager Community. During this podcast, Robert explains how SAP customers can achieve a greater value from SAP support by maximizing the use of Solution Manager, RunSAP, and end-to-end process optimization. He also talks about the skills needed by project teams (and individual consultants) if they want to take advantage of these emerging post-go-live opportunities.

In this landmark podcast, Jon speaks with Kent Sanders, Senior Technology Architect for CSC Consulting, about the beginning of the end for the traditional R/3 Basis Consultant, and how to make the skills transition to "NetWeaver Engineer." Kent explains why mastering NetWeaver is essential for getting involved with eSOA, and why eSOA has moved from hype to reality. Loaded with practical skills tips for consultants and project teams, Kent SAP professionals an inside view on how they can round out their skills, avoid being outsourced, and stay marketable in the NetWeaver era. During the interview, Kent talks about the differences between the classic Basis skill set and the emerging "NetWeaver Engineer" skill set. He goes into the specifics of the tools that SAP technical professionals need to master in order to remain marketable instead of becoming obsolete. Drawing on his own experience, Kent explains how project teams should approach building NetWeaver and eSOA skills sets internally. Kent also talks about h