Why SAP

After getting to know Windows servers, databases and various other applications, I wanted to further my career. I could have taken the functional (business) route or maybe something like project management, but I wanted to stay techie for a little while longer.

There are many applications out there that I could have chosen to pursue such as Microsoft Office. Everyone I know uses Outlook and Word, how many acually use it to its potential, probably not a lot but then how many need to? Also what is the market like for an experienced Word techie. A quick search on jobserve shows some but not a lot of $$$ and to me, its not that interesting.

SAP has been around for a while and searches on job sites showed that there are a lot of jobs out there and in big companies. The $$$ seemed to be good also. But what is SAP and would it interest me?

I spoke to a few SAP experts and came to the following conclusions

1. It is an ERP solution - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_ERP

2. Its huge - you will never know it all. There are many modules within SAP, such as FI (Financials) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_R/3#Modules - to fully understand FI, I would need to have previous experience in finance or the HR module where I would need a good understanding of human resources. Both of which I dont. The techie side of SAP which involves installing, upgrading etc is SAP Netweaver (which used to be SAP BASIS) - this is what I will learn and then move onto one of the other modules.

3. There are a lot of SAP words like transports and transactions code which just seem to be SAP buzz words.

For example transports is just another word for moving SAP programs (created in a language called ABAP) from test system to a QAS system or production system - Im sure this has been over simplified, but thats how I understand it currently.

Also transactions codes, these are simply shortcuts to certain screens. There are many screens in SAP and drilling down the menu trying to find what you want can take a while therefore transaction codes (or shortcuts) are used.

4. To make the big $$$, I will need to have at least 2 full SAP lifes cycles as in two projects where I have contributed from the start to finish.

5. Training cost a bomb!

Clearly this is going to be a challenge but the rewards far out weigh the challenges.

The beginning of a long journey

I have started this blog to keep a track of how I am progressing in the world of SAP.

Currently I am working for a SAP VAR (value added resellar - company who sell SAP) but not actually working in the SAP team. Ideally I'd like to move into the SAP arena and working here allows me to have experts around me as well as access to the SAP website.

I am experienced in Windows 2003 Server and SQL Server 2005 therefore will concentrate on an implementation on this enviroment.

My experience of SAP is next to nothing, in fact, last month (May 2009) I attended an internal course to understand the architecture of SAP Netweaver and the pre-requirements was to have SAP Gui installed. I asked around and found out that this is SAP Front End.

I will detail as much as I can in this blog which will hopefully help others when starting a career in SAP. There is a lot of information on the internet about SAP but not a lot on how to get started in SAP.