Welcome New SAP Mentors Fall Edition 2012

It is always tough to select new SAP Mentors. Many think they all should be diamond SCN contributors and have organized InnoJams in their local home town like Novosibirsk [Isn’t that an amazing city name? In school we once memorized all the cities on the Trans Siberian Express. No other town would roll off the tongue like Novosibirsk] Truth is, not all SAP Mentors are super active on SCN.

I stress one more time, that activity on SCN is an important factor in the selection process, but not the only or the deciding factor of whether someone becomes an SAP Mentor or not. After all we are not SCN Mentors, but SAP Mentors. The larger ecosystem of SAP goes way beyond SCN. The new SAP Mentors below reflect that.

As we have our roots in the original SAP Developer Network many of us mentors are technology focused.  Again, that isn’t limiting us, the spirit of SAP mentorship: the willingness to do your part to improve SAP and it’s offering, to share your expertise and engage with the larger SAP community is not limited to tech folks. This time we even added a retail analyst to the mentor mix.

SAP’s Asia Pacific region especially China added many mentors. Our hope and experience is, that a certain critical mass is very beneficial to the impact SAP Mentors are having in a region.

If we only could do something about the time zones we would be so happy. In his Novel Eastern Standard Tribe Cory Doctorow writes about a group of people that no matter where they are in the world they always adhere to the time that is in New York aka: Eastern Standard Time. That way everyone is always in sync You are in sync with your tribe, but not with the world around you. Doesn’t work for us.

Super excited about these new SAP Mentors. Can’t wait to work closer with them.

Here they are in no particular order:

Jansi Rani Murugesan Country: India Company: Infineon Asia Pte ltd, Singapore

Area of Expertise: Change control Management, Custom Code Lifecycle Management, Business process managment, Incident Management Etc.

Bio: Jansi Rani Murugesan is a consultant with Infineon Asia Pte ltd, Singapore. She has more than 7 years of experience, which includes 6 years of active involvement in IT as SAP Basis and Solution Manager consultant.

Her tireless contributions made her the SCN Member of the month earlier this year.

Peter Langner Country: Germany Company: ADventas Consulting

Area of Expertise: Accounting, Logistics, SAP ECC, SAP NetWeaver, SAP NetWeaver CE, Solution Manager, ABAP, SAP Script, Smart Forms, Adobe Interactive Forms

Bio: Peter Langner is an experienced SAP project manager, business consultant and developer.

Together with Renald Wittwer Peter organized the SAP Inside Track in Hamburg last year. They made a quite professional looking video from footage of that day. Well done. 

To foster the integration with Sybase from the comunity side I am really happy to add 3 members of Team Sybase: Bruce Armstrong, Yakov Werde as well as Sue Dunnell who is coordinating that effort on the SAP side.

Bruce Armstrong Country: USA Company: Integrated Data Services.
Area of Expertise: SAP Power Builder

Bio:  Bruce Armstrong is a Lead Developer with the Los Angeles office of Integrated Data Services (IDS). He is a PowerBuilder MVP as well as a charter member of TeamSybase (originally Team PowerSoft) and has been using PowerBuilder since version 1.0b. He is the editor-in-chief for the PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal in which he has authored numerous articles and at one point a monthly news column. He was a contributing author to SYS-CON’s PowerBuilder 4.0 Secrets of the Masters and one of the editors and authors for PowerBuilder 9: Advanced Client/Server Development by SAMS. Prior to joining IDS eight years ago, he was a consultant with Kforce Consulting for 10 years doing PowerBuilder development for firms such as The Boeing Company, Investment Technology Group, Western Asset Management, Hughes Space and Communications and Rockwell International.

Yakov Werde Country: USA Company: eLearnIt LLC

Area of Expertise: SAP Power Builder

Bio: Yakov Werde MsEd is the proprietor of eLearnIT LLC, a NE USA based PowerBuilder training and consulting firm.  Yakov has been a certified SAP/Sybase Instructor and Developer since 1995 and is an outspoken enthusiast of Sybase technology.  Yakov personally trained thousands of professional software developers on all aspects of enterprise application development using the PowerBuilder platform.  As a senior application developer and system architect, Yakov began his professional career writing business applications under CP/M and MP/M on s100 bus computers and progressed to a stint at IBM as a member of the PC AT ROM BIOS / NET BIOS development team. In his independent consulting career Yakov has built and maintains systems across a wide spectrum of enterprises.  Now a 17 year PowerBuilder veteran, Sybase MVP, [TeamSybase] member, and PowerBuilder .NET pioneer, Yakov, an educational and entertaining presenter, is well known in the global PowerBuilder developer community through his frequent articles in PowerBuilder Developer Journal and ISUG Journal, and annual presentations at the PowerBuilder Developers Conference.

Sue Dunnell Country: USA Company: SAP

Area of Expertise: SAP PowerBuilder, Developers, Community Engagement

Bio: Sue has been working with PowerBuilder since she joined Powersoft in 1996. She worked in technical support, delivered product training internally and at user conferences,  and moved to product management where she managed the PowerBuilder business, and brought DataWindow.NET and PocketBuilder to market.  She’s worked closely with hundreds of PowerBuilder customers, building relationships and growing the PowerBuilder community. She created the MVP team to recognize key developers and contributors in the community, and communicates regularly with the customer base through newsletters, a blog, and journal articles. Prior to joining Powersoft, Sue earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Criminal Justice, and taught various courses at Northeastern University and did part-time private investigative work. Her inner nerd broke through and she returned to Northeastern’s Graduate School of Engineering to pursue a career in computer programming and IT. She is married to her highschool sweetheart, and has 3 kids – 21, 18, and 11, as well as a tightly wound Australian Shepherd.

Corey Adams Country: New Zealand
Areas of Experties: Business Objects – Architecture; Webi; Design; Federation, Wherescape Red, Project Management, Business Analysis, Data Warehousing, RoamBI, RoamBI Flow

Bio: NZ Based BI Practitioner, Advocate and Evangelist – you won’t find me on the corner, or an altar, but I’m still preaching; The End is BI, Refresh, Refresh

Corey works for a customer that is an SAP BW house, which was an existing Business Objects customer. Their story is representative of the requirements and frustrations of legacy Business Objects customers, Business Objects on BW, and now Business Objects on BW on HANA.Can’t wait to hear more of them. Our first New Zealander. Love that country, if only it wasn’t so far away.

Alexandra Carvalho Country: Australia Company: BI Group Australia

Area of Expertise: BW, Business Objects, Data Warehousing, Mobile BI, Big Data, Predictive Analysis, Agile BI, BI Strategy, Governance, Enterprise Architecture

Bio: Working as an SAP consultant for 16 years, mostly in SAP BI. Done SAP BI for the following areas: TPM (Trades Promotion Management), IPM (Intellectual Property Management), IS-U CCS including Smart Meter Analytics, CRM, BPS and IP, Business Objects (Dashboards, Crystal and Webi), BW (from ETL to BEx reporting), APO-DP and SNP, PS-CD Public Sector Collection and Disbursement, SRM and ECC (FI, CO-PA, SD, MM, PM, HR). Is also an ABAPer. Entrepreneur,  Speaker, Blogger, Photographer, Scuba Diver, Marathon Runner, Yogi.

Highly motivated individual with a broad SAP experience base which would be of assistance to others who require mentoring assistance.  She is interested in helping others and in doing so further her own knowledge base.

Fred Verheul Country: Netherlands

Area of Expertise: Core areas are ABAP, Process Integration. NetWeaver. At the moment I’m focusing on On-Demand, BRFplus, NW Gateway and Event Insight.

Bio: working with SAP software as of 1998.I live in the Netherlands with my wife, daughter (age 2) and two cats.Hobbies include SAP, programming, bridge, music (played violin myself, search for my SCNotty 2011 video), reading, and of course my daughter.

Fred has been a very active member and influencer of the community for a while and he’s became a familiar face in the local SAP Inside Tracks and SAP InnoJams. He falls into that category of “what he has not been an SAP Mentor yet”. He got many of nominations.

Gary Hooker Country: Australia FAHCSIA

Area of Expertise: SAP BW, BI, ERP, Netweaver, HR, R/3, Business Objects, FICO

Bio:Approx 15 years of SAP-related experience, Approximately 33 years Australian Public Service experience with a strong background in finance/accounting, budgeting, procurement, HR/payroll and SAP IT areas working in a number of different agencies including Defence, Australian Public Service Commission, Transport, Civil Aviation Authority, Social Security, Centrelink, DIAC, AirServices Australia and FaHCSIA

Love that he is from a customer and active in the Mastering SAP BI conference coordination. 

Greg Capps Country: USA Company: Coca Cola

Area of Expertise: SAP Security, Risk Management, Sarbanes-Oxley, Internal Auditing

Bio: SAP Security and Project Management, SOX Controls TestingRisk Management, Process Mapping and Segregation of Duties Analysis, AS/400 Systems Administrator, RPG and ABAP Program Development Mainframe CICS Development.

Greg is a longtime ASUG volunteer who has shared his expertise generously both at ASUG and TechEd conferences and virtually via web casts and blogs. One of his recent SCN blog is a top blogs in the GRC space.

Moya Watson Country: USA Company: SAP Research

Area of Expertise: Diversity, Communications, Anti-Bullying, SAP Research Cross-Prototyping, Video Sharing, Collaboration, Bridging Gaps or Falling into the Void, Sustainability, Connected Cars, Technical Documentation, API/SDK Documentation, Lapsed QA Engineering…

Bio: Moya Watson has been working in the software industry in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1991. Since 2001 at SAP, she has been forging innovative approaches to communication of all kinds, from standard documentation to technical documentation to collaborative experimental platforms. She is currently a technology evangelist and prototyping project manager on the Cross-Prototyping team in SAP Research, and enjoys fostering innovation — particularly communications-related innovation — and the products thereof – via communities of all kinds within SAP. Outside of SAP, Moya is passionate about the potential that online organizing brings to the causes of social justice and equality. And everywhere, she is interested in particular in the vast spaces between formal messaging and raw expression.

Moya was the driving force behind the creation of the It gets better video where she was able to get even Jim Snabe to participate. Update: Someone tweeted that this video tells more about what kind of company SAP is than 100 press releases A Adrian Bowles @ajbowles Industry Analyst tweeted: It [this video] will shape my opinion of SAP more than 1,000 briefings. Well done. She is also the first SAP Mentor within the SAP Research organization and we hope for greater collaboration with that team too.

Paula Rosenblum Country: USA Company: RSR Resarch
Area of Expertise: Retail

Bio: Paula is widely recognized as one of the top analysts in the retail industry. She formerly served as Vice President of Research & Content at Retail Systems Alert Group (RSAG), and as Vice President of Aberdeen Group’s Retail Research practice. She was also retail research director for AMR Research. Previous to that, Paula spent over 20 years as a retail technology executive and CIO. She works with Wall Street Analysts and various industry trade associations on a regular basis.

Presentation Replay: Global Retailing Conference 2012

Check out that video and you see first hand Paula’s amazing knowledge around Retail. Can’t wait to engage with her around SAP’s solution in that space. 

Prashanth Padmanabhan Country: USA Company: SAP

Area of Expertise: Product Management, Product Marketing, Enterprise Human Capital Management Solutions, Software as a Service SaaS, Distributed Development, Collaboration Systems for Distributed teams.
Web 2.0 Learning 2.0, Mobile Applications, SuccessFactors

Bio: Prashanth is Sr. Director, Product Management in the Human Capital Management (HCM) group of SAP. He is responsible for the design of SAP and HCM OnDemand products and market development for OnDemand services. He is currently leading the effort to design and provide SAP – SuccessFactors Hybrid solutions for North American Customers.

Prashanth fills a key need area on the Mentor team given his role with SAP/SuccessFactors, he is an outside the box thinker, active in social media and has consistently provided very good content in his personal blog about SAP & SuccessFactor.

Tim Guest Country: United Kingdom Company: Frontline Consultancy & Business Services
Area of Expertise: SAP Business One, Mobility, In Memory and the advances of HANA, Sustainability & Corporate Responsibility and Business Intelligence

Bio: Over seven years technology experience with a good understanding of Infrastructure, Virtualisation and a first hand knowledge of how SAP can optimise business processes. Prior to my current role I was involved in fixed price SAP projects, taking business requirements and helping design solutions for businesses of all sizes. I pride myself on networking & relationship building and have a large list of contacts who pass business to me and vice versa.

Actively working with the UK Business One user base to inspire inclusion, innovation and creativity. Helping the SAP User Group to organise SIG’s and to actively increase membership of Business One users. He uses SCN and the SAP user group as part of his Sales pitch and actively encourage our customers to get involved and join the community. It sets us apart from our rivals at Sage / Microsoft. He also designed a programme to work with 18 year old school leavers, coaching them in resume writing and interview techniques.

Zimkhita Buwa Country: South Africa

Area of Expertise: BI and SAP Strategy Management

Bio: Independent SAP BI / Strategy Management Consultant, Train various SAP BI courses, ie TBW10, TBW20,BW305,BW310.

Zimkhita has been extremely active in the BI Community in South Africa where she has been on the BI Steering Committee. She has also presented at various conferences, i.e. SAPHILA, Mastering BI South Africa and Australia. She also mentors postgraduate students from UCT.

Side Note: I just listened to the TED radio hour about Africa, eye opening new perspective very inspiring.

Vance Pan Country: China Company: DataCVG

Area of Expertise: SAP Analytics Solution, specially Business Intelligence Solutions

Bio: Vance is a fan of SAP Business Intelligence Solutions. He has over 10 years’ experience with SAP Business Intelligence products suite, and has deep understanding about China market and customer requirements. Vance was a key member of SAP BOBJ product management in China Lab and later on he joined DataCVG as VP of Strategy, they are one of the largest BOBJ partners in China. Vance demonstrates strong willing and ability evangelizing SAP Business Intelligence Solution in China market.

Wei Zhu (Ethan) Country: China

Area of Expertise: Business Intelligence

Bio: Wei Zhu is an SAP BusinessObjects BI consultant, who has excellent skill for Dashboard Designer, Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence. He is one of the winners of 2010 dashboard design campaign in China. He actively participant the BusinessObjects events and often voices his opinion, sharing his experience regarding working with BusinessObjects Solutions with his peers.

Xumin Zhao Country: China

Area of Expertise: SAP ESA, SAP NetWeaver

Bio: Mr Xumin Zhao has advanced technology know-how, deep understanding and rich practical experience in SAP ESA, SAP NetWeaver and related products architecture and design. He has more than 15 years working experience in SAP field and worked as a Chief Consultant and the Manager of Technology Consulting Department. He was in charge of consultants’ training, business development and technology development. His achievement are IT architecture strategy planning, implementation technology of SAP products, system integration, etc.

Alexander Andrenacci Country: Singapore Company: Accenture

Area of Expertise: ERP-SAP, Program Management, Global and Regional SAP deployments, Business Transformation Programs, IT Strategy, Business Intelligence, Analytics.

Bio:19 years experience in ERP/Transformation Projects. SAP Analytics & BI Lead for APAC. Worked across many industry verticals (Oil & Gas, Telecommunications, and Utilities) although his main focus remains in FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods). For the last 10 years Alex has led two SAP Regional Deployments across Asia/Africa/Middle East/Russia.

Alexander is a strong advocate for SAP solutions – wall to wall. He is leading Accenture’s Big Bets initiative all around SAP: Mobility, Analytics and NextGeneration SAP. He is involved in demand generation and go to market activities with SAP APJ and sponsors Accenture’s Innovation Centers for SAP (focused on Analytics). Our first SAP Mentor in Singapore. Very exciting.

Yariv Zur Country: Israel Company: SAP

Area of Expertise: NetWeaver, UI technologies (HTML5, Web Dynpro)

Bio: Solution Manager / Product Strategist at SAP. Focusing mainly on User Interface and User Productivity in the Enterprise world. Vast development background and deep involvement with community, journalism and Web 2.0 paradigms.

Yariv is one of the SAP people that is most outside looking, speading information about new technology and ideas in blogs and speeches during Techeds. He makes great efforts to insure that people with similar interest and skills gets introduced to each other. That treat makes him  a catalyst when it comes to community building.Yariv is one of these SAP employees that is constantly trying to expand the developer community and making SAP easier to use. Really glad that he is able to join the SAP Mentor Wolfpack. He is making a huge difference in Israel.

Please join me in welcoming our new SAP Mentors. Many will be at one of the upcoming SAP TechEds. Don’t be shy to walk up to us and say hello.

Public SAP Mentor Webinars where the new SAP Mentors will introduce themselves and share some of their expertise will be announced soon too.