Personal Insights
SAP new technologies and the impacts in the life of consultants
I recently received an invitation to prepare and run a presentation to the IT Brazilian community in Sydney, subject free and with the main purpose of sharing experiences which may help other consultants in their SAP career’s development.
With this opportunity I found the perfect excuse to discuss a relevant topic that affects the SAP community nowadays, new SAP techs and the impacts in the life of consultants.
SAP is constantly reinventing its solution portfolio but the changes in the last decade can be considered a new record. So many things have been changing and in such a speed that is pretty difficult to follow up the technological revolution, in the middle of this process there are a lot of consultants that still didn’t find their way to follow these changes and reinvent themselves as IT consultants.
After a long period without checking the latest trends it might be really difficult to understand what is going on.
Image 1: SAP consultant trying to understand what is going on.
In this short blog I discuss the biggest changes that happened in the SAP world in the last decade, review some of the current SAP solutions and explain the impacts in the life of:
- Functional consultants
- Basis consultants
- Technical consultants
Notice that I don’t use the term ABAP consultants because this role is not restricted to ABAP development anymore. Technical consultants is used instead in a way to encapsulate everything that is related with ABAP, SAPUI5, HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, Integration, Analytics, etc.
Also, you will notice more details in the technical section because this is my main area of focus. I hope I can bring some ideas to Functional and Basis consultants but the information presented here is all based on my personal opinion and experience, basically all the things I’ve been learning in the last years during my upskilling journey.
Feel free to contribute with your own ideas in the comments section below. 🙂
Biggest changes and advantages for SAP
If you’ve been checking the movements in the SAP market in the last years you probably notice one of the following items from the list below:
- The development and release of HANA database.
- The transition from SAP ECC to S/4HANA.
- The inclusion of SAP Gateway and OData Services in the integration portfolio.
- The adoption of SAP Fiori as the main user interface.
- The cloud revolution and move from on-premise to SAP Cloud Platform.
- The digital transformation with new information systems like SuccessFactors, Ariba and C/4HANA.
Notice that some of these products had one or more rebrandings in the past (e.g. HANA Cloud Platform, a.k.a. HCP) but I am using the current names to avoid any misconception for consultants that didn’t experience those updates in the past.
In my opinion, the release of SAP Cloud Platform is one of the most important items from the list above, since SAP decided to put focus on its cloud strategy we started to notice huge impacts in the industry, for example, the digital transformation powered by separate cloud solutions and several products being replaced or transferred to the cloud like SAP CPI (SAP Cloud Platform Integration) or SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud).
The cloud strategy brings a lot of advantages for SAP but in my opinion these are the most important items:
- Reduced overall cost with maintenance and support (can you imagine a world without SAP notes?)
- Increased revenue with license based on service consumption instead of the old user license approach.
- Better adaptation to standard processes and fast implementation.
- Easy to expand list of services offered and innovate in different areas.
Since SAP controls the data centers, infra-structure and the software releases it is actually easy to provide updates to the solution or even innovate releasing new services without generating issues to things already deployed. The updates are also quicker, usually released quarterly.
For customers there is another advantage that is the payment based on consumption, SAP also increases the revenue changing from the old model of user license to service consumption subscription.
The adoption of the standard process receives more focus due to the reduced extensibility scope but with the updates of SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory (Kyma) I believe we will have more options to explore in a near future. If you want to get more information about this subject I advise the reading of The next evolution for extensions – the SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory from Rui Nogueira.
We talked about the advantages for SAP but what about the advantage for consultants?
At the first sight it is pretty difficult to see the advantage since you basically need to get most part of your work experience, put on the side and restart all over again studying new technologies and trying to adapt to the new trends in the market.
In my opinion the biggest advantages for us is the fact that SAP is moving from its comfort zone and investing in brand new technology to follow the changes in the market and stay up-to-date, this is the best strategy to expand business and bring the best game against competitors, for consultants it is also excellent because we are not going to work with obsolete technology and stay behind compared to the rest of the IT market.
Even if you express a different opinion from my statement above there is only fact that we can’t ignore that is the need to move out from our comfort zone and start to learn and discover all the new techs offered by SAP, so what’s next?
The Upskilling Journey
Impacts generated by SAP
There are some common issues faced by SAP consultants in the start of this journey and they are usually related with the following decisions, part of the company’s strategy:
- Accelerated evolution to reduce tech delay compared to competitors
- New company acquisitions
- Constant rebranding of products
- Potential duplicate solutions
SAP was always well known by its elaborated business processes and powerful data processing capabilities but there was a huge gap in other areas like user experience and cloud capabilities, to get back in shape and reduce the mentioned gaps compared to its competitors SAP started an accelerated evolution process pushing the boundaries and delivering new solutions in a short space of time.
Also, to support this evolution process SAP has been acquiring different IT companies and incorporating their solutions to the main portfolio (e.g. Hybris, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Callidus, CoreSystems, Qualtrics) with the acquisitions they also faced several rebrandings and sometimes the need to re-adapt the portfolio multiple times to avoid the offer of duplicate solutions.
Beside these facts, SAP consultants can also face issues related with access to study materials, certifications and project experience.
SAP Press vs. SAP Learning Hub vs. Open SAP
SAP consultants looking for training would usually use one of these three options.
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SAP Press was one of my first options when I started to learn about SAP Gateway and SAP Fiori / SAPUI5 development in 2013. The books are usually very detailed, and you can buy a physical copy or just the access online, the prices are in average pretty fair.
SAP Learning Hub is the official platform for certification material and classroom training. I never had the opportunity to check a class due to the expensive prices, but the online platform works well. Nowadays my company provides access to this platform for internal training but you can also buy a single subscription if you want. As I mentioned, all the official training material for certification is available through the Learning Hub, you can find additional information in the other platforms but the best option is to rely on this content if your intention is to get certified by SAP.
Open SAP is the last offering and it brings an interesting concept, free training material providing insights about the latest techs released by SAP, the content is updated constantly and in the end of the course you even receive a certification of participation and conclusion. Some of the materials are pretty good (e.g. SAP Fiori courses with hands-on exercises) but most part of the courses bring just a superficial overview and they won’t be able to fulfil the gap requested in a real project.
The lack of project experience
Project experience is an essential part in the life of SAP consultants, without the hands-on experience is quite difficult to start the upskilling but this is not an excuse anymore. Some of the products are available in a trial mode for developers and you can start your training (with proper exercises) even without working in a project with the desired technology.
For example, people with interest about SAP Fiori and SAPUI5 can subscribe to a trial account via SAP Cloud Platform and access the Web IDE to do exercises. If you want to have a look in the HANA capabilities and maybe work with HANA XS you can also use the SCP trial or even install an image of HANA express in a local VM.
If you want to understand how to proceed with the subscriptions and installations I advise also to have a look in the SAP Tutorial website, there are a lot of exercises and installation guides showing all the mandatory steps before the start of the development (e.g. HANA express).
Since we covered most part of the general steps in the Upskilling Journey I think it is time to dig a little bit deeper and evaluate the details of each one of the main areas of consultancy in the SAP world to understand the impacts for each one of them.
Functional consultant
S/4HANA and the Digital Transformation
The transition from ECC to S/4HANA is definitely the main subject discussed between functional consultants but the inclusion of other systems like SuccessFactors, Ariba and C/4HANA bring an additional complexity to the understanding of the all the products offered by SAP. In my opinion, these are the biggest impacts for functional consultants:
Modules simplifications and restructure
Finance is one of the modules most affected by this change, some usual tables are not used anymore and a lot of process received updates, this definitely brings a positive impact but functional consultants need to be on top of these changes.
New user interfaces
With the appearance of SAP Fiori and SAPUI5 we are not dependent on the SAP GUI anymore and several transactions were replaced by beautiful web applications. One of the main objectives of SAP Fiori is to reduce the macro-transactions and provide simple applications focusing in each one of the business roles in the company. With this change, the functional consultants need to understand the new touchpoints in the system to provide the best experience to their customers.
Configuration and extensibility via SAP cloud apps
On-premise installations are still a huge portion of the SAP market but since SAP is moving the main solutions to the cloud it might be more and more difficult to find on-premise installations in the future.
With cloud solutions the overall maintainability is reduced but the extensibility is also affected. SPRO is not an option anymore, now you provide the extensions and configuration through specific Fiori Tiles available in the cloud, this means that your options are limited and performed through a total different process.
This item brings also an impact for technical consultants but with SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory I believe we will have more features to explore in the extensibility topic in the future.
Basis consultant
Since SAP is offering all the new solutions in the cloud, I believe in the future it might be difficult to find spots for Basis consultants since the infra-structure is mainly attached to SAP data centers and coordinated by their own employees, but regarding on-premise installations there are still a huge portion of the market to explore.
Installation of specific SAP components
With the installation of new products like HANA database and S4/HANA there are some specific components that are requested and may be quite difficult to implement without understanding the new architecture. Some examples are:
- HANA AFL (Application Function Libraries) used for Predictive Analytics like APL and PAL.
- S4CRM add-on in S4/HANA instances.
- Enterprise-search in S4/HANA (without TREX).
Specialization in other cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure)
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In my last projects I could notice the increasing demand of Basis and Cloud Architects with knowledge in AWS or Azure helping to coordinate the installation of SAP instances in the mentioned cloud providers.
Also, SAP has been focusing on partnerships with Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure and this seems the best time to upskill in a topic non-related with SAP technologies.
Technical consultant
I’ve been working and experiencing most part of these solutions in the last five years and I believe you need to understand at least a little bit of each one of them to become a proficient technical consultant, other people may disagree from my recommendations but I believe these items can provide you the best vision to provide outstanding technical solutions to your customers.
SAP Fiori and SAPUI5 (UI & UX strategy)
The new User Experience designed for SAP software and applications, huge change in the front-end development but with incredible benefits for customers.
SAP Fiori is based on five principles: role-based, adaptive, simple, coherent and delightful. The main objective is to reduce the macro-transactions and provide simple UI for each one of the different employees in the company.
SAPUI5 library is the basis of all of the new web applications and it is based on javascript code, you can develop the applications through HANA Studio or via Web IDE. Other user interfaces are supported via ABAP WD and Screen Personas.
Important topics:
- SAP Fiori
- SAPUI5
- Custom apps
- Mixed apps (smart controls)
- Fiori Elements
- ABAP WebDynpro
- Screen Personas
- SAPUI5
ABAP Development
ABAP development is still present but with a reduced scope since most part of the user interfaces have been migrated to applications powered by SAP Fiori and the data processing has also moved to the database level with the new strategy of code push-down.
ABAP still supports really important components like SAP Gateway, BOPF and even the development of Core Data Services via ABAP CDS.
Important topics:
- ABAP Development
- ABAP OO (still relevant)
- New ABAP 7.5+
- Goodbye SAP GUI!
- SAP Gateway and OData
- ABAP CDS
- BOPF
- BRF+
ABAP is also moving to SAP Cloud Platform and now you have the option to deploy ABAP codes there, if you want to have a wider idea about the future of ABAP development I recommend the reading of Evolution of the ABAP Programming Model from Carine Tchoutouo Djomo.
HANA Development
HANA database combines the power of transactional and analytical features in a single DB. The in-memory database created by SAP provides an unique experience to the customers providing the ability to run several queries in real time and with an incredible response rate.
With the appearance of HANA we noticed a big reduction in the ABAP development scope and the raise of code push-down, that is basically the transfer of data modelling and processing to the DB level.
HANA also provides an instance called HANA XS (extended application services) for scenarios of 2-tiers only (Database and UI).
Important topics:
- HANA XS
- Classic
- Advanced (cloud-foundry)
- SAPUI5
- Javascript/Node.js
- CDS (Core Data Services)
- Code-push down strategy
- Virtual Data Model
- ABAP CDS / HANA CDS (Core Data Services)
- AMDP (ABAP database managed procedures)
- SQL Script and Open-SQL (Consumption in ABAP)
- HANA AFL (Application Function Libraries)
- e.g. PAL and APL for Predictive Analytics
SAP Cloud Platform
SAP Cloud Platform was known in the past as HANA Cloud Platform (a.k.a. HCP) but the concept behind the solution is still the same. The main advantage of SCP is the fact that SAP controls their own data centers and are responsible for infra-structure, security and software updates. The list of services is extensive and it covers different areas like DevOps, Machine Learning, Analytics, Data Management, Mobile, User Experience, etc.
In the last years, SAP decided to follow the Cloud Foundry initiative to improve the quality and response time in the development of new cloud applications and with this change they started new agreements with other cloud providers to reuse their infra-structure.
Nowadays, we have the option to subscribe to a Neo instance (deployed via SAP data center) or a Cloud Foundry instance (deployed via other cloud providers). The list of services between the two models is slightly different but you can have a look in the current capabilities through the following link.
Note: The list below doesn’t contain all the SCP offers but just my personal list of important services to explore and learn.
Important topics:
- Web IDE
- Cloud-foundry
- SAP HANA Service
- Integration
- CPI (Cloud Platform Integration)
- OData provisioning
- API Management
- Open Connectors
- Extension Factory
- Blockchain & Internet of Things (IOT)
- Mobile Services
- ABAP environment (on-cloud)
Integration and APIs
SAP PI consultants are also facing the re-adaption, PI / PO is still recommended for on-premise scenarios but SAP Cloud Platform is providing the new set of integration tools with Cloud Platform Integration, API Management and Open Connectors.
SAP Gateway is also an important piece of the integration portfolio but the focus is totally different, while SAP PI/PO works as a SOA middleware connecting and orchestrating interfaces between multiple systems, SAP Gateway provides an easy way to access data and it is usually destined to user applications.
Important topics:
- On-premise
- SAP Gateway and OData
- SAP PI/PO
- SAP Cloud Platform
- CPI (Cloud Platform Integration)
- OData provisioning
- API Management
- Open Connectors
Analytics
The previous role of the SAP BW / BO specialist is also facing some big changes. Since HANA provides the support to analytical modelling in the same DB there are a lot of new technologies and real time reports that doesn’t request the same experience in SAP BW.
The use of Core Data Services and the Embedded BW in S/4HANA is definitely something to explore. The new BW/4HANA also shows a lot of differences compared to its precursor (e.g. ADSO).
Of course, it is still preferable to understand the concepts about BI and Data Warehouse to provide the best solution to your customers, but the most important thing is to understand the new options available in the back-end and how to provide the best user experience in the front-end using the current solutions offered by SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BusinessObjects and the new applications from SAP Fiori and SAP Smart Business Services.
Important topics:
- Back-end
- HANA CDS / ABAP CDS
- S/4HANA Embedded BW
- BW/4HANA
- Front-end
- SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)
- SAP BO (Business Objects)
- Lumira Designer
- Web Intelligence (WebI)
- Analysis for Office (AFO)
- SAP Smart Business Service (on-premise and cloud)
- KPI Design
- Analysis Path Framework (APF)
- Query Browser
- Fiori Elements
- Overview Page
- Analytical List Page
- Analytical UI5 Components (e.g. Charts)
SAP Leonardo
SAP Leonardo aggregates all the innovation areas explored by SAP, you can notice some products released by SAP in this space like the SAP Leonardo ML Foundation, Blockchain and Internet of Things (IOT).
In parallel, SAP has been discussing partnerships with other cloud providers to use their infrastructures and offer their services in a way to fulfil the gaps related with the main topics from the SAP Leonardo initiative. I still didn’t have the opportunity to explore this subject deeper but I believe it is quite important to understand at least the basics involved in this segment.
Important topics:
- Digital Transformation
- IOT & Blockchain
- Big Data
- Predictive Analytics
- Machine Learning
Conclusion
And finally, we reached the end!
This article started with a simple idea and a few loose paragraphs but in the end it turned into a big sharing of ideas and professional experiences that (I hope) it should bring more information to consultants working in the area and people that would like to start in the SAP world.
I wish to extend a huge thank you to the team of the IT.BR Australia for the opportunity to present this content and explore such an interesting subject.
As always, I hope you enjoyed the content and see you next time. 🙂
Olá Filipe de Mello
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences/knowledge.
I believe that it can be very useful for those looking for a lighthouse in this time of changing..
I would just add that for the technical side we should also consider git as a must in 2019.
abapGit project is bringing some options for a better version control in SAP and the technical consultant in SAP should be aware of it.
Hi Sergio,
Thank you for the collaboration.
I've been using Git in the development of SAPUI5 applications but I didn't know about this project abapGit, it seems really interesting.
I am going to include your suggestion in the next revision of this article.
Cheers,
Felipe
Thanks a lot. That is the most comprehensive blog i have read to clarify all the confusion SAP is generating for consultants 🙂
Thank you for the feedback Rashid Javed !
Hey Felipe de Mello Rodrigues ,
Thanks for the overview and greetings from the Kyma Open Source Team at SAP CX in Munich, Germany!
FYI: we are launching an openSAP course on Kyma Open source which is strongly related to the SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory: https://open.sap.com/courses/kyma1
Best regards,
Marco.
Hallo Marco Dorn,
Thank you for the contribution, I am subscribing to the course right now!
Congrats by the innovative work and please extend my regards to the rest of the team.
Cheers,
Felipe
Hello Felipe de Mello Rodrigues ,
Cool, I hope you like the course. Let me know what you think!
Best regards,
Marco.
Thank you! You have listed my top priorities very well. When I get a chance to go in some sort of order.
Right now the projects I'm working on drive what piece of technology I am learning. Once we get caught up (never), I'd love to explore some things on this list.
So my backwards way of learning:
Sigh. This will get bookmarked. I want to learn everything at once. That's not going to happen. As a part of your way to learn I would add SAP Teched. I learn a lot about well - a lot. Hands-on and great instructors make it easier to dive a bit deeper if you are ready for it.
Last functional consultants... I'm Techno/Functional. And yes, that's getting harder to do. I agree the biggest change is in FI. The analytics (that I am not building - I'll get to look at these) are centered around FI/CO - or our new acronym BTC. However, a lot of things were simply moved to HTML / Fiori platform with very little changes.
ABAP - yes important. Remember you can still create apps in the ABAP system and then build a tile that uses them. (On-premise) It's probably NOT the preferred way. However, when everyone is learning - it gets the job done. I have yet to see consultants that really know their way around the technical system. They are learning just like the staff is learning.
So to finish my very long comment.
THANK YOU! This is a nice blog that outlines a way for me to start learning.
Michelle
Hi Michelle Crapo,
Thank you for the contribution and for sharing your personal experiences with us.
It is really interesting to see other consultants experiences to have a comparison and identify the best paths during this learning process.
Regarding your last paragraph about ABAP and UI, I believe that due to the huge number of transactions to be converted from the old GUI we still can't see a big number of SAPUI5 standard applications but SAP has been delivering more and more content in every new release, for this reason you can still notice the use of ABAP WD and Screen Personas in several apps.
If you are delivering a custom application the best approach is definitely to use SAPUI5 but in a time of desperation and lack of expertise it is difficult to follow this approach all the times.
Thank you again for your comment and I wish you all the best.
Cheers,
Felipe
Ah... And you think I'm a consultant. Nope, I'm working directly for McNess. However, this blog applies to all of us. So I find it interesting.
My approach hasn't been the best. It's been learn what I have to learn as I go. Or learn on projects that can be extended a bit, and use the new technology. In the cloud, yes, I have some basic experience with it. I also notice that a lot of tech that is in the cloud can be used on-premise.
Great Blog!
Great discussions,
Michelle
Congrats again Felipe!
You nailed it and helped many people that are getting lost in these changes and rebranddings!
Hey Julio Ganem,
Thank you for the invitation once again, it was an incredible experience.
All the best mate!
Cheers,
Felipe
Great article, very well written!
As I work with ABAP and BW technologies, I feel exactly as you described in the text: somewhat lost on which paths to follow to update me in this scenario of so many new features.
Very important tips listed and put in a very well structured way, congratulations!
I will share with several colleagues who, I imagine, are also feeling lost in this universe of SAP news.
Best regards,
Ademir N. Dias
BW/ABAP Consultant
Hi Ademir Dias,
Thank you for the feedback.
I am glad to hear that this article helped you. So many changes going on at the same time that it is pretty difficult to understand what we should focus on next.
Hope your colleagues enjoy the content too. 🙂
Cheers,
Felipe
Congrats Felipe!!! Great blog!!!
Thank you my friend! 🙂
Phew,
Took me sometime to finish the blog and you have managed to keep me hooked till the end 🙂 .
Great blog Felipe. This has been a satisfying read just before the long weekend.
Cheers,
Sai
Hi Sai Krishna Kowluri,
Awesome mate! Thank you for the comment.
I am really glad to hear that you enjoyed the reading, as I mentioned before this article started with a simple content but due to all the different areas to explore in SAP it turned into a big collection of ideas.
Good to hear the content was interesting from the beginning to the end.
Cheers,
Felipe
Felipe,
Fantastic summary. Thanks for putting this together and making consultants’ life better . You certainly produced a clear yet big picture on various technology shift that has been happening with SAP for the last several years .
Hi INDRASANAN KRISHNAN,
Thank you for the feedback. I believe people were missing this kind of content in the community and I am really glad with the achievement so far, good to see that people are enjoying this content and we are benefiting with this kind of "guide" for the modern SAP consultant.
All the best mate!
Cheers,
Felipe
It’s a great blog. Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge like this. I’m very excited.
I would like to share this blog with my colleagues. Would you allow me to share it in Japanese?
Hi Mino Kato,
Definitely! I would love to see this content translated in Japanese.
Thank you for the proposal and for spending your time with this activity.
Could I please ask you just to include in the beginning of the article a reference to this original post and a reference to my SAP profile?
Felipe de Mello Rodrigues
PS: Send me the link to the article after you publish, I am really excited to see the result. 🙂
Thank you in advance.
Cheers,
Felipe
Dear Felipe,
Thank you very much !
Here is my Blog link.
It was great experience for me.
Regards,
Mino Kato
Thank you Mino Kato! I loved it! 😀
Hello Felipe,
In the midst of number of innovation journey, you read the hearts and minds of SAP folks and struck the right chord. Thank you very much for sharing!
..and yes the term "Technical Consultant" is more relevant than "ABAP Consultant" in this evolving times.
Kind regards,
Harsh
Hey Harsh Bhatt,
Thank you for the kind words, I am really grateful! 🙂
Indeed! Really difficult to use the title ABAP consultant nowadays since we have so many different areas in the technical space but I thought ABAP deserved an honourable mention in the article since most part of the technical consultants have (or had) this experience (in some point of time).
I wish you all the best!
Cheers,
Felipe
Hi Felipe.
Excellent blog and great resource, thank you. i'm 100% agree with you, it's necessary to understand the approach of the new tech of SAP and adapt us quickly to it.
With respect to the BASIS consultants, I would like to know what's your opinion about the relashionship of BASIS and SAP Solution Manager, and its role on the learning path to the consultants.
Again, thanks a lot.
Best regards.
HI Rolmy Monroy Villanueva,
Thank you for your comment and feedback.
I believe Solman is still the main product for application lifecycle management and it also supports the SAP Activate methodology, so probably it is a reasonable choice for the learning path.
Cheers,
Felipe
Hi Felipe.
Thanks for sharing with Current SAP Technologies Portfolio.
Thank you,
Syam
You're welcome Syambabu Allu ! Thank you for the message.
Hi Felipe,
It was a pleasure to watch your presentation and a great opportunity to learn from your experiences.
I can't wait your next article.
Thank you!
Luiz
Hi Luiz Rocha,
Thank you again for the feedback and for attending the presentation in Sydney.
I am currently working on a new content related with SAP Cloud Platform that you will probably enjoy, I post an update as soon I release the new article.
PS: Welcome to the SAP community. 🙂
Cheers,
Felipe
Sensational blog post Felipe de Mello Rodrigues covering the main topics of the day. As an SAP Consultant that has been involved in projects since 1996 there has definitely been a large amount of change - especially in recent years and I myself have had to reinvent myself and learn new skills being for the most part of my career an SAP SD Consultant. This really resonates with me and provides me with some inspiration for writing about my journey from SAP SD to Architecting and Building apps on SAP Cloud Platform so thankyou for this....and of course look out for my blog post ;-).
I really liked this statement here:
Well done on getting the Community speaking about these things. Definitely blog envy on my part :-).
Thanks for sharing and look forward to catching up with you at some point to discuss these items!
cheers
Phil
Hey Phil Cooley,
Thank you for sharing your view about this topic.
For sure I would like to have a look in your new blog post, it is always good to understand the different challenges faced during this adaptation process to improve our own journeys too.
Next time I travel to Melbourne I will definitely drop a message and try to catch-up for a coffee, if you have plans to travel to Sydney just let me know.
Cheers,
Felipe
I manage a Basis & Authorizations team and my company has been on the digital transformation mouse wheel for quite some time now.Each step of the way both Basis & Authorizations have been heavily involved. Granted, their roles and responsibilities have changed and my team has done well to adapt (Thank you openSAP, Learning Hub, AND... Enterprise Support Academy!)
What I have learned in my brief 9 years experience with SAP is, regardless of platforms... technologies... or industry buzz... that Basis will always be around, that Authorizations is taken for granted, and for the life of me I cannot sell the joys of Solution Manager to my company. But that is a story for another day. 🙂
Hi Peter Monaghan,
Thank you for sharing your view.
Regarding Authorizations I definitely agree with you, I believe security is still one of the main roles and even with a cloud instance you need someone in your corporation to be responsible for this kind of activity.
When I mentioned about a reduced scope for Basis consultants in the future I was thinking purely from a software installation perspective but of course there are several different areas that will continue to be available in this space.
The role of the Basis consultant will never die, but as the same that has been happening with ABAP consultants in the last years we can notice a change in the usual scope and reassignment of activities to other development technologies. I believe Basis consultants may face a similar impact regarding the new technologies.
Hope this information brings more clarity to my ideas in the article.
All the best mate!
Cheers,
Felipe
Great blog Felipe de Mello Rodrigues .. kept me hooked till the end and left me wanting more. We expect a 'Part 2' for this blog
Hello Sreenivasa Chandan Medam,
Thank you very much!
I am really glad to know that you enjoyed the reading but to be honest I don't have plans to write the part 2 so soon, I think I need some vacations now. 😀
Maybe next year, with new updates provided by SAP, this way we will have more material to explore and continue this discussion.
Cheers,
Felipe
Hi Felipe,
as expected (when I saw the title + author) this one is really a very useful piece of information to everyone considering himself somehow as consultant in the SAP area.
I personally like it very much that you added SAP Press Books to the list (and even at the beginning) of the learning material.
Considering the ABAP Development area, I would have also listed Eclipse(+ADT). On my opinion and in-house experience a lot of developers are seriously struggling to start with the IDE (mostly because they don't want to get out of their comfort zone). When they then should start with ABAP CDS, they first have to get familiar with the IDE, which could be easily avoided as you can use the ADTs also in projects based on older ABAP releases.
Best regards, and as always thanks a lot for sharing.
Sebastian
Hey Sebastian Freilinger-Huber,
Thank you for your contribution and support my friend. As always, sharing interesting ideas and improving the level of the discussion.
SAP Press was actually one of my first options in the past, even not using so often nowadays I still believe it is an excellent channel for consultants that are looking for detailed information.
Regarding the HANA Studio +ADT you are totally right! I am going to include this item in the first revision of this article (probably in the next months) and this topic is also relevant for BW consultants since they shouldn’t use RSA1 anymore and the creation of BEX queries is also available through HANA Studio +BW perspective.
Thank you once again for the contribution.
All the best mate!
Cheers,
Felipe
Great article, Felipe.
Now, I wonder when Jackie Chan had a change in his career and became an SAP Consultant 🙂
Image 1 very much looks like him illustrating he is about to make one his moves. I am a fan.
Hi Serdar Simsekler,
Thank you for the message mate!
You got it right, it is indeed Jackie Chan! 😀
This image is a famous meme based on one of his movies and it is usually associated with confusion and frustration. LOL
You can run a quick search with Google to find the original image: https://www.google.com/search?q=jackie+chan+meme
Cheers,
Felipe
Wow! Does this prove I am a good fan or other way around?
Thinking the SAP's speed on changing their technology/brands, that image really fits the situation, then.
Cheers...
Serdar
Hi Felipe, I have several friends shared this article to me and I proudly told them that this guy is my friend and he’s also really good at brewing. Good work!
Hey Raymond Pu,
Hope you're well mate.
Excellent news! Thanks for the message and recognition (about the article and the beers too). 😉
All the best and let's try to catch-up one of these days.
Cheers,
Felipe
Hi Felipe,
Thanks for share your deep understanding on different technical corners of SAP 🙂
Really appreciate to your work & experience.
Regards,
Mahaboob Basha
Thank you Shaik Basha!
I appreciate the message.
Cheers,
Felipe
How can both gain from this? In my mind, if SAP is getting more revenue it's because customers are actually paying more for this consuption based model.
I'm opening this conversation, because the fear most customers have when they move to cloud is that it's actually going to be more expensive. From my experience you get a better time to market with cloud, but on the cost side it's far from obvious that customers will pay less in the new model.
Hi Joao Sousa,
Thank you for the question.
A lot of customers are quite concerned about migrating to the cloud and I ain’t talking only about SCP, the same feeling is shared across different migration projects to any of the main cloud providers available nowadays.
This is a big topic of discussion but in my point of view, if you migrate to the cloud and your costs are actually superior compared to on-premise I believe you are not delivering a healthy cloud architecture.
Based on the fact you don’t need to worry about physical servers, network, security, delivering an infra-structure capability and administrating all the operations there is already huge savings (from time and budget perspectives), that provides you the ability to focus on the business and delivery of your applications.
All the cloud services are charged on computing, storage or data traffic, you can start with any size with the possibility to automatically scale, it basically means you don’t have a risk to do a big investment estimating a future stage of your business and enter in a scenario that you have idle resources running and consuming additional investments.
With the adoption of serverless architecture this value proposition increases a lot and some of the newest cloud applications of SAP are already following this path (e.g. SAP Extension Factory).
Hope this information helps to clarify some of your concerns but if you need more details about pricing I would advise to look for an SAP representative to provide all the answers you need.
Cheers,
Felipe
But how can SAP be getting more revenue if customers are paying less? This is just not logical, if it is really more cost effective for customers, how is SAP getting more money at the same time?
Nice Post! Helpful article!
Thanks mate! 🙂
Hi Felipe,
Thank you for the very informative post. We tend to get stuck on our specialist areas. So your post assists in identifying areas of growth.
Regards,
Charles
Thank you Charles Tietze, your comment is greatly appreciated.
Hello Felipe,
Excellent article! It clearly sums up SAP Technology today in a nutshell and is a "Starter's Guide" to enter SAP technology space. For old timers this is a map/guide of where every technology sits in the portfolio and helps them unravel through the confusion of modern SAP technologies!
Well done! With your writing above, you've demonstrated how every SAP consultant today should understand SAP technology.
Best Regards,
Aditya
Thank you for the positive feedback Aditya Palekar. 🙂
Hello Felipe,
Thats a really nice article! Its easy to read and dive deep into modern SAP Technologies.
Thanks a lot!
Best regards
Marcin
Thanks Felipe. Even almost after 1 year this blog still holds true without much technological change (probably can add Docker and Kubernetes) considering how drastically things are moving (thanks to open source community).
Cheers!!
Nice Blog.!
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences/knowledge. It's very helpful for me.
Thanks Felipe for the excellent compilation of the technological tools that are really becoming part of an SAP consultant's need to know nowadays.
Hi Felipe de Mello Rodrigues .
If Rise with SAP entered in the game means still it's worth to learn about SAP Security ?
Note : Im a fresh SAP Security consultant.
Hello....Can you please update your point of view for 2022(Rise with SAP) !