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SAP customers considering a move back to Standard Support must weigh factors such as the rate of inflation and waived fees for extended support on older releases -- factors that could bring the two options to a similar cost over the next few years.

"There is a choice, but because of inflation, the differences between the tiers are not enough to give customers the value they want to see in the Standard Support offering," said Ray Wang, partner at Altimeter Group. "It's not really coming down to those decisions on what products are in place. The real thing that matters here is you're betting with or against inflation."

Direct customers must pick a maintenance and support option by March 15 in order to stay on the graduated Enterprise Support price ramp-up – which will increase fees to 22% by 2016. Channel customers have until April 30.

Standard Support costs 18% of net licensing fees now, but increases will be tied to inflation. A consumer price index increase above 3.5%, which would provide equal fees by 2016, isn't unrealistic, according to a recent Gartner Research note on the topic.

Choosing SAP Enterprise Support

Enterprise Support has advantages. Standard Support doesn't have an SLA for response time, said Bob... More...

Ask your questions about ABAP at ITKnowledgeExchange.com

SAP's original business model for R/3 was developed before the idea of an object-oriented model was widespread. The transition to the object-oriented model reflects an increased customer demand for it. ABAP Objects uses a single inheritance model and full support for object features such as encapsulation, polymorphism, and persistence.

Getting started with ABAP To explore how ABAP is used in the enterprise, here are some additional resources: ABAP for newbies: Here is a collection of resources that will help you get started with this programming language. Which to learn first: XI, ABAP, or SD?: Confused on the whether you should learn ABAP, XI or SD? Here are some answers on the differences from a SearchSAP.com expert.. What SAP says about ABAP's future: Learn about how SAP sees ABAP's future. Podcast: How can ABAP developers survive in a NetWeaver era?: Learn what ABAP programmers need to know to stay current in a NetWeaver world. ABAP jobs and more: Special report: Learn how to get started in ABAP and keep your skills current.

Building an Enterprise Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Solution -- Click here to read the white paper

Like most data warehouses, BW is a combination of databases and database management tools that are used to support management decision making. BW supplies the infrastructure typical of data warehouses, but also includes preconfigured data extractors, analysis and report tools, and business process models. Among the other features of BW are: Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) that enable connections to non-R/3 applications; preconfigured business content; an integrated OLAP processor; automated data extraction and loading routines; a metadata repository; administrative tools; multiple language support; and Business Explorer, a Web-based user interface. SAP Business Warehouse is an integral component of the company's mySAP Business Intelligence group of products.

The deployment of an ERP system can involve considerable business process analysis, employee retraining, and new work procedures.

Rebecca Gill, vice president of Technology Group International says:
"For almost twenty years we have had people ask for demonstration copies of our ERP software, so they may play with it at their leisure. For years we have said no and we've done so with good reason. An ERP package is an advanced system. It isn't Microsoft Office and it isn't an iPhone. You can't simply turn it on and expect it to run without training." ERP (enterprise resource planning) is an industry term for the broad set of activities supported by multi-module application software that helps a manufacturer or other business manage the important parts of its business, including product planning, parts purchasing, maintaining inventories, interacting with suppliers, providing customer service, and tracking orders...(Continued)

Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) is SAP's enhanced version of service-oriented architecture (SOA). ESA facilitates deployment of Web services at the business level. This streamlines the conception and development of innovative application programs within the existing infrastructure of an enterprise, minimizing the cost while allowing timely implementation of new business processes.

The term SOA refers to the underlying structure supporting communications among units of work, also called services, executed on behalf of computing entities such as human users or applications. SOA defines how these entities can interact, allowing one to perform a specific service for another. The interactions are defined using a description language such as Unified Modeling Language (UML). Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) is SAP's enhanced version of service-oriented architecture (SOA)... (Continued)

Ask your SAP questions at ITKnowledgeExchange.com

The original name for SAP was German: Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte, German for "Systems Applications and Products." The original SAP idea was to provide customers with the ability to interact with a common corporate database for a comprehensive range of applications. Gradually, the applications have been assembled and today many corporations, including IBM and Microsoft, are using SAP products to run their own businesses.

SAP applications, built around their latest R/3 system, provide the capability to manage financial, asset, and cost accounting, production operations and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents. The R/3 system runs on a number of platforms including Windows 2000 and uses the client/server model. The latest version of R/3 includes a comprehensive Internet-enabled package.

SAP has recently recast its product offerings under a comprehensive Web interface, called mySAP.com, and added new e-business applications, including customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM).

As of January 2007, SAP, a publicly traded company, had over 38,4000 employees in over 50 countries, and more than 36,200 customers around the world. SAP is turning its attention to small- and-medium sized businesses (SMB). A recent R/3 version was provided for IBM's AS/400 platform.

And don't forget the enterprise SOA [service-oriented architecture] angle. It's something where, from a technical point of view, this can help companies drive globalization, their divestiture, and their integration over all topics, for example. And this is a business process platform -- not a technical platform -- that can give users the tools and techniques to make use of the SOA concept.
What are some of the common challenges that companies are facing in their upgrades?

We've really seen the upgrade challenges more on the project management side, so it's important to have a good project manager and project plan in place.

Secondly, get the business involved. Don't perceive the upgrade as something to get done in the data center. Perceive it as something where the customers -- the users -- have to be involved and, to a certain extent, even drive the process.

Thirdly, testing is still a major challenge. Get the respective resources from the user community and drive it from the user perspective and not an IT perspective.

From a technical point of view, really look at your landscape and at the implications the upgrade might have for your landscape. So you're not all of a sudden faced with the challenge that you've upgraded R/3 to mySAP ERP and then find out there's maybe something else you have to upgrade as well.
Why should users upgrade to mySAP ERP 2005 instead of mySAP ERP 2004?

It starts with maintenance. If you look at the maintenance piece, right now you are able to sit on the release much longer, which gives you, to a certain extent, a better return on investment. Also, with [mySAP ERP] 2005 you still have the flexibility to introduce new functionality. Those are two main things that you can't do with [mySAP ERP] 2004.

On top of that, look at all the effort SAP is putting into it. All the efforts within SAP are clearly focused right now toward 2005, the respective enhancement packages, and switch frame technology to integrate industry solutions. So the investments in regards to making 2005 a robust business process platform toward 2010 and beyond is something you can't find within 2004.

Therefore customers who are in the midst of a 2004 upgrade project should look at whether it would be a good idea to go to 2005. And that's really a very strong point for us. 2004 is a good release, but there are things you don't get, and consequently it's not enterprise SOA, and you won't see 2004 going toward enterprise SOA.
How will mySAP ERP 2005 upgrading affect SAP professionals and job seekers, and do you have any advice for them?

My personal advice is that there is a shift in what IT people will be doing. It will become a stronger business environment -- business process engineering, business process knowledge, business process optimization, processes within enterprises, processes beyond enterprises, networking with other IT departments to make those cross-enterprise processes work. So there will be much more on that side of the coin beyond just technology. That's one element.

The second element is still technology. The shift from a normal programming kind of environment into a service-oriented composing environment again requires business content knowledge compared to technical programming knowledge, which is another challenge and opportunity to grow into.

Last but not least, you still have to have a strong technical platform. Optimization, performance and a stable environment will become even more important. Also, given the fact that the access to data within the organization -- and we are seeing this more with enterprise SOA -- is now going from the BlackBerry device all the way down to the normal PC and browser environment. So there are some other technology areas [where] you see skills really becoming valuable.
How will mySAP ERP 2005 upgrading affect SAP professionals and job seekers, and do you have any advice for them?

I will add two more things to that point. One, there are certain solutions to look at -- think about Duet or Adobe forms, for instance -- from a technology perspective. Two, we see a huge amount of interest in GRC (governance, risk and compliance).

I would really encourage people to broaden their more or less classic SAP knowledge. If they look into the areas I mentioned, they should be in very good shape from a career perspective in the years ahead.

And on the SAP side, last year we launched the business process expert community. More than 60,000 people have signed up. I think there is a significant demand out there for this type of skill set. You can play a different role, as Martin said, and be a key user that understands business process requirements and can model them. We are building tools like visual composer that can be used. The SAP expert role will be different two years from now than it was two years ago.

It is something that has to be driven and comes from the business side, so it has not been a prominent IT topic. But, as I said, it is very important to have vendors, and I think SAP is one of those that are really able to address the topic and support the business.

DENVER -- At the start of the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG) mySAP ERP 2005 Upgrade Symposium this week, Martin Riedel, head of SAP's global upgrade office, and Stefan Kneis, vice president and ASUG executive liaison, discussed some issues facing customers who are considering upgrading to mySAP ERP 2005, how upgrades may affect the SAP jobs market, and the growing importance of compliance.