WHAT IS SAP?

Primary objective of a company is to make money. A business produces either a product or a service in order to make money. Products or services are sold to customers. The raw material and operating supplies are purchased from vendors. The company needs to manage customers and vendors. Also the company would produce reports each month (or each period) showing the progress of the business. Also the company would need to manage all aspects of the business e.g. employees, bank accounts, inventory etc.In order to make things manageable there would be various departments in the company each looking after a particular aspect of the business e.g. Finance Department, Manufacturing Department, Human Resources Department etc. Each department would need to use some kind of software in order to manage their day to day activities. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is an enterprise wide solution. ERP software consists of modules. Each department of the company could use one or more modules (specific to that department) of the ERP software in order to manage its day to day tasks. All modules of ERP software are connected. This way management can have a view on the company as a whole. SAP is leading ERP software with largest market share. Usually the term SAP refers to both the company and its software.SAP AG is a company based in Walldorf, Germany. AG in German stands for "Incorporated". SAP is pronounced as s-a-p, not as sap. SAP was founded in 1972 in city of Mannheim, Germany. SAP AG is an older company than both Oracle and Microsoft. A group of five ex-IBM engineers formed this company. The idea was to develop a software that integrates business functions in a manner that reflects industry best practices. This way a company could replace multiple software (financial, warehousing, production planning) with one single software having integrated modules. Maintaining a single version of truth results in: synergies and communication benefits. This idea soon evolved into a product called "System, Applications, and Products in Data Processing" (SAP). In German SAP stands for "Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung". SAP was designed in such a way that it could be installed on a variety of hardware platforms and could work with variety of back-end databases This gave its customers flexibility and is a major factor in propelling SAP into forefront. SAP supports:

More than 40 languages

More than 50 currencies More than 30 industry specific solutions More than 20 combinations of hardware platforms/database/operating systems

Within two decades of its birth, SAP was not the only business software vendor. IBM was facing a tough competition from SAP Various players emerged including:

BAAN Oracle Corporation PeopleSoft JD Edwards

Some small players start gaining grounds as well including:

Great Plains Navision SAP remained the leader throughout, mainly due its support for diverse platform.

JD Edwards was purchased by PeopleSoft, which was later on purchased by Oracle Corporation. Currently, Oracle Corporation is number one rival for SAP with its software called Oracle E-Business Suite. SAP AG is based in Germany and listed on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol of SAP. The company has about 43,000 employees. SAP has about 2000 support partners. About 46,000 customers have purchased SAP software and more than 100,000+ installations are in place around the globe. The company does business in more than 50 countries. There are more than one million SAP end-users. Primary competitors of SAP are Oracle and Microsoft. All three, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft provide:

Business software for large enterprise Solutions for small and medium sized business Software development platforms Ability to tie together disparate systems (Integration Solution)

All three help sustain one another. Examples are:

Most installation of SAP runs on Oracle database (Oracle Corporation makes database as well as their own business software). Microsoft Windows is most popular desktop operating system to access SAP software SAP Products

SAP software is a family of components and products. Product in turn consists of modules.

SAP software is a group of products SAP product is a group of modules

It is within a particular module that business processes are configured. SAP is built on the concept of specialization and integration. Specialization refers to the fact that each product within the family meets a particular need. Integration refers to the fact that products can communicate with each other (transfer data and share data). SAP software can be broken down into following products:

SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP

NetWeaver Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Product Lifecycle Planning (PLM) Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

SAP is well known for reflecting industry's best practices. A company can grow faster and serve its stakeholders much efficiently by following best practices. Reflecting best practices has been a major reason in SAP's success.SAP offer industry solutions for most industries. Mainly you can divide the industry solutions into three main categories:

Manufacturing Service Industries Financial/Public Services

The above mentioned categories include Aerospace and Defence, Automotive, Banking, Chemicals, Consumer Products, Engineering and Construction, Health care, High Tech, Insurance, Media, Oil and Gas, Pharmaceuticals, Public Sector, Retail, Telecommunications, Utilities, etc. Industry Solutions are installed on top of SAP's core products. A company can choose to implement core SAP product and customize it according to its requirements. Or a company can simply choose to deploy specific industry solution.SAP product or component can be broken down into modules. The term product and component is used synonymously. For example SAP ERP is a product. It has various modules with it for example:

Financials Sales Distributions Human Capital Management etc

Modules can be defined as portion of business functionality within products. This portion of business functionality is discrete in nature. Each module serves a area of business for which a department is responsible for. All departments work together to do the business. If SAP is used across the board then consistency is achieved, as modules are integrated. Management gets the high level visibility it needs to make necessary decisions. (Again because modules are integrated).SAP software is more about the big picture of connecting people, resources, and processes across the enterprise. SAP Architecture SAP Web Application Server SAP products are built on a platform called Web Application Server (WebAS). WebAS is a very powerful and highly standardized platform. WebAS could be installed on a variety of hardware and could work with various databases. This gives IT department great flexibility in terms of SAP`s installation. WebAS supports popular programming language and protocols including Web Services, XML, HTML, ABAP, and Java.ABAP is SAP's traditional programming language. Hence WebAS is very flexible in terms of its development capabilities as well. Three-Tiered Architecture SAP software uses a three-tiered architecture. In a three-tiered architecture there are three nodes:

Presentation Layer or Client Business Logic or Application Server Database Server

Presentation Layer Various devices could be used to access SAP business software. For example: desktop, mobile devices, laptops, and so run. This device would be called a

presentation layer. You might have to install a piece of software on these devices so that they could talk to the application server (computer running the actual SAP software). You could also use your web browser to access SAP application. Whatever the case may be, the front end device would communicate with the application server. The device would simply display you a presentation layer while the application is actually running on the application server. The device is also called a "client". Application Server The actual SAP software runs on an application server. Client node simply displays the image of the screen that is actually being produced on the application server. It is important to note the application server only runs SAP software. Data is not stored in application server Database Server Data is stored on a separate machine called database server. Presentation layer communicates with application server to retrieve the screen image to be displayed to the user. Application server in turn communicates with the database server to write data to the database and to retrieve data from the database. The database server would be hosting a database management system like Oracle. Oracle is the most popular choice of database to be used with SAP software. Other databases could be used as well e.g. SQL Server (from Microsoft) and DB2 (form IBM). Network Network is an important part of a three tiered architecture. The client computer would connect to the application server through internet, or company specific intranet, local area, network, dial up line etc. Similar media is used by application server to communicate with database server. This way user can run business application virtually from anywhere. Scalability, Flexibility, and Ease of Maintenance Three-tiered architecture provides scalability and flexibility. If overtime, load is increased on the application server, then another application server could be added. Or simply more memory or CPU could be added to the same application server without disturbing other nodes. Similarly database server could be upgraded without touching the other nodes. Also when it is time to upgrade the business logic to a newer version, only application server absorbs the new business logic patches. Service-Oriented Architecture SAP is SOA enabled. SOA (pronounced as so-uh) stands for Service-Oriented Architecture. SOA architecture is based on NetWeaver technology. Being SOA enabled means that SAP software support service calls. Any program (even external to SAP) can make a service call to SAP to retrieve some useful information or to

register new information. For example lets say you have developed an external website that needs to retrieve current pricing information from SAP software. Instead of retrieving information from the database (by writing SQL) your website will make a service all to SAP requesting prices on selected items. Also your website may make a service call to SAP to register a new customer. The information might arrive to your program responsible for generating website in an XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) format.XML is a popular choice of protocol for data exchange. You can then parse this data and display it to the website in any layout you like using HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language). Websites are built using HTML language. This is the language that your browser can decode. SOA architecture brings flexibility to the table. It makes it easy for external applications to communicate with SAP.

How to Access SAP? SAP GUI In order to access SAP software, a user interface software need to be installed on your desktop. This user interface software is called SAP GUI (pronounced as goo-ee). GUI stands for Graphic User Interface. There are various flavours of SAP GUI available. Most popular choice is WinGUI. WinGUI is also known as fat client. WinGUI is a SAP user interface for Microsoft Windows. It uses lots of disk space and memory. Another popular choice is Java GUI. Java GUI is also a thick client in terms of computer resources. You can access SAP through Java GUI from non-Microsoft based desktops or clients. If the client device does not have too many resources available then SAP software could also be accessed via Internet Explorer (IE). Using IE is easier to maintain. It comes with Windows Operating System and does not have to be installed and maintained on desktops by the IT department. In terms of network traffic, IE is not as efficient as WinGUI and Java GUI.

Citrix's Presentation Server is also an alternative to access locally installed SAP software. Citrix uses very small network bandwidth and is very fast in performance. SAP Installation Guide Installation process could sound confusing at first look. Key to success is reading and then following. Documentation provided by SAP is excellent. If you are planning to install SAP ERP 6 then start by downloading SAP ERP 6.0 powered by SAP NetWeaver 7.0 Master Guide. The guide will give you a quick insight on what is involved in installation. It will even point out where to download the electronic media from if you don't have SAP DVDs. The guide also covers various installation scenarios including how to install self service applications. Service Marketplace The installation guides are available from SAP service marketplace. The website for SAP service market place is http://service.sap.com/ Search under keyword instguides. Relevant notes may be search for at http://service.sap.com/notes Installation Dependencies Before you continue you make sure:

You You You You

understand the installation procedure are not missing any piece of software have all the required patches and updated meet server and disk platform standards SAP Opportunities

SAP Roles Both technical and functional jobs are created when a company plans to SAP implementation or when a company maintains already implemented system. Following roles come into play in a new SAP implementation and in an environment where SAP is already implemented:

Super Users Functional and Technical Analysts System Administrator Programmers Project Managers

Super Users In any SAP environment, a gap has to be bridged between business requirements and business processes. When a company undergo SAP implementation, it needs personnel who can champion business solution for their team. These are called super users. Super users have little bit of IT knowledge as well. They have the ability to bring along those as well who are challenged by new technology. Super users are the first one to get training on SAP software. They work closely with SAP functional consultants. This makes easy for super users to gain SAP knowledge. Functional and Technical Analysts Analysts could be divided into two types: functional and technical. Analysts are also referred to as consultants. Functional analysts are also called configuration leads, business analysts; business process owners. Technical analysts are also called functional developers or configuration experts. Both functional and technical analysts role are aligned with a particular SAP module or group of modules. Analysts work with client's business-side counterparts or super users, to implement SAP. More modules a company will implement, more analysts will be required. Job of a functional analyst is to gain business requirements, by working closely with super users. The functional analyst would then work with technical analyst of that module, to have SAP configured according to the business requirements captured. Analysts roles are vital for an SAP implementation. These roles require a person to have excellent coordination expertise. System Administrator System Administrator is an expert on Basis module of SAP. This person often takes team lead role or architect role. The person is expected to design overall technical strategy.SAP security also comes under Basis. Person responsible for implementing security works closely with functional team to make sure security is implemented as per business requirements. Programmers SAP programmers are specialized in programming language called ABAP. ABAP stands for: Advanced Business Application Programming. Most of the SAP software is written in ABAP language. ABAP is a C like language. Programmers are also called developers and ABAPers (pronounced as ah-bop-ers). Besides ABAP, programmers are also expected to know Java, .NET, SAP Business Intelligence, SAP Process Integration, and SAP Enterprise Portal etc. Programmers mainly come into the picture when customization is needed.

Customization simply means modifying the code such that the functionality of the application fits the business requirement. Software code is only modified if team is unable to achieve the desired results using functional configuration. Programmers are also required when interfaces need to be written. Interfaces connect SAP with external software. For example if a company is using SAP Financials and Oracle Manufacturing then programmers will write interface so that both business software could communicate with each other. Project Management Project Manager is responsible for managing SAP implementation project or an upgrade project. There is a high demand for project managers specialized in SAP. Demand for project managers is increasing as number of SAP implementations and upgrades are increasing. Upgrades are something that will keep on happening, as new product releases will keep on occurring. Companies have to keep pace with the new releases in order to keep their SAP support valid. SAP AG would not support software if it is too old. Many consulting companies have established Project Management Offices (PMOs) in order to coordinate groups of project managers. You can consider breaking into SAP arena as a project manager. PMP (Project Management Professional) certification from PMI (Project Management Institute) would come handy if you wish to go this route. You can visit PMI home page at: http://www.pmi.org