Jon Reed on SAP TechEd 2007 Day 4

This is Jon Reed's "roaming podcast" from SAP TechEd '07, Day 4. Get Jon's unscripted reactions to the last full day of TechEd '07, including key info on SAP skills trends, becoming a Business Process Expert, and Jon's conference wrap.

In this podcast, Jon ties together the themes he covered throughout SAP TechEd '07. Recorded right on the spot in conference rooms and hotel lobbies, Jon's TechEd podcast series puts the technology trends of TechEd '07 in the context of the skills SAP professionals will need to succeed.

For the Day 4 podcast, Jon breaks down his "instant reactions" to technical themes such as eSOA, mashups, Web 2.0, BI, and becoming a Business Process Expert, and he comments on the SAP skills gap in these areas and how they will be filled.

Topics in this part of the podcast include:

- Which SAP skills sets are becoming commoditized and what the skills growth areas are.

- A view of the "SAP skills of the future" but also a consideration of the skills needs of the present, and how SAP consultants should balance the two.

- Why Jon is changing his stance from consultants needing to have an 80/20 technical-functional mix (one way or the other) to a 50/50 skills mix, which Jon thinks might be the ideal in the future.

- Jon's reflections on the workshop on "Becoming a Business Process Expert" (BPE) and the tools that technical and functional consultants can pursue to becoming a BPE.

- Jon explains why he divides SAP customers into three distinct groups and what he sees as the project priorities of each group

- The different versions of NetWeaver that are coming out, and the conflicting information that SAP representatives gave Jon at TechEd about when certain releases and features were becoming available. Jon talks about the pending release of NetWeaver 7.1, and the questions about when SAP PI (Process Integration), Enterprise Services Repository (ESR), and NetWeaver CE (Composition Environment).

- Jon covers why ABAP is not dead, and talks about the different conversations he had with folks from SAP Labs about how ABAP fits into SAP's NetWeaver plans. Jon gives his take on why ABAP is still part of SAP's plans, based on facts such as: the ABAP Workbench is still part of NetWeaver, that the PI component is partially built on ABAP, and that while the CE does not have ABAP, there are many ABAP-related tools still supported in NetWeaver, such as WebDynpro for ABAP and MDM for ABAP.

- Jon talks about the different SAP modeling tools that are going to change the nature of SAP development and give business users a greater opportunity to get involved in development using visual modeling tools like Visual Composer, Aris for NetWeaver, and the upcoming SAP Eclipse Development tool. Jon talks about why he thinks this new generation of modeling tools is a big deal, and finally gives some teeth to the "extend the enterprise" ERP movement which actually began in the late '90s, but did not have the technical capabilities to really support it.

- Jon wraps his four part podcast series on TechEd with a review of the conference as a whole and the bottom line implications for SAP professionals.