Jon Reed on SAPPHIRE 2007 Day 2 and 3

This is Jon Reed's "roaming podcast" from the floor of SAPPHIRE 2007, Day 2 and Day 3. Follow Jon's unscripted, instant reactions to the press briefings and executive interviews he conducted on the final two days of the conference.

On these last two days, Jon talked with a number of industry insiders and SAP executives and consolidated what he learned onto this podcast wrap.

A couple of major highlights included the backgrounds needed for consulting success in BI and RF/RFID, and the emerging NetWeaver "jobs roles of the future."

Highlights from Jon's uncensored and unscripted conference reactions included:

- Jon's reaction to the key themes of the big SAPPHIRE keynotes, including the shift from "disruptive innovators" to "innovation without disruption."

- Jon documents which SAP terms are in and more notably, which SAP terms are on the way out. Terms on the way out include: ABAP, Basis, and R/3, but also more surprising departures such as XI, mySAP, and ESA.

- Jon tracks the hot consulting areas emphasized during the conference, including emerging activity in the retail industry as well as xApps and selective SOA implementations.

- Jon's detailed review of a NetWeaver executive's review of the SAP job roles of the future. Jon describes the roles of "Composer," "Consolidator," "Repository Keeper," and "SAP Developer," and notes the skills and backgrounds that will be necessary to move into each of these new roles.

- Jon documents a couple more public admissions by SAP executives of pending skills shortages and Jon speculates on whether the skills gap is as big for SOA as the skills gap once was between mainframe and client-server technologies.

- Jon details the emerging RFID consulting role and the kinds of skills profiles that will find success on an SAP RFID implementation.

- Jon looks more closely at BI consulting and which types of functional and technical SAP consultants will succeed in BI and BW consulting going forward.

- Jon describes a rapid mySAP ERP 2005 xApp implementation, how it was accomplished and what kind of skills were needed to complete it.

- Jon also predicts how long the SAP upgrade wave will boost consulting and when we will return to a "winners and losers" consulting market like we had for most of this decade before the upgrade wave hit.

-  Finally, Jon wraps the podcast with another review of the hottest areas of SAP going forward (BI, Retail, SOA, functional and technical skills convergence, and HR and FI (but not classic back office HR and FI).

Editor's Note: at the 6:25 time stamp mark on this podcast, Jon Reed says that SAP now uses PI as the abbreviation for "Process Industries." In this context, he actually meant "Process Integration," the replacement for SAP XI.