SAP for Beginners

SAP has been eluding professionals since its inception and has been one of those things, which can only be learned by professionals and only by professional training courses. When I started my Masters course at University of Greenwich little did I knew what it was going to be. The only thing that I knew which was out in market was ASP 3.0, ASP.Net 1.1, and Java!

Then there was a course called Data Warehousing and Data Mining, which seemed to me as an extension of Database management, which would help me greatly in my course of web programming. But this turned out to be entirely different ball game, as it taught me the fundamentals of data warehousing, and data mining using Microsoft Analysis server, and Clementine respectively.

Now after working for about 2 years in the .Net platform, I am thinking of getting SAP certified. I am not sure if that is a logical progression, but seems to me as though I have seen the .Net world, and now the Business Intelligence world is calling me to atleast visit it once! So here I start the journey of learning the intricacies of SAP, and this are supposed to be the breadcrumbs, in case someone might also want to wander off on this path!

So for all those who embark this journey; Bon Voyage!

What is SAP?

SAP, started in 1972 by five former IBM employees in Mannheim, Germany, states that it is the world's largest inter-enterprise software company and the world's fourth-largest independent software supplier, overall.

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 39,355 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.