The introduction of SAP NetWeaver, and the evolution of the Business Process Platform will allow customers to build and deploy a dynamic model of their business. Importantly, using this approach, SAP is moving on from the traditional “one size fits all” approach to software. Every company will be able to construct its own unique business using the building blocks of web services. Fundamentally this is a customisation process enabling customers to configure an existing set of processes into the precise subset – or superset – that forms the operational core of their company. SOA will herald new possibilities for tailoring business processes to match the real world requirements.

It is effectively a very simple process – that is the whole point! SOA is designed to allow fast, effective (and therefore cheap) deployment of SAP software. Using a modelling environment, customers are able to choose either existing predefined processes, or start building their own from existing services. These individual services refer to specific functionality available in the SAP Business Suite. The big advantage of using web services as the foundation for this approach, is that they use completely open standards, and so non-SAP functionality can be integrated within these processes as easily as SAP functions.

Clearly this is a very different approach to deploying SAP systems, and so the skills required are going to be different to those of a traditional SAP consultant. A number of new key roles have been identified:

• Enterprise Architect – evaluate business requirements, understand the technology capabilities, design and deploy the model
• Business Process Expert – model and orchestrate business process and user interfaces using modelling and simple development tools
• Enterprise Service Developer – enterprise service creation and composition

This is the start of an exciting time for SAP and SAP Education. As our first contribution, SAP Education is currently rolling out training and certification to support these new roles.

Enterprise Architect

Certification for Enterprise Architects is currently being offered at the Associate level. Other higher level exams will follow in the future. In order to achieve Associate level certification, delegates should attend the SOA100 (Enterprise SOA Fundamentals – 2 days) and SOA200 (SAP Enterprise Architect Framework for enterprise SOA – 5 days).

Other supporting courses for an Enterprise Architect include the courses SOA230 (SAP Enterprise Architect Modelling with Aris – 2 days) and the SOA250 (Advanced Enterprise Architect Framework for enterprise SOA – 5 days). These are expected to form the basis of the Professional exam when available.

Business Process Expert

Certification for Business Process Experts will also available at two levels, Certified Business Process Associate, and Certified Business Process Professional – this latter certification is still under development, and should be available Q4 2009. In order to achieve Associate level certification, delegates should attend BPM100 (Methodology - 2 days), BPM130 (Business Designer - 2 days), BPM300 (Governance Overview - 3 days). The Business Process Professional will include SOA120 (Business Process Modeling - 2 days), BPM150 (SAP Business Server and Publisher, Enterprise Modeling, Process Optimization and Performance - 2 days), BPM140 (Model To Execution - 3 days) and BPM310 (Governance in Detail - 3 days).

Enterprise Service Developer

As yet there are no developed certifications for this role, but these are under development. This curriculum is being designed to incorporate the latest technology for the development environment, including the new Composition Environment released with SAP NetWeaver 7.1. Enterprise Service Developers will certainly need skills in existing development technologies though, including Web Dynpro for Java, Web Dynpro for ABAP, Composite Application Framework, and Visual Composer.