There are many people in the SAP world who started working in this area many years ago. Five, ten, even twenty or thirty years of experience are not that uncommon. For them, as for myself, SAP is mostly an ERP system written on ABAP programming language.
But if you are new to this world, your view on SAP may be very different.
In my opinion, the change started when SAP (as a company) started to implement non-ABAP tools into the ERP system. I mean Java stack.
The addition of a Java layer was meant to help developers. And I hope it did.
In the meantime, SAP (as a company) started to move into the adjacent areas and also went shopping.
SAP Portal, SAP HANA and some others are SAP developments that are aimed at the non-ERP segment of business applications.
At the same time, Siebel, Fiori and others represent acquisitions that are ERP satellites.
Many of these new products have nothing to do with ABAP. Some of them have nothing to do with ERP either. But SAP still had a point in developing or acquiring them: they want to deliver a complex solution from a single vendor for the end customer.
Sometimes the integration of the complex solution goes well. Sometimes, especially on early and ramp-up phases, not so smoothly. Unfortunately, it is quite often that the customer pays for the additional development for the integration and loses money due to a lack of experience on the part of the implementation team. That is life…
What does that mean for us as consultants? It means you can now spread your knowledge to a wider range of systems and technologies, if you wish. It also means that ABAP knowledge may be unnecessary even for an experienced SAP consultant, if (s)he works in a non-ABAP environment.
What do you think about the future of SAP products? What is the SAP vision, from your point of view? Where will all of us end up?