Today's IT professional
often comes across acronym-packed jargon that may be scary to many. I worked in
an IT giant for a couple of years at the beginning of my career and trust me it
was crazy to the core to remember the full forms of innumerable acronyms. I
would curse all those people who invented these terms saying they were poor
with their alphabets so forced it upon us as well. Although I hated it, I had
no choice but to memorize all those terms that were relevant to my project as I
had to communicate with my clients and colleagues in the preferred language.
Frankly speaking, it's really not that tough to remember them if you learn it
in a fun way and understand what the term actually stands for rather than
blindly memorizing the terminologies. So here's a quick guide for all those
SAPiens who find it difficult to keep in mind important terms related to SAP.
ABAP: pronounced
“ah-bawp,” is SAP’s foundation and stands for Advanced Business
Application Programming language
BOBJ: pronounced
“bob-jay,” is not a type of rarely seen North American bird. It’s actually a
the short form of SAP BusinessObjects, the business intelligence vendor
SAP acquired in 2007. SAP is totally banking on BOBJ for its future
success
Business ByDesign (ByD): SAP Business ByDesign is a suite of on-demand ERP
applications. (Note: SAP also uses the ByD technology to build its OnDemand
business applications.) At the close of 2011, SAP had signed up approximately
1,000 customers.
Cloud: SAP was a late comer to the cloud-computing arena,
embracing it with all the enthusiasm that a five-year-old has for eating his
vegetables. Which is to say, not so much. That’s changed as of late, however.
Colgate-Palmolive and Valero: two SAP reference
customers (the former in consumer product goods, the latter in energy services)
who you are most likely to hear from at an SAP conference. They put the “early”
in “early SAP adopter.”
“Drinking Our Own Champagne”: SAP’s take on the
classic “eating our own dog food” vendor euphemism. (Too many cynical
comparisons have been made to the price of champagne, relative to dog food, and
the price of SAP software. Woof!)
Ecosystem: as in “SAP Ecosystem.” Ecosystem makes one
think of the symbiotic relationship among mammals and the Earth’s plants,
oceans and land; in this case, think of the occasionally dysfunctional
relationship among SAP, its customers, consultants and IT integrators.
ERP: a catch-all acronym (enterprise resource
planning) for critical back-end business software, for which SAP is best known. Typically includes financial/accounting,
operations/supply chain, HR (or human capital management), and
project/portfolio management. The “sex appeal” of SAP ERP apps is very low, but see how “hot” your CFO gets if
any of those financial apps don’t work properly.
“Game changing”: SAP executives, in 2011, began
working this phrase into their presentation lexicons to describe SAP’s
“innovative” portfolio of technologies and software.
Go to Market: if you meet an SAP employee with “Go to
Market” in his or her title, know that it’s either someone tasked with getting
SAP products delivered to customers or a “rain making” sales honcho (the Brooks
Brothers suit, nice watch and iPad are also a dead giveaway)
Hasso: the first name of legendary SAP cofounder
Hasso Plattner. Like Madonna, Michelangelo and Lindsay, you will rarely hear
someone refer to him by including his surname, because there’s only one Hasso.
(Which is probably why his interview
of himself actually makes sense.)
HANA: unlike Hasso, HANA is not the name of a famous
SAP executive. It is, however, Hasso’s pet project: HANA stands for
High-Performance Analytic Appliance and is based on
SAP’s
in-memory technology initiative. In layman’s terms: HANA allows your
company to process a
ton of data
really fast.
In-Memory: you’ll hear this term often when the
discussion involves SAP HANA, which uses in-memory computing principles (not invented
by SAP, by the way) to analyze massive amounts of data “up to 3,600 times faster” than
on SAP Business Suite with traditional disk-based databases, according to SAP.
“Innovation without Disruption”: a significant
marketing push by SAP, though you don’t hear that much about it anymore. One
guess: SAP ditched the negative “disruption” part and prefers to talk about the
positive “innovation” piece all by itself.
OnDemand: SAP’s (slow) growing line of on-demand business applications—a.k.a. “The SAP Cloud.” As of early 2012, the OnDemand portfolio
includes: Business ByDesign, Sales, Sourcing, Carbon Impact, BI and StreamWork.
(Planned for later 2012 are OnDemand apps for: Career; Environment, Health and
Safety; Sales and Operations Planning; Service; and Travel.)
On premise. On demand. On device: as Brad Hamilton
said to a bewildered Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High:
“Learn it. Know it. Live it.” This is the three-pronged strategy that SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott
and Jim Hagemann Snabe have laid out for the vendor’s future.
Optimize: you are forewarned: You will hear this word
a lot and may be tempted to use it in SAP discussions yourself: We need
to optimize our customized SAP solutions. Don’t get sucked
into the “Optimize” vortex!
Orchestration: a new entry into the SAPnish lexicon,
you’ll be hearing more and more about this topic from SAP execs: an ability to
manage your company’s data across IT environments and applications, via
on-premise, in the cloud or on mobile devices. Easier said than done, by the
way.
“Our Next Largest Competitor”: rarer than a week
passing in which
Oracle doesn’t
buy another company is SAP actually referring to the “Stack Attack” by name.
Run Better: SAP’s 2011 marketing campaigns were
anchored by the “Run Better” slogan,
multiple tour stops and a
hip video showing
cool SAP customers such as Burton and Skullcandy
@sapcio: the
Twitter handle for
SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann, whose stock has risen right alongside his company’s.
Gartner’s Thomas Otter once tweeted about him: “IMHO
@sapcio has done more
for SAP’s brand than a 100,000 airport posters.”
SAP Acronym-o-Rama: PI? SRM? FI? GRC? There are too
many to include here, so click on this
SAP
glossary page to figure out that SAP product acronym that’s got you
thinking
WTH (what the heck?).
SolMan: though it is pronounced like the zany 1980s
movie
Soul Man, it has absolutely nothing to do with C. Thomas
Howell, applying to Harvard or “bronzing pills.” It’s short for SAP Solution
Manager, the oft-derided and chronically underused
technical and application support and management tool set.
Ask your CIO how the company is using SolMan to
lower TCO of your company’s SAP
investment, and see what happens.
Solution(s): this is a word that every SAP employee
(from co-CEO down to janitor) is contractually bound to use in at least every
other sentence they utter. (OK, that’s not entirely true, but you get the
point.) If you abhor this word and all who freely use it, then don’t buy SAP
software.
StreamWork: this is SAP’s collaboration platform, and SAP wants us all to love it
like it was Facebook. Or even Myspace circa the late 1990s.
SuccessFactors: a cloud-based HCM vendor SAP purchased in early 2012 for $3.4 billion. Its CEO,
Lars Daalgard, is slated to become SAP’s cloud chief and figure out SAP’s
all-important cloud strategy. (No pressure there.)
Sybase / SUP / Afaria: SAP acquired Sybase in 2010, and that deal included the Sybase
Unwired Platform (a.k.a. SUP) for managing enterprise applications and Afaria for device and security
management. (And, FYI, Sybase people don’t think “Wass ‘Sup?” jokes
are funny or clever.)
TomorrowNow: Just. Don’t. Talk. About. It. Ever.
Walldorf: SAP’s headquarters in Germany. Don’t
confuse it with the famous NYC hotel and salad, which is spelled Waldorf
Hope you enjoyed learning Spanish..oops..SAPnish as much as
I did writing it! In case you are interested in teaching or learning some modules of SAP online, then go through
this site for more details. If you think you have more terms that are not mentioned here,
please add them in the comments below.
