Question:
I am working on one of the biggest SAP projects in Europe the fact is SAP BW is being replaced at few sites I hear about stories like this time and again. I have been a victim of the same I was working on the SAP BW project at our company and our company eventually after knowing the inherent benefits - low cost of deployment and ongoing maintenance replaced SAP BW with another tool called Business Objects. Read about it here -
http://www.businessobjects.com/products/data_integration/data_integrator/
So don't even dream that there is no other tool out there that cannot do what BW does.
The people who are talking about SAP BW are just frogs in a well who do not know the world beyond SAP BW. These people Business Objects who are supposedly the No.1 in Business Intelligence are offering solutions that are cheaper to deploy and manage a data warehouse for SAP R/3 than BW this is the reason why our company replaced BW and it as now proven beyond doubt. What was implemented in our 19 months by 6 BW consultants as been redone by Business Objects in less than 4 months and we now have only 2 developers for Business Objects who manage development and do production support what needed a army for our BW system - simple number!.
I was just short of loosing my job when my company replaced SAP BW with Business Objects despite we having almost a free SAP BW license !!!. But I was just lucky I had a good Manager who got me retrained in SAP CRM and put me on the SAP CRM project. My skill in BW is helping in the SAP CRM project.
I would say the problem that SAP BW or any other SAP projects face today is the making of the shameless consulting companies around they get onto SAP projects and deem it as their birthright to squeeze and suck the SAP customer and eventually make the project a mess and kill the SAP industry. These so called consulting companies must be banned from SAP consulting. I would say sooner than later SAP wakes up and takes over implementation responsibilities on all SAP projects from the clutches of these evil SAP partners otherwise these consulting companies already have created such a bad reputation for R/3 and now they are doing the same for all the new dimension SAP products as wll. If SAP does not take stock of the situation I feel the future of SAP is doomed - you can engrave it in stone. These crook consulting companies will finish the SAP industry. A testimonial read the following article this is not the one somebody had posted on this very forum a while ago that a SAP project having run into a billion dollar and still nothing been implemented is limping. If this is what these hon'ble consulting companies who are brethren of Arthur Andersen are doing they are not SAP partners they are SAP's enemies!!!
They have a one line objective make hay while the sun shines. The consulting companies mess up SAP and eventually competitors to SAP come and seize the opportunity this is what is happening with SAP BW.
So if yours is one of the projects using a consulting company time to kick them out before you lose the project itself. They bring useless graduates and train them SAP at customers expense and mess up the projects and charge the customer a fortune for the liability they bring.
ConcernedUser
SAP project with German military stalls
By Alorie Gilbert
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 21, 2002, 2:30 PM PT
Software maker SAP is taking some heat for a stalled information technology project within the German federal government, according to a report.
The German Federal Armed Forces has delayed using a new set of bookkeeping applications from SAP due to problems installing the software, according to an article published Thursday in the German business magazine Handelsblatt. The delays are costing the German government 350,000 euros ($350,664) a day in unplanned fees for outside consulting on the project, the article says.
The SAP applications are the centerpiece of a 10-year, 6.5 billion euro ($6.5 billion) computer modernization effort under way at the military agency, the magazine said. SAP, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, is one of the world's largest suppliers of software applications designed to automate bookkeeping, order processing, and inventory tracking for businesses.
Bill Wohl, a SAP spokesman in the United States, confirmed that the German Federal Armed Forces is a SAP customer but declined to give further information about the project or about the company's relations with the German Ministry of Defense, which oversees the Armed Forces.
Just last month, SAP announced it had won a contract with the U.S. government for a similar project. Under the three-year, $30 million deal, SAP has agreed to provide accounting software to the Internal Revenue Service as part of a larger information technology renovation project at the tax agency.
Software companies have been eagerly courting government contracts as businesses around the world cut back on investment in computer systems. On Wednesday, SAP competitor Siebel Systems said it has formed an alliance with government contracting giant Lockheed Martin to sell computer systems.
But SAP's trouble with the German armed forces may be a warning call that government contracts are not always a walk in the park, particularly for a segment of the IT industry prone to project snafus and missed expectations.
"These federal deals operate in the glare of public scrutiny," said Joshua Greenbaum, a technology analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting.
"The kind of oversight that goes into government spending does pose a real problem to vendors when things go wrong," Greenbaum added. "The idea that it's a panacea to the software industry is stretching it."
Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 1:11 am Post subject: http://www.bwexpertonline.com/ - can you stop wasting time
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I wish to remind the promoter of this venture. The fact is BW consultants are sitting without work. My company when I asked my boss for subscribing to this bluntly told me that the company is planning to replace our SAP BW system by an Oracle data warehouse reason SAP BW was proving very expensive for the company and they wanted to get rid of SAP BW.
When this is the scenario forget about companies putting in BW people want to get rid of BW and this company is asking us to spend $495 for a subscription - forget it.
The same thing they are 3 BW books in the market all absolutely crap the one from Kevin Mcdonald of Compendit a SAP BW consulting company all that Kevin with WH Inmon does is try to sell us SAP BW. This is not the crap we want, people want to learn SAP BW it is absolute BW theory after reading this book you would not have learnt even to create a BW query or a infoobject just shocking dry theory and added that injury the authors shamelessly provide testimonials of some people who reckon it is a very good book. All these people perhaps are still in 1999 when companies thought IT was a fad and would throw any money to run any IT system. None of these people are living in year 2002 where IT managers are questioning the existence of various IT systems to wring the last dollar out of IT investments. Please do not trust all these books and their authors you cannot learn BW reading these books and magazines. The only way to learn BW is attend the SAP training course work on a implementation for atleast 1 to 2 years with a experienced consultant may you would know BW then. Do not blow your hard earned money on these kind of florics.
I suggest to people who are bringing these kind of magazines and publications and seeking opinion are perhaps sitting on a project that as plenty of money and nothing to do and have time to look at all these worthless things. If you are serious go and deliver some serious value for your BW system to your users otherwise you are just sitting at the edge of a cliff and will be thrown out shortly once your IT manager accesses the value of your system.
I hope everybody takes it in the right spirit. Go and deliver value for your SAP BW system otherwise we are all toast hopes it makes sense. This is serious it is happening slowly and gradually across the world people are throwing out systems without a serious value.
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Guest
Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2002 2:18 am Post subject: Replacing SAP BW With Oracle Data Warehouse
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I could not help replying ,to disagree with your observations.
First the BW Expertonline comes from an established source. The other publications have been extremely good in content. I know every SAP consultant wants to get the best rate. But when it comes to investing to upgrade/hone their skills they want it free, source material unauthorisedly or attend training at Unauthorized institutes!! You have a choice to subscribe or not. You and i can't take shots at someone carrying out activities legally.
As for replacing SAP BW with Oracle DW is concerned , i will bet my money that, it will be a night mare extracting data fron SAP the way BW does. Mu guess,the implementation would have been carried out by one of Big 4, with guys learning on your site or other consultants who have switched from SAP ABAP/Basis/Application Modules and masqerading as BW Consultants. You know the end results.
The magazine is not meant only to serve Idle BW consultants or SAP Consultants trying to become a BW Consultnats by posting in this forum.
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Guest
Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2002 2:31 pm Post subject:
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The issue is that the true value proposition for BW, ease of extraction, is hurt by two factors:
1. Existing R3 reporting & the uncooperative R3 application analysts
2. Lack of understanding of what a data warehouse is
The current R3 reports hurt because of the old maxin "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Also R3 analysts feel that reporting is their job, even if they are swamped and lack understanding of the other modules.
Also, no one understands that BW provides an easier way to extract and stage data for reporting than R3 does.
However, the BW reporting layer stinks, and SAP should open the API to BI vendors so that better reporting is possible.
There are too many IT managers thinking BW is a reporting system, or BW is a data warehouse, or BW is an integration tool, or BW is ETL, or whatever, that the essential point is missed:
BW is the best way to get at R3 data, without engaging an R3 analyst in full life cycle process report development.
Answer:
I will not try to answer the whole of this, but one question I read often I still cannot answer is : how consultancy agencies are able to train their staff at customer's expenses ?
I worked as an internal staff for some years, and each time I found one of my consultants being less experienced than said, I directly discussed it with the agency and they lowered the rate or changed the guy. I even had people for free on board, just because the relationship with the consultancy agency was good and we had agreements like 3monthes for free as a trainee, and then we started to pay the fourth month.
So, I think that the consultants are not the only people to blame with this.
Regarding the replacement of BW by BO, you should perhaps have replaced the consultancy agency, don't you think ?
And if you really think that SAP is better than the agencies to implement the tool, than that's because you never worked with guys out of SAP itself.
I did it. I could put the whole Belgian army with vehicles and planes in the gap between what they claim to know and what they actually do.
Ch
Keep on smiling (sic)
_________________
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There are only 10 types of people in the world :
those who understand binary and those who don't.
Answer:
Do you work for Business Objects?
Answer:
There is a sense of cynicism in everyone about something. It's human nature that one person always prefers to be better than the other about something. There have been many casual visitors who have contributed to this site by bashing SAP ABAP and SAP BW and the people who work in these areas. Soon and someday there will be other smarter generation that will come around and begin bashing Business Objects, Java, C++, etc. and the people who work in those areas.
It's the PEOPLE.
It's a sad situation but who is to say…
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
- Isaac Asimov
Answer:
Couple of quick points as this diatribe doesn't really deserve a response:
- do your homework when selecting a consultancy. Biggest IS NOT BEST for newer products. Go for specialists.
- I have worked with oracle + bus obj data warehouses and would say that the effort involved in creating and maintaining is even greater. ok if you have one table you want to report on, you can be up and running v quickly. however, look at the incremental cost of adding a new functional area e.g. Cost Centre Accounting. By the time you've done your design, extraction, build and test, you'll have spent at least 2 man months. In a mature BW system, this takes 1 day....
Answer:
Hi Guest!
What you have posted is right maybe, but the question originally was if www.bwexpertonline.com is usefull. Don't complain about them, don't hire them, if you think they are to expensive.
This posting was not the answer to the question. I would kindly ask you to visit speaker's corner the next time and tell the "truth" there.
We all know what we can use BW for and for what not. If somebody tries to build a Warehouse with BW only for all applications of Warehousing than possibly he should learn a lot more about warehouseing.
BW is an OLAP Datamart and that's it and also very usefull for SAP reporting. And this works. So what's your problem.
I hape bwexpertsonline will be an additional information source that helps a little bit, beside sapfans.
Ciao
Mike