What level of certification is required for ECC 6 ...

Hi everyone,

I'm already a ceritifed SAP technology consultant (up to NW2004), however need to update my certification for ECC 6 (netweaver 7).

What is the appropriate exam to sit (eg associate or professional) to be allowed to perform productive SAP ECC 6 upgrades?

Thanks

Shaun

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Certification

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Shaun

If you are a certified Associate consultant with more than 4-5 years of relevant experience, then you should go ahead for the NW 7 Professional Examination.

Inquire more about the certification exam at SAP bangalore office or the Authorised training centres. They can guide you the best looking at your past records of work.

Also, enquire in your firm about this requirement. Usually experience is more than enough and you do not need a certification to do any projects or upgrades, though its subjective, from company to company and client to client.

Goodluck!!

Rgds,

Zub

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Thanks for your reply Zub.

I've been doing SAP basis for over 15 years now, and hold a number of SAP basis certifications from release 3.x up to NW 2004.

Maybe your unware, but it is a requirement by SAP that all productive (non-development/test/qa) installations and upgrades be performed by a Certified SAP Basis Consultant. A customer who chooses to have a non-certified basis consultant perform those productive tasks risk SAP not providing the appropriate "free" support if issues are experienced, or an issue down the track is found to be the result of the install/upgrade process. And yes, I'm aware that there are probably thousands of production installations/upgrades around the world that have been performed by non-certified consultants. Good luck to them.

I appreciate that many customers and consultancys don't care if the basis individual is certified or not, but I do, and have been in the position when dealing with SAP over in the USA where I had to provid by certification details (my S number), as we were experiencing an issue on an upgrade from 3.0c to 4.6c. To skip the step of the upgrade I gave them my certification number, and they kindly gave me the code/passkey to skip the upgrade step (as advised by SAP) ... no certification no passkey.

If you are not certified and experience issues during your production installation/upgrade SAP do have the right to charge the break/fix call as a consultancy issue vs a standard support call.

Anyway back to my original question....

Does the NW7 basis associate technical exam permit the holder to perform installations and upgrades to NW7? ???

Does the NW7 basis professional technical exam permit the holder to perform installations and upgrades to NW7? (im assuming yes for this one).

Thanks

Shaun

Edited by: Shaun on Jan 27, 2010 6:07 AM

Hi,

Are you sure that you need to be certified for SAP Upgrades?, I know that to be able to do Heterogeneous system copies being Certified in Heterogeneous system copies is a must for productive systems because if you don´t then SAP can charge for the support. But it is the first time I heard about being certified for upgrades. I have carried out 4 full upgrade projects from small to huge and I´m not upgrade certified and every time I needed any help SAP provided me with support with no cost at all.

Even for homogeneous system copy or installations SAP do not requries you to be certified. I work for a SAP Partner and before I got my certification I was installing 4.7 and ECC 5.0 for new implementations with no problem and with full SAP support.

Probably this has changed and I would like to know where to look for this info so if you have some source please share it here.

Thanks,

repeated

Edited by: AC on Jan 28, 2010 8:31 PM

Hi AC,

The requirement to use a certified basis individual for installations and upgrades has always been the case with SAP (right from the early 2.x days).

The reason for my post is that I approached SAP Education querying if my current certification level was high enough to perform NW7 (eg ECC6) upgrades and they stated that it was not. I have gone back to SAP to query about the associate vs professional exams but thought maybe someone on SDN had already asked the question ... thus my post.

Given you have performed SAP upgrades and installations, you would be aware of the service request that you send to SAP specifying that you are about to perform a new installation or SAP upgrade?? If not, it does actually specify on that form the name and ID number of your "SAP Certified Installer/Consultant". A lot of consultancys just use the ID of someone in the organisation that is certified thus SAP don't really care.

In case of upgrade issues and SAP support, I didn't say the SAP wouldn't help, just that they can choose not too. For example if its a simple case of "follow these steps" or "apply this oss note", then they will help under most curcumstances. But where you log a note saying that you have corrupted/deleted productive data/resposity objects/ddic structures they may be less inclined to provide help. There fall back point is "are you certified? whats your ID?". If your certified they have no choice but to provide assistance.

Based on my consulting travels , I have found some counties are more compliant than others when it comes to this requirement.

To be honest if SAP say you don't need to be certified to perform installations/upgrades then I'll never bother doing another certification exam again (except OS/DB migration) ... (I'm having a small party in my head at the thought of no more exams!)

Cheers

Shaun


> Even for homogeneous system copy or installations SAP do not requries you to be certified. I work for a SAP Partner and before I got my certification I was installing 4.7 and ECC 5.0 for new implementations with no problem and with full SAP  support.

As for your point about heterogenous system copies, yes you do need to be certified for this (of which I am), as this is classed as a specialist area with the potential "high risk" of data loss or corruption when you migrate the customers production system using tools such as r3load (low risk if you have had the training and know what your doing).

99% of sites that perform homogenous system copies often copy prod to other non-prod systems. I'm yet to find a customer that performs homogenous copies over the top of there production system. Even when moving their prod instance from an old host to a new host (say hardware upgrade) you tend to do this via methods such as backup/restore, drag&drop / copy (like with maxdb or db2), or maybe the detach/attach method with mssql ... all these are very straight forward and have a very low risk of data loss or corruption.

Cheers

Shaun

Interesting discussion, I have got professional ceritification P_ADM_SYS_70, but never did the certification exam for OS/DB migration. Am I certified to do the heterogeneous system copy?

Cheers,

Denny


> Interesting discussion, I have got  professional ceritification P_ADM_SYS_70, but never did the certification exam for OS/DB migration. Am I certified to do the heterogeneous system copy?
> 
> Cheers,
> Denny

Hi Denny,

The certification for heterogeneous system copies (aka OS/DB migrations) is TADM70.

Cheers

Shaun

Thanks Shaun, I know it's TAMD70 , and the certification code is C_TADM70_04.

Since P_ADM_SYS_70 exam covers content of TADM70, that's why I keen to know if P_ADM_SYS_70 can be used as certification for heterogeneous system copy.

Here is the description of P_ADM_SYS_70:

http://www12.sap.com/australia/services/education/certification/certificationtest.epx?context=%5b%5b...

Cheers,

Denny


> Thanks Shaun, I know it's TAMD70 , and the certification code is C_TADM70_04.
> 
> Since P_ADM_SYS_70 exam  covers content of TADM70, that's why I keen to know if P_ADM_SYS_70 can be used as certification for heterogeneous system copy.
> 
> Here is the description of P_ADM_SYS_70:
> http://www12.sap.com/australia/services/education/certification/certificationtest.epx?context=%5b%5b...
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Denny

Hi Denny,

TADM70 is still the current certification for OS/DB migrations - I have already enquired with SAP about when they plan to release an updated version of the exam, to which I was told there is no ETA.

My understanding of P_ADM_SYS_70 is that is only covers various aspects of performing system copies (eg differences of hetero vs homogo), however when you attend the TADM70 course, you sit the exam on the last day.

Cheers

Shaun

Hi Shaun,

it's more than that. e.g. troubleshooting of os/db migration, though there are only few questions, less than 10% of total 80 question.

Anyway, I would take the exam for C_TADM70_04 if it's required for OS/DB migration.

Thanks,

Denny

Hi everyone,

Major update on the "do you need to be certified" topic ...

I finally got a reply from SAP Education regarding two queries I had regarding what level of certification was required as a basis "guy" to perform production SAP installations and upgrades.


You don't need to be certified to do installations. In reality, customers will have much more comfort having an install done by someone who is certified rather than someone who isnu2019t, but ultimately itu2019s the customeru2019s call.

I then asked if this was applicable for SAP upgrades also ...


Hi Shaun,
 
Indeed it is. 
 
Best of luck!

I then went on to clarify that their is no support implications for customers who don't you certified Basis personel to perform their upgrades/installs:


So your saying that although itu2019s preferable to be certified ... you donu2019t have to be, and there is no impact to the support provided by SAP?


Ultimately, SAP cannot mandate for individuals (excluding those employed by SAP) or SAP Partners to be certified to work on projects. However, customers and partners will employ the consultants to work on the projects, from what we have seen recently customers and partners are now asking for SAP certified consultants to work on implementation and upgrade projects.
 
Thus we suggest to have an advantage to be employed on future SAP projects that you are certified in the solution you will be working on, or upgrading to.
Example: If you are looking to work on an upgrade from CRM 5.0 to CRM 7.0 the customer would look for certified consultants in CRM 7.0
 
So it is solely up to you if you wish to certify yourself in the latest release of the solution you are working in.

I then rang SAP education and had a very pleasant discussion with one of the ladies there. She went on to explain that the requirement for certification really became an optional thing a few years back. SAP was no longer in a position not to support customers regardless of who they use to perform their upgrades/installs since a customer continues to pay their yearly maintenance costs - thus SAP is obligated to provide support.

As for OS/DB migration is does appear that the NetWeaver Technology Professional exam P_ADM_SYS_70 covers this also, although there is also no support impact if you perform a migration and your not certified.

So I guess the next question is .... can I be buggered getting the latested certification (professional) since it no longer has any bearing on whether I'm allowed to perform installations and upgrades ....

Most customers look at your experience not your certification.

And I might have a little cry for all the money I have spent on certifications over the last x years.

So really what is the value of certification except for the warm fussy feeling?

This is what I knew from some time ago, SAP recomends to its clients that it is better to have certified Consultants working on their projects but it is not a must. The only exception to the rule (Basis related) as far as I know is Heterogeneous system copies.

That's the reason I always speak to people wanting to be a Certified Basis consultant and tell them that at the end of the road, if you have the experience, the Certification is not a good Idea if they have to pay for it. In my personal case the partner I work for paid for it so not getting Certified was not an intelligent option even if I had to study a lot to pass it. I´m also certified in Solution Manager operations but it was also paid by the Company I work for.

Now the funny question for myself is Why SAP in my country was telling all Consulting companies that some % of their working SAP Consultants Must be Certified? so they send most consultants to take SAP training even if they were already experienced consultants, the Consulting company invested a lot of money on this because SAP Training, as similar as other countries, is very costly in my country. I have some ideas of why they did this but I won´t share it here because it is not confirmed so this is just my personal feeling.

In my opinion SAP is correct when said companies are paying for support so they cannot obligate them to hire or request for Certified Consultants only.

So Being a SAP certified consultant or not is most a matter of personal taste and how much money you have to spare.

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