Enterprise SOA & Solution Manager - any particular skills to be learnt ?

[Former Member]

Hi all,

I have 8+ yrs exp in SAP, across MM WM & SolMan areas, all as Functional Consultant.

I have made some basic readings about SOA and am very glad to see a lot of strides being made by SAP in this area.

I am keen to know what are the exact tangible skills in SOA that a Functional guy should learn, to be of relevance in Consulting/Job market? In particular, are there skills that would help offer a customer a easier roadmap to SOA by using Solution Manager as an enabler.

Best regards,

Srini

[Former Member]

Hi all,

For house-keeping purposes, I am marking this question as "Answered".

However, if you happen to see this thread by some search or other and have a view to convey, please do post and I would be certainly keen to see your views.

Warm regards,

Srini

[MendelKoerts]

Srini,

Although Sol Man is quite a useful tool for transaction-based SAP solutions, I don't see it adding any value to an eSOA based SAP solution at the moment. From a hands-on perspective it is essential to understand how to bring Enterprise Services 'to life': these still need configuration. Being able to select the right one is another skill you'd need. From a design perspective, you would for example need to understand how to design eg composite services and the user experience.

Mendel

[Former Member]

Hi Mendel,

Thanks for sharing your views.

I was just wondering if 'Logical Component' based assembly of integrated Business Scenario that SolMan supports - is it not the best way to represent the process definition in any ESOA project ?

May be I have to read a lot more, especially from a good ESOA project undertaken anywhere, and see how SolMan would have fitted in.

Can you please, if time permits, suggest me a good case study of ESOA that's available on the net.

Best regards,

Srini

[MendelKoerts]

I'm not sure whether I correctly understand what you're saying, but in essence there are of course various tools one can use to register business services. like for examples 'plan a course'. In Sol Man you could indeed link this to the relevant ECC transaction.

Thing is, when talking eSOA, we'd need to link this business service to the IT functionality that supports this service in another way. Ideally this business service is indeed linked to one IT component, which would be a clustering or composition of IT functionality that is now described in the ESR and possibly a non-SAP ESR as well. We'd also need to include security aspects, sequencing rules, integratity rules, UI aspects etc.

On top of this we'd need the tool to support the administration of rules for sequence determinition (orchestration) and monitoring across those IT components. I'm not aware of Sol Man being capable of supporting this?

This [link |http://www1.sap.com/platform/esoa/customersuccess/index.epx] leads to customer succes stories. Various SAP-approved Capgemini show cases will be made public during Sapphire.

Edited by: Mendel Koerts on Apr 21, 2008 11:42 AM

[Former Member]

Hi Mendel,

Being new to ESOA, I could now appreciate some of the points you have highlighted. Many thanks.

I posed this question due to earlier instances of other people speaking of the two tools/methods as being almost complementary. [like [this|http://www.sap.com/community/events/2006_11_02_On24/index.epx] webcast].

I am experienced in SolMan, but new to ESOA and was keen to see what further skills should I pick up, if I have to offer some enabling inputs to any ESOA team that's running a project, and evinces interest to implement SolMan too.

I guess I have a lot more reading to do on ESOA and find out certain connections myself. For instance, I am keen to know:

(1) How SolMan can help define Business Scenarios that span Services as opposed to mere Logical Components that are involved

(2) How would the Project System Landscape look like ?

(3) How would a project created in ESOA framework lend itself to Business Process (& Interface) Monitoring via SolMan ?

(4) All other SolMan provided scenarios - like Change Request Management (ChaRM), Solution Monitoring, Integration of SolMan with HP QC tool for test purposes - how can a ESOA project benefit from these ?

I am sorry if these queries are inchoate and not clear enough expressions.

The best way to learn would perhaps be to be thrown into a ESOA project, but there aren't many to land in

Best regards,

Srini