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DataXstream Concludes another Successful Year at SAPPHIRE NOW 2013 and ASUG Annual Conference

May 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Sapphire Now 2013 and ASUG Annual conference wrapped up last week in Orlando. DataXstream was among the 20,000 customers, vendors, and prospects in attendance. In addition to the participants in Orlando, over 80,000 virtual participants experienced this year’s conference. This year was no exception to SAP’s tradition of top-notch event, providing exciting news and innovative solutions. Likewise, DataXstream had a great week with customers and potential partners during the conference.

DataXstream highlighted core lines of business including Consulting Services, Project Leadership, Functional Expertise, Custom Development, Basis Administration, Integration Services, and ISV Enablement Solutions.

Here are a few highlights from DataXstream Core Offerings presented at SAPPHIRE NOW 2013.

  • DataXstream’s Consulting Services provide experienced consultants that bring technical expertise and delivery project success.
  • DataXstream’s Project Leadership utilizes years of implementation experience to set the right direction for your project.  We provide solutions that work for your company.
  • DataXstream provides Functional Expertise that delivers processes and configuration to maximize the business benefit of your SAP solutions.
  • DataXstream provides Custom Development solutions to bridge gaps between your business processes and the SAP solution, as well as driving cost reduction through better design.
  • DataXstream provides experienced Basis Administration to provide excellent NetWeaver platform support, and provide system architecture to deliver a reliable, scalable, and adaptable SAP platform.
  • DataXstream’s Integration Services team works with customers to build reliable, stable, and robust integration solutions.  Throughout the integration process, we work with you to integrate your SAP and non-SAP applications to build your complete solution.
  • DataXstream provides ISV Enablement services that integrate your third-party products into the SAP solution.

Now that SAPPHIRE NOW 2013 is over, DataXstream will return to its core activities and continue to deliver value to its customers and establish new business relationships.  We wish everyone who participated in the show continued success.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

What Makes a Great ISV Enablement Partner?

May 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

DataXstream is a company that specializes in SAP and most readers of this blog are SAP professionals.  So, I have some shocking news for you–news SAP doesn’t want you to know.  Are you sitting down?  Good.

SAP isn’t the only software vendor out there!!

Shocking, I know.  But there are other software platforms than NetWeaver; software languages other than ABAP and Java; and there was a time in the not-too-distant past where the center of the SAP universe, HANA, didn’t even exist!

While you are coming to terms that SAP is not the be-all and end-all, I would like to point out that no modern software system exists in a vacuum.  Because of this fact, attention has to be paid to how software systems interact with each other.  There is a seemingly endless supply of enterprise software solutions that supplement existing functionality, introduce new functionality, improve the user-experience, and, in general, bring value to the enterprise.  SAP’s predominance in the enterprise software market means that it these new enterprise software solutions need to interact with SAP–either getting data from SAP or sending data to SAP (or both).

But, SAP is not an easy software system with which to integrate.  The depth of SAP product offerings and modules make learning how to properly merge SAP functionality with an external software system difficult.  SAP NetWeaver is not known as a particular open or easy-to-access platform.  And while I personally laud SAP for their decision to enforce proper multi-tier data access restrictions (i.e. no direct read/write database access), this decision makes the SAP learning curve especially steep.

Many software companies desiring to integrate their software solution with SAP choose an independent software vendor enablement partner.  So, what makes a great ISV enablement partner?

  • Functional Expertise: In order to make the most of an integrated software solution, you must understand the needs of the business user.  Once these needs are understood, you need to transfer these requirements into software functional units of work.  Finally, an end-to-end workstream is defined across all participant software systems that will deliver the required functionality to your customers.
  • Technical Expertise: The best end-to-end workstream definition is only as good as the framework upon which the integration executes.  A great ISV enablement partner understands all of the technical aspects of SAP NetWeaver integration and development.  They will use this expertise to design and implement a solid, robust, scalable technical integration solution.
  • Go-To-Market Experience: Once the solution has been designed and built, it will need to be made available to the market.  A great go-to-market strategy involves market analysis, promotion, and working with the SAP ecosystem including SAP partnerships and certification.
  • Technical Sales and Marketing Support: Even the best software solutions don’t sell themselves.  Your ISV enablement partner should be there throughout the customer sales process to answer any questions and remove any barriers to sale.
  • Flexible Partnering Agreements: A great ISV enablement partner will work with you to craft a partnership agreement that benefits all parties while giving your customer’s the world-class solutions and support that they need.

DataXstream has been a leader in SAP ISV partner enablement since 2005 and has assisted dozens of software companies successfully enter the SAP market. Contact us today, to find out how we can unlock the SAP world for you!

Filed Under: Blog, SAP ABAP Blog, SAP EDI Blog, SAP Functional, SAP Interface Blog, SAP Java Blog, SAP PI Blog, SAP Project Management, SAP Strategy, SAP Technical Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

What Makes a Great SAP Custom Development Partner?

May 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

SAP Development Reality versus Reputation

Have you ever met someone whose reputation precedes them?  You’ve heard great things about his/her ability to get things done, the technical expertise and all kinds of accolades.  Then you meet.  And disappointment sets in.  The disconnection between reality and reputation smacks you in the face.

This (alleged) rock star cannot articulate what he does in a language you understand; he can’t give you a good sense of where he has done similar work before.  Where’s the magic?  I’m often amazed at how often technical gurus seem to have a skill deficiency when dealing with regular folks.  But why do I care, they’re a bunch of technical folks with specialized skills who do what the specification says – right?  Not so much.

SAP Development Core Competency

For me this situation touches on a core competence found in a great SAP development partner: the ability to communicate, question, understand and explain in non-technical language is critical.  As an SAP end user, business representative or business analyst (or, true confessions, sometimes as a project manager) you don’t care about how efficient the code is, which select statements are best, the funky table joins, the use of internal tables, memory parameters, and so on.  This is like explaining relativity to your dog – he’s hoping something good is going to happen when you stop talking.

Great developers have great coding skills; they understand technology and relish the tough assignments.  Don’t get me wrong: I love these folks and what they can do.  But the ones I want to work with know I don’t care that much about their esoteric universe and their alphabet soup.  Instead they know we need to use a common language to work together: the language of business and business goals.

My Checklist for a Great Custom Development Partner

The things I value most in a great SAP custom development partner are communication and collaboration, this means:

  • developers who understand business goals, business process and business data
  • comfort using business language
  • understanding of SAP business processes
  • SAP technical and integration expertise

DataXstream developers know quality output comes not just as a result of a well written functional or technical specification: it comes from common language and collaboration.

Now, let’s talk.

 

Filed Under: Blog, SAP Functional, SAP Project Management, SAP Strategy, SAP Technical Tagged With: ,

What Makes a Great SAP Integration Partner?

May 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

An SAP integration specialist’s responsibilities are to design and implement a robust, extensible solution that uses the appropriate standards and technologies to guarantee ACID programming guidelines (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) while leveraging the available programming interfaces to the best of their capabilities.  This may sound like a daunting task.  That’s because it is.  Integration is a very complex, specialized areas of expertise in the SAP ecosystem.

A great SAP Integration Partner will offer individuals that design and build integration solutions that adhere to the following concepts:

  • Robust – A good integration solution can recover from data and/or transmission errors. A truly robust solution should automatically attempt reprocessing where appropriate and, barring automatic processing, alerts the support personnel to the exception with context-specific data to assist in the exception resolution.
  • Extensible – Change is constant in the world of business.  A good integration solution is able to rapidly adapt to changes in process, requirements, and/or functionality.  More often than not, the individual that initially implemented the integration solution is not available to make the changes.  A combination of good design, process and procedure adherence, and documentation lowers the total cost of ownership for the integration solution.
  • Standards – Good integration partners understand standards, how they should be applied as well as their strengths and weaknesses.  Integration solutions that conform to standards are usually more robust and extensible, and therefore easier and cheaper to support, than their custom counterparts.
  • Atomicity – Robust integration solutions require atomic actions.  That means if one part of the transaction fails, the whole transaction fails.
  • Consistency – A consistent integration solution leverages the application programming interface to ensure that all business rules and processing logic are applied to the data prior to posting it to the database.  It is also important that data created via the integration solution passes the same validation and business rules as data created via the user interface.
  • Isolation – Great SAP integration partners understand how transaction isolation can greatly impact overall system performance.  Providing isolation means concurrent execution of data transactions results in a system state that would be obtained if transactions were executed serially–or in other words the interface can be executed in parallel, and therefore, take advantage of SAP NetWeaver parallel processing.
  • Durability – A durable integration solution is not affected by errors outside of the transaction–whether these errors be related to environment (power, network, database, etc.), data (business rules, missing data, incomplete data, etc.) or other factors.
  • Programming Interfaces (APIs) – A great SAP integration partner understands available programming interfaces and standards, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and how they interact with other components of the application.  Not all APIs are created equal and a great SAP integration partner will choose the API best suited for the integration solution.

DataXstream solution architects and integration specialists are trained in every one of these aspects and have the experience necessary to ensure every integration solution is a great one.

Filed Under: Blog, SAP ABAP Blog, SAP Basis Blog, SAP EDI Blog, SAP Functional, SAP Interface Blog, SAP PI Blog, SAP Project Management, SAP Strategy, SAP Technical Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

What Makes a Great Basis Administrator?

May 8, 2013 by 1 Comment

Basis Administrators are key to overall project success. Proper system administration provides stable systems and consistent support for your project. One of the key questions that companies face is what makes a great basis administrator? The following items are critical to basis administration success:

  • Technical expertise with NetWeaver platform
  • Understanding of technical operations for datacenter activities (OS, DB, SAN, network)
  • Ability to adapt to changing technology
  • Ability to problem solve and learn on the job

A great basis administrator must understand the different NetWeaver platforms, integration points, and how to support the multiple systems in a SAP landscape. The SAP landscape is becoming complex with multiple SAP systems, hybrid models for infrastructure components (e.g. Linux and Windows OS), and multiple Database technologies based on application dependency. The increased use and deployment of technologies like mobility, analytics, cloud computing, and in-memory-computing force a basis administrator to have a breadth of technical knowledge. The rapidly changing landscape also means basis administrators must be flexible and adapt to the changing infrastructure requirements. A great basis administrator has to support current technology while learning new technology. The ability to utilize core technical knowledge and apply that knowledge to emerging technologies is key to long-term success. Adapting to the shifting technical landscape and problem solving within this environment is critical to success.

DataXstream basis administrators understand the multiple aspects of system administration. We understand the technical details and ability to adapt to emerging technology. DataXstream basis administrators have real experience, with proven results.

Filed Under: Blog, SAP Basis Blog, SAP Technical, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

What Makes a Great SAP Project Manager?

May 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

A project manager’s job is to deliver a defined scope on time and on budget.  This expectation comes from the overall project leadership, the business community and the IT organization.  To do this an SAP project manager needs to know:

  • The project goals and success criteria
  • The tasks to be performed

  • The dependencies between the tasks

  • The resources and skills needed

  • The key milestones and critical deliverables

Coordination, execution, review and sign-off throughout the project lifecycle requires marshaling different resource types at different times including business team members, functional consultants, ABAP developers, PI/XI developers, the Basis team, technical infrastructure, network operations, production support, training teams, etc.  A great project manager needs to be comfortable and confident interacting with different audiences, communicating in their language and using terms and jargon they understand.  A great project manager has a rolling horizon always looking a week, a month, a quarter or more into the future anticipating needs and planning ahead.  A great project manager lives with the belief that fire prevention is far more desirable than firefighting.

A great project manager monitors critical tasks and recognizes when to be flexible and when to dig in. There is constant negotiation, evaluation of information to separate the important from the inconsequential, and refinements to keep the project on track.  A great project manager knows to cultivate team member engagement, motivation and drive and maintain a common vision of the end goal.

DataXstream project managers understand all of this.  They live it every day.

Filed Under: Blog, SAP Project Management, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

Virtual Machines and Snapshots

March 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Service packs. Kernel patches. New module releases. What do all of these have in common? Restore points and backups. Before we, as BASIS administrators, do any of these we have to make sure we have a recovery point so if anything should go haywire, we have a point of recovery. Usually it involves communicating with the database administrators, operating system administrators, and backup teams to leverage  the current backup technology.

If you are already a virtualization house, or are thinking about converting to be one, then you know about some of the new solutions available to you. The most basic, and most easily leveraged is that of the “snapshot”.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, SAP Basis Blog, SAP Basis Performance, SAP Technical Tagged With: , , , ,

NCo 3.0 Error: “Cannot get destination XXX — no destination configuration registered”

September 19, 2012 by 5 Comments

I have received a few inquires about users getting the following error when they try to execute the NCo Samples provided by DataXstream:

Cannot get destination XXX — no destination configuration registered

This error is caused because the .NET Framework is unable to locate the sapnco assembly file.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, SAP Interface Blog, SAP Technical Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Enhancing SAP Lean Order Management for SAP Retail Part 3: Enhancement Framework

August 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

Creating Custom Views, Events, and Controlling the Visibility of Data Elements

In my previous two posts in this series, I discussed how to control field level help information and how to influence the look, feel and flow of the end user experience. In this entry, I will discuss some of the LOM capabilities for controlling what happens behind the scenes to manage technical events as well as screen content. For example, during transaction processing the system locks table entries to prevent other users from updating data while you are processing it. As in many technical endeavors, good housekeeping and cleaning up after yourself is always appreciated. To quote Roger Manifold, “Good manners don’t cost nothing”.

The enhancement framework concept is used to create custom views, handling of those custom views and dynamically controlling the visibility of different elements within Lean Order Management.

The FPM (Floor Plan Manager) with the Web Dynpro application interface provides you with methods to allow the application to participate in all FPM events that happen during the entire lifetime of the application.

Within the package ERP_SLS_LO_OIF, the main Web Dynpro component is LO_OIF_MAIN_COMP. Open this Web Dynpro application using transaction code SE80. The first step is to create an enhancement by clicking the enhance button or CTRL+F4 key. [Read more...]

Filed Under: SAP Functional, SAP Retail, SAP Technical, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Enhancing SAP Lean Order Management for SAP Retail Part 2: Configuring LOM

July 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In the previous blog post, I discussed how to tailor the contents of field level help dropdown lists.  This kind of customizing is very specific, detailed and should always be thought through carefully.  In this post I discuss a higher level of customization of Lean Order Management, namely the look, feel and flow of the end user transaction screens.  This in turn influences the process flow and can be used to ensure the end user actions occur in the required sequence.

SAP often gets a bad rap for their GUI design, whereas other companies (can you think of a crisp, golden delicious fruit?) are lauded for their GUI design.  This doesn’t happen by accident and it isn’t easy.  “Intuitive” designs can be anything but intuitive and understanding your end user audience, their skills, expectations and willingness to learn is imperative when designing with LOM functionality.

In this regard, a recurring theme with LOM is to think it through before acting: LOM is a powerful tool and, to paraphrase, with that power comes responsibility.  Ideally, any LOM development work is preceded by detailed whiteboard sessions to map out the screen flow, the required buttons and actions, pop-up windows and possible responses, otherwise it is easy to end up doing basic design on the fly – and that rarely ends well.

Anyway, enough of the preamble – how do we make this magic happen in SAP? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, SAP Functional, SAP Retail, SAP Technical Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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