SAP provides industry specific Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
solutions. Meaning they have different solutions for each type of
industry ranging from government organizations to mid sized privet
enterprises. The solutions / systems they provide can be customized to
suit the needs of each company and could handle the entire business
cycle from order to cash. Each part of the solution is categorized by
business function and these are called 'modules'. For ex. the part that
caters to the sales and distribution needs of a company is reffed to as
the SD module. SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software
and is the 3rd largest software company in the world, competing with
Oracle and Microsoft.
Most people consider SAP to be a bit difficult to learn compared to
other database systems such as SQL based databases because the database
tables in SAP are not normalized.
SAP training courses are provided by both SAP them selves and their
partner academies. The only accredited SAP partner academies (known to
me) that provide SAP certification are Siemens and Genovate. There are
only about 2 universities in the world that offer SAP related degree
courses. The cost of getting certified in SAP depends on the level of
certification you want. Consultant level certification costs about
10,000 USD anywhere in the world.
However I would highly recommend getting work experience in SAP before
attempting to get certified as it help with passing the exam (Pass mark
is 70%). It is not at all necessary to have previous knowledge of SAP to
get a job related to it. Going for certification in SAP is required
only if you intend implementing SAP solutions as a career. Most
employers train people to use their systems soon after being recruited
and therefore a good starting point would be to become and end user of
SAP by working for a company that uses SAP. For most people it takes
about 12 months to understand the whole picture.
