SAP

With the move to SAP ERP 6.0, SAP had promised that there would be no more Upgrades. Initially I brushed this aside as another ploy of SAP to make clients consider this to be the last hurdle and be motivated to get it over with. After all, I do remember, it was sometime in early 2001 when I was working at Delphi, when SAP came over to conduct a lunch and learn session. Over pizza and soda we were told that with the Upgrade to SAP 4.7, our upgrade woes would come to an end as this would be the final version that SAP would ever release. We were also told that as there would be no more versions, SAP was renaming this release as the Enterprise version. All improvements were supposed to be plug-ins going forward.  It didn’t take us long to realize that the whole thing was a myth and that upgrades would be around long enough for me to build a career around it.

Coming back to SAP’s recent promise, it looked like SAP was all set to be firm with its commitments this time. EHP1 through 3 were all as promised by SAP and could be implemented fairly easily using SPAM/SAINT. But with the advent of EHP4, things seem to have changed once again. Though SAP has introduced the enhancement pack installer “SAPehpi” which makes downtime shorter as most processing is done on a shadow system, too many standard SAP programs have been modified and so, it calls for thorough testing. And so it is déjà vu time with all the steps involved in an upgrade project needing to be thought through and strategized all over again!  What’s next SAP?