The arcane, acronym-laden jargon overheard in today’s IT departments is likely to scare off even the most tech-savvy business exec: They probably know what analytics or “the cloud” means, but they’re lost in the weeds when they start hearing about virtualized servers, scrum methodologies, Java, HTML5 and “cross-platform integration solutions.”

Those non-IT folks who bravely enter the SAP universe typically undergo a baptism of sorts as they are plunged into the foreign language of SAPanese. Talk to someone working in the world of SAP—an SAP employee, IT consultant, sales guy, developer, partner, ASUG volunteer—and it can sometimes feel like two native English speakers are conversing in different languages.

Not to fear. Here, we offer up a field guide to help you better understand SAP and all its confusing and ever-changing terminology.

Here is a list of some of the most important ones for newbies to know—and rest assured, many of these are not just SAP specific. (We’ll be updating and adding more as we go.) Please feel free to add your favorite SAPanese terms and phrases in the comments section below.

ABAP—pronounced “ah-bawp,” it is not to be confused with ‘70s Swedish pop band ABBA (sing “Dancing Queen”). ABAP is SAP’s foundational Advanced Business Application Programming language.

BOBJ—pronounced “bob-jay,” it’s not a type of rarely seen North American bird. It’s actually a shortened way to say “BOBJ,” which is short for SAP BusinessObjects, the business intelligence vendor SAP acquired in 2007. SAP’s banking on BOBJ for its future success.

Business ByDesign (ByD)—SAP Business ByDesign is a suite of on-demand ERP applications. (Note: SAP also uses the ByD technology to build its OnDemand business applications.) At the close of 2011, SAP had signed up approximately 1,000 customers.

Cloud, The—SAP was a late comer to the cloud-computing arena, embracing it with all the enthusiasm that a five-year-old has for eating his vegetables. Which is to say, not so much. That’s changed as of late, however.

Colgate-Palmolive and Valero—two SAP reference customers (the former in consumer product goods, the latter in energy services) who you are most likely to hear from at an SAP conference. They put the “early” in “early SAP adopter.”

“Drinking Our Own Champagne”—SAP’s take on the classic “eating our own dog food” vendor euphemism. (Too many cynical comparisons have been made to the price of champagne, relative to dog food, and the price of SAP software. Woof!)

Ecosystem—as in “SAP Ecosystem.” Ecosystem makes one think of the symbiotic relationship among mammals and the Earth’s plants, oceans and land; in this case, think of the occasionally dysfunctional relationship among SAP, its customers, consultants and IT integrators.

ERP—a catch-all acronym (enterprise resource planning) for critical back-end business software, for which SAP is best known. Typically includes financial/accounting, operations/supply chain, HR (or human capital management), and project/portfolio management. The “sex appeal” of SAP ERP apps is very low, but see how “hot” your CFO gets if any of those financial apps don’t work properly.

“Game changing”—SAP executives, in 2011, began working this phrase into their presentation lexicons to describe SAP’s “innovative” portfolio of technologies and software. (A subsequent Twitter meme was born: “Every time you say game changer, God kills another kitten.” Meow!)

Go to Market—if you meet an SAP employee with “Go to Market” in his or her title, know that it’s either someone tasked with getting SAP products delivered to customers or a “rain making” sales honcho (the Brooks Brothers suit, nice watch and iPad are also a dead giveaway).

Hasso—the first name of legendary SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner. Like Madonna, Michelangelo and Lindsay, you will rarely hear someone refer to him by including his surname, because there’s only one Hasso. (Which is probably why his interview of himself actually makes sense.)

HANA—unlike Hasso, HANA is not the name of a famous SAP executive. It is, however, Hasso’s pet project: HANA stands for High-Performance Analytic Appliance and is based on SAP’s in-memory technology initiative. In layman’s terms: HANA allows your company to process a ton of data really fast.

In-Memory—you’ll hear this term often when the discussion involves SAP HANA, which uses in-memory computing principles (not invented by SAP, by the way) to analyze massive amounts of data “up to 3,600 times faster” than on SAP Business Suite with traditional disk-based databases, according to SAP.

“Innovation without Disruption”—a significant marketing push by SAP, though you don’t hear that much about it anymore. One guess: SAP ditched the negative “disruption” part and prefers to talk about the positive “innovation” piece all by itself.

OnDemand—SAP’s (slow) growing line of on-demand business applications—a.k.a. “The SAP Cloud.” As of early 2012, the OnDemand portfolio includes: Business ByDesign, Sales, Sourcing, Carbon Impact, BI and StreamWork. (Planned for later 2012 are OnDemand apps for: Career; Environment, Health and Safety; Sales and Operations Planning; Service; and Travel.)

“On premise. On demand. On device.”—as Brad Hamilton said to a bewildered Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High: “Learn it. Know it. Live it.” This is the three-pronged strategy that SAP co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe have laid out for the vendor’s future.

Optimize—you are forewarned: You will hear this word a lot and may be tempted to use it in SAP discussions yourself: We need to optimize our customized SAP solutions. Don’t get sucked into the “Optimize” vortex!

Orchestration—a new entry into the SAPanese lexicon, you’ll be hearing more and more about this topic from SAP execs: an ability to manage your company’s data across IT environments and applications, via on-premise, in the cloud or on mobile devices. Easier said than done, by the way.

“Our Next Largest Competitor”—rarer than a week passing in which Oracle doesn’t buy another company is SAP actually referring to the “Stack Attack” by name.

Run Better—SAP’s 2011 marketing campaigns were anchored by the “Run Better” slogan, multiple tour stops and a hip video showing cool SAP customers such as Burton and Skullcandy. (FWIW: That catchy theme song, “Do It,” is by Mooney Suzuki, which sounds like it could be the name of an SAP customer.)

@sapcio—the Twitter handle for SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann, whose stock has risen right alongside his company’s. Gartner’s Thomas Otter once tweeted about him: “IMHO @sapcio has done more for SAP’s brand than a 100,000 airport posters.”

SAP Acronym-o-Rama—PI? SRM? FI? GRC? There are too many to include here, so click on this SAP glossary page to figure out that SAP product acronym that’s got you thinking WTH (what the heck?).

SolMan—though it is pronounced like the zany 1980s movie Soul Man, it has absolutely nothing to do with C. Thomas Howell, applying to Harvard or “bronzing pills.” It’s short for SAP Solution Manager, the oft-derided and chronically underused technical and application support and management tool set. Ask your CIO how the company is using SolMan to lower TCO of your company’s SAP investment, and see what happens.

Solution(s)—this is a word that every SAP employee (from co-CEO down to janitor) is contractually bound to use in at least every other sentence they utter. (OK, that’s not entirely true, but you get the point.) If you abhor this word and all who freely use it, then don’t buy SAP software.

StreamWork—this is SAP’s collaboration platform, and SAP wants us all to love it like it was Facebook. Or even Myspace circa the late 1990s.

SuccessFactors—a cloud-based HCM vendor SAP purchased in early 2012 for $3.4 billion. Its CEO, Lars Daalgard, is slated to become SAP’s cloud chief and figure out SAP’s all-important cloud strategy. (No pressure there.)

Sybase / SUP / Afaria—SAP acquired Sybase in 2010, and that deal included the Sybase Unwired Platform (a.k.a. SUP) for managing enterprise applications and Afaria for device and security management. (And, FYI, Sybase people don’t think “Wass ‘Sup?” jokes are funny or clever.)

TomorrowNow—Just. Don’t. Talk. About. It. Ever.

Walldorf—SAP’s headquarters in Germany. Don’t confuse it with the famous NYC hotel and salad, which is spelled Waldorf. (For the record, SAP’s North American HQ is in Newtown Square, Pa.)

Please feel free to add your favorite SAPanese terms and phrases in the comments section below.

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13 Comments for A Beginner’s Guide to SAPanese

Andy Klee

Great stuff, Thomas.

And by the way, what is the correct pronunciation of ‘sapanese’? It sounds better if you break all the rules, and don’t go with ‘s-a-p-anese’.

Andy

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Scott Wallask, Managing Editor at CRM Expert

Humorous rundown, and I can relate to the BOBJ explanation. I think the name SAP itself could join this list, particularly the correct pronunciation. Which, as Andy notes in the comment above, would be a different pronunciation than “SAPanese”.

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Jim Link

Good stuff – enjoyed this take on the language of those who work with SAP. Minor comment would be that it’s Business ByDesign (not ByDemand).

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Thomas Wailgum

Thanks Jim for pointing that one out. Can’t believe I confused that one! (Maybe I need a refresher course?)

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alanrick

Love it….. let’s see if you can get up to 100 – here’s my contribution:

RSWUWFML – It’s all in the pronunciation – as any SAP Business Workflow consultant will tell you (not to mention what it means.)

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Mark Finnern (@finnern)

Hi Thomas,

Love the collection. Thanks for doing the needful.
If you would like to know what “doing the needful” means from an SAP Community Network perspective, check out SCN’s Urban Dictionary: http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/HOME/SCN+Urban+Dictionary

Curated by the community.

Surest sign of a true community is the development of their own phrases, Mark.

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Oliver Mainka

Delicious, thanks!!

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Dave H

Colgate-Palmolive and Valero—the most common answer given when someone asks who’s already confirmed and scheduled to present at the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2029 sap conferences.

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Donald MacCormick

Thomas, you forgot:

NW, OLAP, BW, BIWS, BICS, WebI, DeskI, CR, CRM, Basis, BIWS, QaaWS, InfoCube, BEx, Universe, Duet, B1, PLM, SCM, SRM, EcoHub, co-innovation, MaxAttention, BPX, SCN, Sapphire NOW, ASUG, TechEd, GRC, EPM, BPC, BI, …

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Thomas Wailgum

Donald — Will get to the in the next version!!

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Tomas Pineda

Thomas – Great posting! I really enjoyed the humorous spin to the definitions.

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