As part of his ongoing podcast series with SearchSAP, Jon Reed interviews Ori Inbar, Senior Vice President of SAP NetWeaver, for a groundbreaking interview on the SAP skills needed for success in the NetWeaver and eSOA era.

In this frank discussion, Ori acknowledges that SAP faces a significant skills gap that needs to be addressed for NetWeaver to realize its promise.

Ori then analyzes the skills gap, explains how SAP plans to address it, and most importantly, highlights the skills needed for NetWeaver and SAP eSOA project success.

This is the first podcast we know of where a high-ranking SAP executive goes beyond talk of the skills gap and the "NetWeaver jobs of the future" to detail the specific "next phase" skills and roles that SAP professionals can pursue, not in the future, but right now.

Ori also announces a new plan for SAP certification that will be unveiled at TechEd '07 in Las Vegas.

In this twenty-five minute interview, Jon and Ori cover a series of critical topics, including:

- How Ori broke into SAP and how his SAP career has evolved into his current NetWeaver leadership role.

- The significance of SAP Enterprise SOA (eSOA) and why it impacts every SAP product.

- The estimated "SAP skills gap" of 20,000 SAP professionals and how SAP intends to fill it. Ori explains the importance of "the SAP ecosystem" to filling these gaps and how consultants can anticpiate where SAP is going next.

- Ori's take on the four new SAP roles that are emerging on project sites, and his assessment of the skills required for each of the four: NetWeaver Systems Admin, Enterprise Architect, and Business Process Expert and NetWeaver Developer (Enterprise Services Developer).

- Ori explains why the NetWeaver era means the "end of the functional silos" and why SAP skills will be business process driven from here on out.