SAP TechEd 2009

I just got back from TechEd, which was held in Phoenix this year. Usually it is in Vegas, which means no exposure to the outside. However, this time I stayed in a hotel near the convention center, permitting a four-block walk every morning. The weather in Phoenix was gorgeous – in the 80s with no humidity and clear skies. The contrast when returning to wet and cold Philadelphia was depressing.

I had some great classes at TechEd this year. Highlights were:

• The CTS+ course taught by Karin Sudrow and Patrick Schmidt. The presentation materials were clear, and the exercises were extremely well thought-out and WORKED. (Those of you who have attended TechEd know that exercises do not always work in a high-volume demo environment.) Rave reviews and kudos to Karin and Patrick on this one.
• Marc Thier provided some interesting information about the new release of Solution Manager. SAP has decided to cancel the Enhancement Package 2 for Solution Manager, and instead re-architect the system based on CRM 7.0. (The current release is based on CRM 5.x.) I tweeted the most significant information coming out of Marc’s presentation on Tuesday, October 13 from @lbsanders.
• Janko Budzisch presented a course on the new technical monitoring and alerting infrastructure to be available with Solution Manager 7.1 at the end of next year. This will allow all monitoring and alerting for ABAP AND Java systems to be available in one place, a very nice development for system administrators.