About the Author

George W. Anderson is a six-year veteran of numerous successful end-to-end SAP implementations and hundreds of SAP design, upgrade, and testing engagements. An SAP Basis consultant by trade, he is currently employed by the Hewlett-Packard Company, responsible for leading a team of SAP Basis and other systems infrastructure folks throughout North America. In this regard, he has personally developed new SAP opportunities and actively participated in the consulting on the resulting projects.

George has been engaged in supporting mission-critical enterprises for 16 years. He started his career as a mainframe operator and JCL/COBOL developer while serving in the United States Marine Corps. After earning his MBA and leaving the Corps, he moved into supporting Banyan and Novell networks. He eventually followed the rise of Microsoft back into the enterprise space, designing and configuring NT Server–based solutions in complex heterogeneous environments.

After holding several positions of increasing responsibility with a national systems integrator, and eventually leading a team of more than 50 enterprise and database consultants, George joined Compaq Computer Corporation’s fledgling Enterprise Consulting Services group in 1997.

It was here that George got his first real taste of SAP consulting, successfully assisting a major petroleum company with a number of proof-of-concept SAP R/3 stress-testing engagements. The goal was ambitious indeed for the time—to prove that Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 could actually scale to handle a mix of 600 SD, PP, FI, and MM users. This experience, coupled with a number of engagements in what was becoming known as “total cost of ownership” analysis, cemented George’s desire to pursue a career in SAP consulting. And in doing so, his focus was sharpened on designing highly capable, yet relatively low-cost SAP solutions for his customers.

In 1998, George moved into a senior engineering and consulting role within Compaq’s SAP Competency Center, and was soon adept at analyzing and mapping large company business requirements into SAP R/3 and BW technical solutions. He developed what may be considered the first real sizing methodology for SAP BW at this time, and later assisted in doing the same with APO and B2B (which eventually morphed into what today is known as Enterprise Buyer Pro).

George foresaw the upcoming trend with regard to Internet-enabling and extending SAP into the larger eBusiness enterprises. As a result, George added “.com” and “Internet Transaction Server” credentials to his repertoire. Soon, he was designing and building ITS on Microsoft IIS solutions in support of Employee Self-Services, and other burgeoning SAP Internet-related endeavors.

In late 1999, George returned to the “field,” armed with a recent Project Management Certification as a “PMI PMP,” followed by one of the first Microsoft Windows 2000 MCSE certifications.

Soon, with experience and certifications in Microsoft, Compaq, and SAP technologies, George found himself immersed in cutting-edge assignments involving Business Information Warehouse design and testing, a Business-to-Business Procurement pilot, SAP Workplace implementations, and other “mySAP” solutions projects.

In recent years, changes in technology saw George designing and implementing Storage Area Networks in SAP environments, implementing Microsoft and Unix clusters, and assisting large customer SAP R/3 proof-of-concept and other benchmarking exercises. Today, his work continues to provide challenge, and George is looking forward to providing many more years of SAP consulting and back-room engineering to enterprise SAP customers of the new HP.