Article from InsideSAP - Issue13 March/April 2011
Tony De Thomasis
Beginning last year as the infrastructure architect at Australia Post, where he grew the SAP landscape significantly and implemented several innovations such as a leading Solution Manager deployment, de Thomasis decided it was time to move on.
With the projects he had been working on going live and shifting infoproduction support, he was ready for a change. "I like to go to different sites and to bring improved ways of doing things," de Thomasis says. So joining boutique consulting company Acclimation as NetWeaver Practice Lead was the perfect choice - not only was de Thomasis responsible for building a NetWeaver teamfrom the ground up, but he is now engaged in spreading knowledge and best practices with customers worldwide, andinstalling cloud-based demonstration systems for NetWeaversolutions.
As a business Acclimation focuses on introducing innovative improvements for companies using SAP, to yield the greatest benefit from their investment."Some of the things we concentrate on are using SolutionManager to reduce costs, using the new developmenttools that you get with SAP more effectively, integrating BusinessObjects into your landscape, and how to get all that stuff in without the pain of disruptive deployment," deThomasis says.
But de Thomasis is perhaps best-known far his work as apassionate SAP evangelist. He is a platinum contributor to the SDN, and was its number one Australian contributor in 2010.
He is also an SAP Mentor, spoke at numerous SAP eventsincluding SAP TeehEd Las Vegas and the SAUG Summit, and wrote many articles and weblog entries for various industry publications.
It doesn't end there - de Thomasis was selected as an SAP lecturer at Victoria University and to run an Expert Guided Implementation presentation for the Application Lifecycle Management roadmap, and was on the Influence Council forSAP Solution Manager. It's a measure of his influence that when we speak, he is in New York City for the SAP Run Better Tour, having been flown in from Australia for the announcement of BI 4.0and the in-memory computing roadmap.
While he says finding the balance between his work forthe SAP community, paid work and family life is a constant challenge, being so involved in the SAP ecosystem brings many rewards."When you speak at an event, or when you put your handup to run a course or write a weblog, the stuff that comes backat you is the most exciting thing. You get different views andinsights, so I like connecting with the people who are usingthe software and helping the whole ecosystem go forward," deThomasis says.As someone highly connected with the 'next big thing" inthe SAP world, de Thomasis believes in-meniory computing will bring the next revolution, causing a shift as significant as the client server movement was in the late lKOs and early '90s."This is going to revolutionise the way we do installationsand the way we set up our data centres. We're going to havefewer machines and in the data centre and more machines inthe cloud, where you can rent CPU cycles.
This is not a five- toten-year proposition - it's on the doorstep right now."
On becoming influential
"You've got to learn your craft properly. You've got tohave a fair bit of hands-on experience, you've got todo your reading and you've got to do your certificationcourses. There's no substitute for knowing your stuff,"de Thomasis says.
"You also need to reach out to others in thecommunity. Never feel backwards to connect withsomeone on Linkedln or Twitter. If you got to an eventsuch as the SAP Australia User Group, it's always goodto introduce yourself to the people in charge and tellthem what your interests are, so they can connect youwith others. You can start building your reputation thatway, by branching out and connecting with others, andsharing the collective knowledge.
"Then if you really feel like it, you can share yourthoughts electronically by writing a weblog, amagazine article, or recording a podcast. There's justso many ways to share information - it's only limitedby your time and imagination.
"And this in itself can lead to great opportunities withSAP, as de Thomasis has found.
"All you've got to do is make it known that you're thatway inclined, and SAP will often reach out to you andgive you access to knowledge and opportunities thatyou wouldn't otherwise had access to."
