Is SAP BI/BW a good option for career growth? Is there demand for this now in the industry?
SAP are going to be around for a long time, however they are going to have a harder time keeping all of the pie. There are many advantages to using a non-SAP solution.
There is going to be plenty of work for SAP BI/BW work in the future. SAP has a huge amount of market share in BI/BW. SAP can be a rather complex ecosystem of products, and so people with skills in this area are always going to be in demand. My caution would be there is significant disruption in the BI/BW space recently. There are many innovations happening from Netezza, Teradata, Greenplum, Vertica, Tableau, etc. There are literally too many to list.This is all being driven by:
1. Data is growing by leaps and bounds.
2. Companies are competing more and more using Analytics.
3. Analytics companies are innovating to make getting answers easier.
4. Schools are providing more programs around Data
Competition is becoming heated. Data Warehouse, Visualization, ETL Tools, all have serious innovations happening. Companies like SAP are going to be around for a long time, however they are going to have a harder time keeping all of the pie. There are many advantages to using a non-SAP solution. Many are cheaper, not as complex, and easier to digest. You can start on solutions like Pentaho or Talend very small, and they can grow with you. Some companies like MicroStrategy have a very easy to understand product set.
One of my points is, that to learn SAP, and understand it very well, may consume your entire career. If I personally had to choose being an expert at SAP Business Objects and BW vs. riding the wave and understanding all the other cool innovations out there, I would take the wave.
I would say BI/BW in general is a great career right now. If you make it SAP specific, it is still great, but I think that is limiting yourself more than you should. You have to ask yourself what it is you like to do. Do you like to play with databases, build visualizations, solve analytics problems? Focus on what you like. If you like BI/BW in general, than you should try to learn Databases, ETL tools, Statistics, Visualizations, Data Management and more. A generalist in todays explosion of data, one that can play on a team, is much more valuable than a specialist in my opinion.