Technology Behind SAP Certification

Have you ever wondered what is the technology behind SAP certification? I mean what kind of software is used to deliver the exam?  Where are the databases with questions and answers are located? How a certification at SAP location is technically different from a certification at SAP partner location? What are the technologies to prevent people from cheating during the exam? Seems like a lot of questions:) In this post I am going to answer some of them.

SAP Certification Runs… Questionmark

SAP values its certification program because they believe that the certification is an important enables of successful SAP projects with high quality. Indeed, according to the researches conducted in the IT industry, performance of SAP project teams where majority of consultants are certified is better than performance of the teams with very few certified professionals. For this reason SAP is genuinely interested in development and further improvements of its certification program. Being a truly global company, SAP offers certifications in 20 different languages and cover the requirements of customers all over the world. Although SAP is a software giant, it surprisingly uses third party software in order to deliver certification exams. The company called Questionmark is  in charge for development of technology behind SAP certification. More specifically, their solution called Perception™ is what you see when go for SAP certification. On the picture below you can see a screenshot of its login screen.

Architecture of SAP Certification Delivery System

So, how does the architecture of this software for SAP certification look like? Well, all the important stuff like certification questions and answers and participants’ results are located at protected servers which, in most situations, are installed in Walldorf, Germany. These servers are then connected to SAP and SAP partners’ certification centers through secure browsers. There is also a connection to SAP website so that people can make reservations online and see their results. A global overview of the architecture of the technology behind SAP certification is presented on the figure below.

SAP Certification from SAP or from Partners?

There are two primary delivery channels of SAP certification: SAP and Pearson VUE. SAP partnered with VUE because it has good coverage of the North America, flexible education delivery models and mid-marker audience. However, VUE uses its own delivery system for certifications – Athena that is different from Questionmark solution. Thus, SAP wants to integrate and harmonize these two delivery channels and connect Pearson VUE testing centers to the Questionmark softare.

Cheating at SAP Certification

Well, it is not a secret that a lot of people would like to cheat during the exam. And many actually do it. However, the intensity of cheating varies among certification locations and very much depends on the administrative personnel responsible for delivery of a certification exam. As far as the author knows SAP has not yet introduced any special equipment for prevention of cheating and, thus, it is still a human factor.