An SAP official said today that 30,000 job openings exist worldwide for SAP consultants to support the needs of the company's 82,000 customers and their 12 million users across the globe.Speaking at an event in Lagos, Nigeria, SAP manager Jaco Van Zyl said his company hopes to begin filling some of those openings with trainees who complete "SAP e-Academy and IT certification courses" managed by a new training and education partner in Nigeria called New Horizons Systems Solutions, according to an article in the Vanguard of Nigeria:

"The mutual agreement will ensure that interested Nigerians and other neighboring countries are certified to be able to implement SAP applications across its array of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management, Procurement, Human Resources, Financials and Business Intelligence and others," [Van Zyl] said.

Van Zyl also said that the training offered in Nigeria is valid around the world: "It is a global certification: whether somebody gets certified in Lagos, Abuja, Johannesburg, Frankfurt or elsewhere. It is is exactly the same exam, same quality."

While Nigeria is not generally thought of as a stronghold for SAP expertise, it is equally true that IT offshoring has moved into a number of countries around the world that have only recently established themselves as geographic centers of global IT capabilities. So SAP's extension into Nigeria of its SAP e-Academy makes a great deal of sense, particularly in light of Van Zyl's claim that demand for SAP expertise is currently outpacing supply by 30,000 workers.

New Horizons CEO Tim Akano was quoted in the Vanguard piece as saying that SAP's expanded training network will increase the universe of certified SAP professionals and "offers our clients and customers a one-stop centre as far as IT education is concerned in Nigeria."

Question for you experts on SAP consultants out there: anyone have an opinion on Van Zyl's contention that there are 30,000 openings for SAP consultants? Does that number seem high, low, or about right?