IT leaders, take note. It may be challenging to hire SAP specialists, according to the results of Foote Partners skills pay study for the first quarter of 2008.

The IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index reveals that IT skills pay for SAP Master Data Management is up 20% in the last six months. SAP ERP skills pay increased 18.2% in the last six months and pay for NetWeaver business intelligence commands a 16.7% premium. SAP HR is up 11.1%, SAP CRM and SAP Materials Management are both up 10%, and SAP Netweaver Applications Server is up 9.1%.

David Foote, founder, CEO and chief research officer, attributes the widening supply/demand gap for SAP skills to the vendor’s product transition and expansion into the small to mid-size market. “The combination of these strategies and SAP’s obvious success and large installed base can only cause disruptions in the skills market because it’s a well known fact that jobs and skills acquisition lag new product introductions, and sometimes by a considerable time period,” says Foote.

Foote says minimum requirements for SAP project managers are typically six years, three to five years for mid- to senior-level administrators, and four to six years for mid- to senior-level developers. The challenge for IT leaders in SMB firms is that they need people to be experienced when they arrive, and it’s not likely you’ll be able to grow your own expertise in the timeframe that’s required.

Along with SAP, other skills increasing in value include network security management, wireless network management, business intelligence, PHP and SANs.

Amy Schurr is the former managing features editor of Network World.