EXPERT RESPONSE
Great question. Obviously SEM is really evolving now that it has been brought into BW in the latest incarnation of BI. What I didn't like was the future of SEM consulting with SEM as a stand-alone component, because that market has not taken off. But now that SEM is shipping with BW as part of NetWeaver, I like the future of SEM consulting a lot more. However, I'm not sure that SEM can truly be considered distinct from BW anymore. In fact, the SEM-BPS component has officially been replaced by BI-IP (Integrated Planning in BI 7.0). At this point, BI-IP is not in heavy enough use to be called a "hot" consulting area, but I'll be pretty surprised if it doesn't become pretty hot in the near future as more and more companies move to BI 7.0.
To answer your question, I would consider BPS to be part of SEM, but IP is clearly part of BI going forward. SEM as a product is very closely linked to BW and I don't know if you'll see much use of the "SEM" moniker going forward. But there's no question that the key planning and decision support functions SEM was built to address will continue to be a factor on SAP projects. I would probably approach them from either the BW or Financials side and not worry about specializing in SEM much longer.
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