Change your career to one that is a blend of both management and IT

If you skim through this batch of career answers, one thing you'll see is that I continually advise folks to pick the hottest area of SAP that matches up best with their overall skills. In your case, you are looking at SD, HR and CRM. You don't have work experience in any of them, but you do have an overall HR background through your MBA. And you do have some technical experience which can also come in handy.

However, to answer your first question, unless you have a strong inclination to technical work, I would opt for the functional side of SAP. Keep in mind that even on the functional side of SAP your technical skills are going to come into play. That is probably truer than ever as we head into the NetWeaver and SOA era.

So I like your skills profile to pursue HR, which for now is certainly as hot as SD and CRM. The one thing to remember is that HR is really expanding into SAP HCM, which is a broader and more strategic way of looking at HR functionality. So while I do think that certain aspects of SAP HR will become pretty commoditized (such as payroll and some core benefits functions), there are forward-thinking aspects of HR, such as workforce management, that are going to ensure that the HR module continues to grow. Good luck!