SAP and Microsoft seamless Duet gets development road map
1 min read
SAP and Microsoft have extended their product road map for Duet – the jointly developed system that allows users without SAP seats to interact with SAP business processes and data through Microsoft Office applications.
The next version, Duet 2.0, is planned for the end of 2008, with Duet 3.0 due for release soon after the next generation of SAP Business Suite applications and Microsoft Office software, including SharePoint Server.
And there is to be a new appliance for Duet running on high-performance HP servers. The announcements came on the second day of Sapphire, SAP’s user conference currently being staged in Atlanta, USA.
Enhanced and new business scenario will be developed to support sales and supply chain management – for example, enabling sales people to manage sales leads and opportunities within SAP CRM (customer relationship management) from Microsoft Office.
Supply chain managers will also get new capabilities for purchasing and legal contract management – and the pair promise support for governance, risk and compliance scenarios.
And enhanced Duet tools and infrastructure combined with Microsoft SharePoint Server will enable users and SAP partners to customise scenarios and using templates and development tools.
Overall, expansion of Duet to support unstructured processes, information and team collaboration using SharePoint will build on SAP Business Suite and achieve what few systems have been able to do – connect people, processes and information enterprise-wide.
As for the appliance, ‘Duet by SAP and Microsoft, powered by HP’ is an HP ProLiant server pre-installed with Duet software, allowing users to create a pilot and more quickly evaluate Duet’s business benefits using customer-specific data.
HP says that pre-loaded scripts have been engineered to help users to jumpstart both pilot and production implementations. And the Duet appliance also be expanded to include additional HP ProLiant or HP Integrity servers that integrate with a company’s live Microsoft and SAP applications.
“Today’s announcement is a win for customers, another example of SAP’s ongoing tradition of co-innovation with partners and evidence of our continued commitment to our relationship with Microsoft,” said Léo Apotheker, president of customer solutions and operations and deputy CEO of SAP.
“Customers and partners can count on richer business scenarios, new collaboration features and simpler, more flexible ways for information workers to leverage their organization’s business processes and information,” he added.
“The incredible level of interest in Duet by our customers motivated us to share specifics around the future direction of the product,” said Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s Business Division. “The broadened capabilities of Duet, coupled with the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server integration, will bring businesses new value and people the tools to help them drive business success.”
