Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP

Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP is a new product planned for availability in the second half of the coming year through a collaboration between Microsoft and SAP. The two companies are essentially pushing forward an already existing joint effort around bridging the office productivity suite and SAP, dating back to 2005. Four years ago, the duo introduced Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP, a step which led to the most recent announcement related to the delivery of Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP.

According to the Redmond company, Duet Enterprise is designed to take to the next level the bridge built between Microsoft and SAP solutions. “Duet Enterprise will empower people to blend SAP data and processes with Microsoft SharePoint content and collaboration tools to increase personal and team productivity across the PC, phone and browser,” explained Pascal Gibert, director of Duet product management at Microsoft.

However, in addition to connecting SAP processes and data with Office, Duet Enterprise is set up to streamline the effort developers and IT professionals need to pour into creating new end user solutions. This because Duet Enterprise comes to the table with interoperability, building blocks, templates, and tools that simplify the building of additional products.

“We heard from customers their strong desire to generate more value from their existing IT investments. Historically, customers who integrated Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office with SAP applications faced a number of challenging tasks, including authentication between Microsoft SharePoint and SAP services, and the building and deployment of combined services and solutions,” Gibert added.

Michael Reh, senior vice president of the Information Worker Product Technology Group at SAP, argued that a critical aspect of growing effectiveness in any company was delivering the business context in a comprehensive and easily accessible form to employees. Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP is, in this regard, positioned to offer an insight into business operations with unprecedented levels as far as Office and SAP blending goes.

“Business context, as I define it, is relevant and accurate information supporting a business decision. SAP runs customers’ business processes, and by bringing these processes into context with Microsoft SharePoint, we create a combination that improves personal and team productivity. Duet Enterprise enables that while ensuring end-to-end security, data and process integrity,” Reh added.

The Redmond company revealed that it expected Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP to be made available to customers in the second half of 2010. Duet Enterprise is, of course, designed to increase interoperability between SAP and SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010.