When it comes to enterprise business systems, the fundamental goals of business units and the IT organization are not always in alignment. For business units, the priority is responding to ever-changing market conditions while driving continued growth. On the other hand, IT organizations tend to focus on managing system cost and complexity, ensuring that business systems can be maintained efficiently and remain secure. To support business growth, it is imperative that technology solutions enable the business in a timely, agile, and effective way. To meet this need, IT is required to deploy systems that support flexible, innovative solutions while scaling to meet dynamic business needs.
To help business units and the IT organization address their goals, SAP and Microsoft plan to offer Duet® Enterprise software. A product developed jointly by the two companies, Duet Enterprise enables all employees to consume and extend SAP applications through Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010. Duet Enterprise combines the collaboration and productivity supported by Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office with the business data and processing functionality of SAP® applications.
Duet Enterprise will enable companies to:
- Drive people productivity – business users can enjoy a unified view of the data and tasks they need from Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010. Planned for both individuals as well as teams, Duet enterprise will boost people’s productivity in successfully performing their business tasks.
- Expand Value of IT investment – Duet Enterprise helps IT realize extended value by broadening the use of SAP software throughout the enterprise and expanding the scope of Microsoft SharePoint.
- Rapidly Response to Business needs – providing greater ability to meet business requirements through the ability to quickly compose solutions that meet changing business needs
Duet Enterprise is planned to provide the following functionality:
- Foundation for the interoperability between SAP and Microsoft SharePoint. Key focus areas are: system management, single sign on, authorization and user management, life cycle management, data models mapping, traceability and supportability.
- Tools and Business Content to compose solutions that blend the worlds of process and collaboration. Duet Enterprise takes advantage of the respective tools of Microsoft and SAP to reduce IT training. These tools are enriched to support an end-to-end solution development between SAP and Microsoft. In order to accelerate development of Duet Enterprise composites, configurable templates and building blocks will be delivered.
- Ready-to-Use capabilities with quick time to value for users for people to interact with and collaborate around SAP information, participate in SAP workflows, access SAP reports, and browse SharePoint ‘MySite’ profile enriched with HR information from SAP applications.
See an introduction movie to Duet Enterprise.
About the Partnership
Microsoft, the leader in business productivity solutions, and SAP, the leader in enterprise software applications, enjoy a strong partnership. The collaboration between the two companies has delivered significant value to customers for more than 18 years -- from SAP R/3 running on Windows in 1993 to comprehensive .NET/Enterprise Services Architecture interoperability in 2004 all the way to their first joint product Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP.
With Duet enterprise, the companies are expanding their partnership addressing market demand for interoperability of SAP applications with Microsoft SharePoint offering fully extensible product.
For more information, visit us at www.microsoft.com/duet or www.sap.com/duetenterprise
