SAP and Microsoft will work closely in the future to better integrate their key products, notably Office and SAP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) products. A future product code-named Mendocino adds Office to the list of client interfaces to SAP's system. The resulting product will be sold by both companies, will be extensible by other software vendors, and could provide a template for better integration between Office and Microsoft's own ERP products. While welcome, the new cooperation between the companies does not indicate any major shift in either one's platform choices.

What's in Mendocino

Mendocino will include code from both companies that will link Office and SAP systems more tightly.

Version 1.0 of the product will include extended application menus and Office task panes (customizable panels that can be viewed in Office applications) that link to SAP systems through SAP's NetWeaver, an integration server that provides communications and messaging for business objects and business logic in SAP's ERP system. The two companies recently released a developer toolkit that integrates Visual Studio with NetWeaver.

Mendocino will also include Excel components for analyzing business data retrieved from SAP systems, InfoPath forms for inputting or modifying information in SAP systems, and Outlook components that read data and alerts from SAP systems and allow some direct interaction with those systems.

Specific scenarios envisioned for the first version of Mendocino include the ability to link Outlook appointments to SAP time-and-billing modules; human resources management functions, such as approving employee time off and delivery of personnel reports, such as promotions, new positions, and reassignments; and daily budget monitoring, through reports delivered to Outlook.

The extended application menus will allow functions such as marking a specific Outlook calendar item as billable or nonbillable time, and the task panes will display SAP reports or user interfaces that can be used from within Office applications.

Mendocino is being built by Microsoft's Office Business Applications team, headed by Lewis Levin. This team is also developing "Maestro," a solution for generating business scorecards. (Maestro is described in "Maestro to Direct Business Scorecards".)

Benefits for Microsoft, SAP

Mendocino will provide incremental benefits to both companies. Although it is not likely to have any significant impact on sales of Office (since most SAP customers already use Office), it will provide an incentive for current Office customers to treat Office as a custom application platform and to deploy the latest version of Office, two major priorities for Microsoft.

Mendocino will require Office 2003 Professional Enterprise Edition, the .NET Framework 1.1 or higher, and Windows 2000 or higher, and on the server side, Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003.

Required SAP components include SAP NetWeaver '04 and mySAP ERP 2004 or higher.

According to SAP, Mendocino will provide public software interfaces that will allow others to build on the product as well. Mendocino might provide a model for better integration between Office and Microsoft's own ERP products, such as its Axapta and Great Plains product lines.

SAP gains additional visibility for its products among the Microsoft sales force, who will be selling Mendocino. By letting customers employ the ubiquitous Office product as an entry point to its back-end ERP suite, SAP also gains a step on its archrival Oracle, which lacks such integration.

However, Mendocino does not signal any significant shift in SAP's platform choices: the company appears committed to the Java-based NetWeaver and to standards-based Web services to couple various system components, while Microsoft encourages use of its .NET Framework and BizTalk integration server. Furthermore, Microsoft is just one of many vendors with which SAP is developing better integration. Others include Adobe, Computer Associates, IBM, Macromedia, Mercury Interactive, and Symantec.

In the long run, however, Mendocino's impact could be significant. In late 2003 the two companies explored a potential merger but decided against it. Mendocino is the first joint product from the two companies, and a successful launch could be the beginning of a deeper relationship.

Resources

The SAP Developer Network, which provides more information about SAP developer tools and Microsoft integration, is at www.sdn.sap.com.

Mendocino is described at www.sap.com/mendocino, and www.microsoft.com/office/sap.

Previous SAP-Microsoft integration efforts are described in "Toolkit Extends SAP Portal to .NET" on page 21 of the Apr. 2005 Update and "Adapter Connects BizTalk 2004 and SAP" on page 19 of the Oct. 2004 Update.