Mendocino Ties SAP and Office

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.