Salesforce.com To Offer Links To SAP R/3 Systems

The connector, developed with Sierra Atlantic, is the "first packaged integration we've delivered and I believe the first in the on-demand space," said Kendall Collins, vice president of sales for San Francisco-based Salesforce.com.

He said other connectors might be introduced based on customer demand. "When you think of taking on demand to the enterprise, it's critical to evolve integration," Collins said.

While SAP is trying to move its legacy ERP customers to MySAP from R/3, most observers say there is still a lot of R/3 running out there. Collins said of the Salesforce.com customers running SAP, half remain on R/3—the 4.6c release, to be exact. SAP pitches All-in-One and Business One to smaller customers.

Collins said a number of current Salesforce.com customers already link Salesforce.com to Oracle, J.D. Edwards, QuickBooks and Great Plains applications but that requires custom integration work and coding, typically using Salesforce.com's Web services API. Collins said 45 percent of the company's traffic comes via that API.

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"Integration to legacy apps and integration in general has been termed the Achilles heel of on demand. But has been area where we've driven forward," Collins said.

Typically, solution providers use Salesforce.com's API to integrate outside apps and data. What this new connector provides is a packaged up bi-directional synchronization between R/3 and Salesforce.com data. Customers would run the SAP connector in their own shop.

The summer release of Salesforce.com also adds the company's promised partner relationship management or PRM functionality. Also new to this service update is interactive call scripting that promises to help customer service people to better manage client interaction.