SAP, Microsoft Collaborate On Cross-Platform Tools

SAP dominates the market for back-end applications. Microsoft's Office is the undisputed champion of front-end applications. At SAP's SAPphire conference Wednesday, SAP and Microsoft announced jointly developed tools as well as sales and co-marketing efforts they say will ultimately make Office client software a complement to SAP's ERP applications.

Both Microsoft and SAP say Web services will act as the common denominator between their two platforms--enabling application builders to move easily between SAP NetWeaver and Microsoft Visual Studio .Net.

The announcement--which comes two weeks after IBM issued its own Web services message and two weeks before BEA Systems is expected to unleash a services blitz at its eWorld conference--highlights the software industry's push into services-oriented architectures (SOAs).

"This is a validation that .Net is a platform for building applications, and Web services are great for integration," said Eric Rudder, Microsoft senior vice president of Servers and Tools. "This will provide friction-free, adapter-less computing."

Specifically, SAP and Microsoft announced five technology "deliverables" they said would be released within the next three months. The new SAP Enterprise Portal Software Developers Kit (SDK) for Microsoft .Net, which is expected to enter beta testing this summer, will enable programmers to use Visual Studio .Net to customize and extend portals built on SAP's software.

SAP .Net Connector version 2.0 will offer improved support of Visual Basic .Net, better integration with Visual Studio .Net, and the ability to create more-secure applications and controls. It is slated for an August release.

Next, SAP will join the Visual Studio Industry Partner program, which will allow programmers to work on SAP applications from within the familiar Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment.

In addition, the Walldorf, Germany-based company will help promote Microsoft smart client technology by developing and delivering sample smart client applications. The software behemoths hope these samples will help programmers use Office applications and Visual Studio 2005 for implementing smart client access to SAP software.

The next version of NetWeaver will include native support for advanced Web services protocols for better interoperation with the Microsoft BizTalk integration server.

And sometime "early next year," Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft will deliver repository managers that integrate SAP NetWeaver Knowledge Management, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.

Some industry observers said the collaboration will have little immediate benefit.

"Other than declaring eternal love and brotherhood, there's nothing world-shattering about these announcements," said Simon Hayward, a Gartner Group fellow. "They've done a good job of papering over the fact that there's very little specifics besides those repositories. There's no commitment to move all of the NetWeaver tools to Visual Studio .Net. There really are no high-value cards on the table."

Still, the joint technology undertaking does bring Microsoft's .Net Web services framework into the NetWeaver fold. When SAP first unveiled its integration platform in January 2003, it only supported the Java/J2EE environment. SAP executive board member Shai Agassi said he's been working toward Microsoft interoperability since NetWeaver's original introduction.

"Our customers said they were constantly going between applications on our two platforms," Agassi told CRN. "We looked at the stack on both platforms, layer by layer, to find the friction and eliminate it. We've done that at every level--portals, development environment, knowledge management and brokers."

Agassi said the goal is to enable programmers to start a process model in one tool, then finish the model in the complementary environment. "The whole thing is preparation for both companies to look at the next generation of applications, to see what you can do when the friction is gone," he said.

To help demonstrate what such a future might hold, Microsoft and SAP will jointly staff a Collaboration Technology Support Center in Walldorf to show integration scenarios in action. In addition, the two companies will engage in a variety of joint sales and marketing efforts.

As for NetWeaver itself, Agassi made it clear that he and SAP see it as the linchpin of the company's services-centric strategy. "SAP is becoming an enterprise services platform provider," he told CRN. "NetWeaver becomes the composite application enabler, where you design, develop, configure and execute the compositing. Up to now, most players released engines of integration and it was up to the customers to figure out how to put those pieces together. NetWeaver started out as integration as a product. Now we are moving to where you fill this box with a collection of objects from the most widely deployed apps in the world. As customers fill that box, it [NetWeaver] becomes a foundation with a collection of objects. The value is what's in the container. If those objects are already familiar, like Office, it speeds user adoption."