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Mendocino - a love that dare speak its name?

Inside the Microsoft/SAP affair

SAP, meanwhile, is the Bridget Bardot of IT. Looked great in the day but now must work harder on its looks and to retain the public's interest. SAP needs Mendocino to hook Office customers, Windows application developers and business process consultants into its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Mendocino means SAP processes, such as time management, budget monitoring and travel and expense management, can be accessed inside Office. The companies are promising the ability to access functionality via extended application menus, synchronization between Microsoft Exchange Server and SAP, the ability to retrieve information held in SAP systems through Microsoft Excel, and to also submit data to SAP through Office InfoPath forms.

Integration for end users is the first step in this story, through. An inevitable consequence of any server, desktop or device initiative from Microsoft is the developer and partner pay off. Developers and partners expand the base-line functionality provided by Microsoft by delivering their own add-ins. Also on the trail will be business process consultants, like the Accentures, who will devise process and workflow integration for specific customers running Office and SAP.

Upgrade, she wrote

That's a vital consideration to SAP, who has spent the last three years trying to broaden its appeal among mainstream developers and ISVs, who are not versed - or interested - in SAP's proprietary ABAP architecture.

NetWeaver has been SAP's flag carrier in this strategy, but the going has been slow. Less than 5,000 out of a total 30,000 SAP customers have moved to NetWeaver since 2003, while the majority are still on legacy R/3.

Opening up SAP brings the company's architectures and processes into the field of view of an army of ISV and consulting partners who'd normally just focus on Microsoft.

Mendocino has been hailed as Microsoft's most important alliance since MS-DOS with IBM. And certainly, when the world's largest software company decides works with world's largest supplier of enterprise applications, something is afoot.

Mendocino represents an intersection of mutual self interest for both companies. It delivers all the benefits of Office as an enterprise information portal to Microsoft while unlocking a developer and partner ecosystem coveted by SAP without the strategic, tactical and legal mess associated with a big merger.®

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