What do real-life SAP users think about Duet? We recently asked our readers to share their two cents on the new product. The vast majority of the 100+ readers who were kind enough to submit comments to us were overwhelmingly positive. No doubt about it — the buzz we saw around the Duet booth at Sapphire 2006 is alive and well.

However, buzz does not automatically translate into actual implementations — at least not this year.

"I think Duet looks like a great way to deliver SAP functionality to end users," said Paul Krier from Johnsonville Sausage, Sheboygan, Wisc. "We may be able to use Duet in the Portal we are putting together, but at this point we use Lotus Notes as our email server, so I think we are a ways off from implementing Duet into our systems."

Colin Ross from Austrialian steel firm OneSteel echoes the positive sentiment. He considers the ability to run quick and easy reports directly in MS Outlook as the biggest benefit of Duet, and foresees his company getting on the Duet bandwagon in 2007.

"[This is a] nice product. I think it will be especially useful for users who only interact occasionally with SAP," Ross said.
Dan Amend from Tuthill corp., Burr Ridge, Ill. likes what he has heard so far but isn't ready to get in the game quite yet.

"We do not use much of the HR functionality in SAP," Amend said. "Most of the early Duet demos focused on T&E-type functions, so we have not gone too far with it. As it moves more into the financial arena with budgeting and analytics, we will get more interested in it."

Based on the responses we've seen, it seems many have choosen a slow and careful approach to Duet — but they'll probably get Duet with it in the end. This cautious angle has the proven benefit of having the early adopters clear the inevitable land mines before they take the plunge in 2007 and beyond. There were some downsides to Duet, however.

Bryan Beasley from CMC Steel Group is currently working the blue-printing of their SAP implementation. He works largely with Microsoft development, so this is a natural area of interest to him. Still, he has some reservations about Duet at this point in time.

"Based on reading and nothing hands-on, from what I can tell, the feature set is still somewhat limited," Beasley said. "In other words, it seems it may be hard for enterprise to cough up the bucks for a product that will have limited impact and will probably increase support costs in the short term.

What I have not seen from SAP is really how is it cost effective to develop something in Duet versus other environments such as Sharepoint, VS.NET or something more custom to SAP. And what about distribution and management of Duet solutions?"

Fellow SAP professional Sunil Aghi is generally very positive to Duet, but he did point to the Achilles heel of cost. This was something of a common thread as cost and excessive upgrade requirements on the SAP end appears to be the most frequently mentioned concern for SAP professionals.

"I see the success coming gradually, over a medium term horizon of 2-3 years," Aghi said. "[However,] cost, and upgrades, could be a deterrant."

Another question that came up was that of Exchange. What if you don't want to use Exchange? Many companies don't because of security concerns, one reader pointed out.

General distrust of Microsoft and its history of occasionally playing hardball with customers is another sticking point. The old Microsoft vs. Open Source debate appears to be alive and well.

"My biggest worry is that Duet is tied into Microsoft and does not allow for any latitude in the Open Source area (e.g. open office)," said Carl Cavendish-Davies from Barloworld Equipment. "This will heavily influence our decisions here as we are in a three-year cycle of migrating and proving the use of an Open Source Operating System."

So what's the final verdict on Duet? You be the judge! Check out our Special Report: Duet in a nutshell for a rundown of the benefits and technical specs you need to know. Tune into our latest podcast for an interview with Duet skeptic Jim Murphy of AMR Research. Then test your Duet knowledge in our Quiz: Duet 101.

Matt Danielsson, Editor

Developer tools that allow companies customize unique scenarios and enable independent software vendors to develop new features will be released. SAP plans to make an announcement in September at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas, according to Kevin Fliess, SAP's vice president of product marketing for emerging solutions.

Duet, formerly code named Mendocino, was jointly developed by Microsoft and SAP. The software allows end users to tap into SAP back-end data through the familiar Microsoft front-end Office products.  

The additional Duet scenarios due out by the end of the year include Travel management, recruiting, analytics integration, sales contacts management and procurement integration. But additional features go beyond new scenarios, according to Fliess.

Fliess also did not rule out extending Duet to other data sources beyond SAP back-end systems. For example, companies running Siebel or Salesforce.com would be able to tap into the data in that familiar Microsoft environment using Duet.

So how do you buy Duet?

Fliess said that most companies are talking with both SAP and Microsoft sales reps to get the best deal. There’s no server component associated with it when you buy it through the SAP channel, Fliess said. But depending on a company’s architecture, you have to shop between the two software vendors to get the best deal.

Microsoft sells the software at $125 per computer, plus an additional $125 license per server. Duet requires the use of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003.

Fliess said SAP is also using Duet as an incentive to upgrade. It often falls into conversations around upgrades, he said, since customers must be on the latest version of mySAP ERP in order to use the software.

SAP and Microsoft have made it official: the project codenamed Mendocino is now unveiled and will henceforth be known as Duet. It will roll out on schedule in June this year. As part of the launch, SAP and Microsoft have created a website, duet.com, and will follow up with a 13-city roadshow to spread the word about this new, jointly developed product.

In a press conference earlier today, Jeff Raikes, President of Microsoft Business Division, and Shai Agassi, SAP executive board member and president of the Product & Technology Group, ran through basic features of Duet. They also fielded questions from the press on issues like pricing, when Duet will be available on the CRM side, and what else we can expect from the SAP-Microsoft partnership in the years ahead.

"This is not the end of the relationship; it is merely the beginning," Agassi said.

Click here for the full story, which includes complete coverage of the event along with an exclusive interview with one of the Duet preview program companies. Not signed up for our Daily News? Click here to subscribe today.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

ASUG president Mike Perroni talks about the latest SAP technologies, why SAP customers are slow to upgrade and what to expect at this year's ASUG and Sapphire user conferences.

Perroni discusses the current makeup of ASUG, which has grown to about 45,000 individual members and 1,300 member companies. He said ASUG has worked closely to improve SAP ' account relationship model and executive exchange program. ASUG is also working with SAP to make ROI/TCO a priority, he said.

Perroni talks about why SAP customers are slow to upgrade their systems. He discusses SAP's Enterprise Services Architecture strategy, the joint SAP-Microsoft Mendocino product and whether SAP will face tough challenges as it faces Oracle and Microsoft in the midmarket. Perroni also talked about the maturity of the SAP Exchange Infrastructure, SAP Master Data Management and whether SAP's foray into the on-demand market could be successful.

Download the podcast here

The joint SAP-Microsoft project codenamed Mendocino is beginning to assume a more solid shape by the week. When we first wrote about Mendocino last year, a lot of the details were fuzzy. Here’s an update on how things played out, where the product stands today and what we can expect in the future.

According to Fliess, some of the options currently on table include: 

• Smart Tags. These show up as regular links in, say a contract written in Word, but instead of merely pointing to a URL you can actually access and edit relevant customer data in the SAP system.
• More robust XML.
• Enhanced employee self-service functionality.

Basically, whenever there’s a lot of routing and approvals between departments and managers, that’s where the strength of Mendocino 2.0 comes into play.

Moving back to Mendocino 2.0, Caren said they are basing a lot of the product on customer feedback. Two areas that are getting particular attention:

1. Adding additional scenarios to target the same Mendocino users who find 1.0 appealing. These additions will be in the world of Employee Self Services and Manager Self Services, primarily in areas that touch a lot of employees. Caren emphasized that nothing is definite at this point, but examples of such ESS features may include purchase order routing, contract management, requisition management and travel management. For management functions, there may be an expansion on Mendocino 1.0’s bridging of IT and HR functions in areas such as employee record keeping and the ability to include things like performance reviews and goal/bonus structure information.
   
2. Providing strong development tools, whether customers want to extend or improve a pre-made scenario or develop a brand new process and add it to the Office/SAP ecosystem. For example, a bank user needs to create something for fraud monitoring. That user can then create a mySAP-based tool from scratch using the Office interface and have it snap in right along the pre-made functions.

As before, Microsoft and SAP are co-developing the next version of Mendocino, Fliess said. “Mendocino uses XML-based middleware to pull together the two companies' products into a unified interface.”

Matt Danielsson
Editor