Duet Enterprise Developer Community Team Blog

Duet Enterprise: General Availability (GA) Update

2010-12-01T18:12:05Z

December 1, 2010

Today we have achieved a major development milestone of our jointly developed product, Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP, with its general availability scheduled for later this week. Microsoft and SAP have been working hard to bring this product to market and to make sure our early customers are highly satisfied. Come hear their stories first-hand at our Duet Enterprise Launch Summit on February 1, 2011.

Duet Enterprise expands the value of existing customer investments in SAP and Microsoft by increasing individual productivity, and allowing a rapid response to shifting business needs. Duet Enterprise does this by enabling the interoperability between SAP applications and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010. The solution provides a simplified approach for our customers to bring together the business processes and data from SAP applications with the content and collaboration capabilities offered with SharePoint.

At the upcoming Duet Enterprise Launch Summit where you’ll hear keynotes from top executives at SAP and Microsoft, you will learn about both the business and technology value of Duet Enterprise. Our vibrant partner ecosystem will provide insight into the breadth and depth of their solutions already built with Duet Enterprise. Visit the summit site and make sure you reserve a spot for you and your colleagues. You can also familiarize yourself with Duet Enterprise and gain a better understanding of how this can help your company achieve its IT strategy by going to http://www.sap.com/duetenterpriseenterprise or www.microsoft.com/duet.

See you on February 1, 2011!

Best regards,

Rakesh Agarwal
Chief Product Owner
Duet Enterprise
SAP Labs

Hari Prasad
Principal Group Program Manager
Duet Enterprise
Microsoft

Duet Enterprise at SAP TechEd

2010-11-09T17:28:05Z

Here is the wrap up report from USA SAP TechEd conference in Las Vegas last week, where attendee numbers of 5,500 were on par with their record year in 2008!

Microsoft was clearly a relevant story at the SAP conference this year with large amount of interest in our joint product Duet Enterprise for SharePoint and SAP. Not only did we have our usual presence in the Exhibit Hall, but we also had a key location in the community clubhouse area with Intel, standing/sitting room only in all of our speaking sessions but we also had numerous highlights and mentions by Vishal Sikka (SAP CTO and Executive Board Member) during his keynote to kick off the week. The interest in our “Microsoft and SAP: Better Together” story is very strong not only with our customer and partners, but also with nearly every SAP employee who I had the opportunity talk with this week. It is exciting to see the partnership with SAP continue to gain momentum.

Microsoft can never have a strong presence at any show without great resources, so I want to thank all of our staff from MSIT, DPE, MCS, the Duet and SQL Server teams and the Microsoft-SAP Technology Center staff for the long hours they put in making this conference a success for the SAP Alliance and Sales teams.

Keynote:

A packed keynote session delivered by SAP CTO Vishal Sikka, where all the chairs were taken and many attendees were standing against the walls or sitting on the floor. During his 90 minute session Duet Enterprise was highlighted across multiple slides and a video of Microsoft IT’s latest Duet Enterprise pilot was shown and a demo on end-to-end support and monitoring between SharePoint and SAP was showcased. Vishal also thanked Microsoft for all the work we have done together in bringing our solutions to market, and specifically highlighted that partnerships can work and result in successful joint efforts. Vishal called out a few items every organization should be pursuing this year, and Duet Enterprise is called out specifically. For those interested, the full keynote can be seen here.

Exhibit Hall/Community Clubhouse

Microsoft’s exhibit hall presence this year focused on Duet Enterprise and our Windows/SQL Server platform story for SAP. We had a staff of over 10 people who were constantly busy during show hours. 3 of our 4 pod locations were tasked with Duet Enterprise with SQL Server on the 4^th. All pods were extremely busy all week and I did notice on several occasions that our people pulled out their own laptops and moved away from the booth to have more in depth discussions with customers due to the high volume of people at our booth.

In addition to the Microsoft booth, our friends at Intel invited us to be part of their booth also. At the Intel booth we showcased the Mission Critical capabilities of SAP on Windows Server 2008 R2 in a virtualized (Hyper-V) environment on the Intel Platform. We had a great demonstration showing Live Migrations of an active (transactions were being processed) SAP system from one virtual system to another on another. Customers immediately recognized the benefits of this capability (no SAP downtime required for system maintenance). Intel commented that the Microsoft pod was consistently the busiest area of their booth all week, with people standing 6-8 deep watching the Live demo and listening to our story.

Microsoft also had several “meet the expert” sessions. These were scheduled times in a casual lounge setting where customers could stop by, relax and discuss in more detail our Duet Enterprise story, both of our MSIT Duet Pilots and SQL Server on SAP. Howard Beader, Peter Loop, Kristen Chester and Juergen Thomas facilitated these discussions.

Sessions

And finally, the reason most people attend SAP TechEd conferences… the sessions! SAP TechEd is a unique opportunity for customers to not only hear detailed presentations on topics but also sign up for hands-on sessions on a variety of areas. Microsoft had several speaking sessions on Duet Enterprise and general SharePoint-SAP Interoperability as well as a hands-on session where customers were able to roll up their sleeves and get a peek at Duet Enterprise months before it releases this quarter. All sessions were offered at least twice and each time they were full, with standing room only and SAP having to close the doors due to room capacity 5-10 minutes before each session began. One of our sessions had so many attendees registered that SAP asked us to repeat it later that afternoon to accommodate the demand.

Here is a video montage:

New Video: Duet Enterprise Overview

2010-06-21T08:08:00Z

Hello my name is Howard Beader and I am a Group Product Manager with Microsoft responsible for Duet Enterprise.

I am very pleased to share with you this short video introduction to Duet Enterprise. In this video you can Learn more about Duet Enterprise and it’s 3 main pillars including: a foundation enabling interoperability between SAP applications and Microsoft SharePoint, Tools & Services to compose solutions that blend the worlds of process and collaboration and ready-to-use capabilities that provide immediate value to end users.

Building solutions on Duet Enterprise

2010-04-30T17:40:00Z

Hi, my name is Atanu Banerjee and I work in the Duet Enterprise Program Management team. In this blog post I'll provide an introduction on building solutions on Duet Enterprise. Subsequent blog postings will go into more details.

Any kind of enterprise application can be built on top of Duet Enterprise, e.g. to support particular business activities for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), … etc . However the idea here is not to rebuild application interfaces that already exist. Instead through Duet Enterprise we provide a set of application building blocks from which new kinds of solutions can be composed. We expect that these new kinds of solutions will enable collaboration, communications, or content management in Office and SharePoint in extension to the core SAP business processes. The consumers of these solutions would be information workers who need access to SAP information and services as they perform their business activities, or who participate in business processes managed in SAP, but are not typically power users of the SAP interfaces.

The building blocks that we will provide through Duet include both functional building blocks (e.g. application components for SAP data models like Customer, Product, Employee, … etc.) , as well as infrastructural building blocks (e.g. for Reporting, Workflow, Collaboration, … etc.).

These infrastructural building blocks are what Christian described as 'Ready To Use' capabilities in his blog posting earlier.

So an example of a solution built on Duet Enterprise might be an extension to inventory management processes in SAP to allow ad-hoc collaboration and reporting in SharePoint around alerts and notifications raised from a warehouse or a factory floor. However while Duet Enterprise provides a new set of building blocks, it does not add a new set of tools. Solution builders can leverage existing skillsets, and use standard tools like Visual Studio, SharePoint Designer, and ABAP Workbench. They would use these tools to compose these building blocks into new kinds of solutions that support a particular type of business activity. This solution would typically combine ad-hoc collaboration in SharePoint with structured process in SAP, and bring in contextual business data and reports to support decision making for that activity.

Let us take a specific example. In today's enterprises there are typically virtual teams to service key customer accounts. A particular account v-team would include employees who report into different organizational units, e.g. Sales, Marketing, Support ... etc., and who work out of different geographic locations. While organizationally separate, these v-teams need a way to collaborate among themselves, and to manage their working activities. Out-of-the-box with Duet Enterprise we will ship a set of composites, one of which is the customer collaboration workspace for account teams. This will enable any person with access to account information in SAP, to browse the list of customer accounts within SharePoint, and for any account request access to a collaboration workspace. This is a SharePoint site that gets auto-provisioned by the Duet Foundation the first time that the workspace is requested by a member of the account v-team, using the packaged composite that ships with Duet Enterprise. The site comes pre-wired with connections to SAP information and services. For example the account v-team members can view and edit account related information that is managed by SAP, as well as view reports related to the account, and can take for granted that the Duet Foundation provides the integrated security and administrative support which is necessary to support such activities.

Now consider the design time experience to support the flow described above. The composite for the customer collaboration workspace which we provide in Duet Enterprise is a collection of building blocks that have been assembled together in a particular way. This provides a starting point for further customization and solution building. For example, there is a set of web services that are exposed from within the Duet Enterprise SAP Add-on (e.g. Customer, Sales Contact, … etc.), there is a set of External Content Types provided for SharePoint (that map to the SAP web services), and there is a SharePoint site definition which provides a template for the customer collaboration workspaces which are auto-provisioned for v-team members. In addition there are SharePoint Features for the ready to use capabilities (e.g. Related Reports) that can be stapled to the Site Definition. So a solution builder can customize the composite by extending the web services and the external content types, by adding new SharePoint web parts or Features if needed, and by customizing the site definition files for the workspace, or even creating entirely new site definitions. Finally the solution builder leverages hooks in the Duet Foundation to plug in these new or customized composites.

This is a rather high level introduction to the topic of building Duet Enterprise solutions. Going forward we'll provide more details, and specific examples.

Duet Enterprise in Tech.Ed-India 2010

2010-04-28T19:25:00Z

As many of you might know, Microsoft hosted one of the largest technology showcase - Tech.Ed, in Bangalore during April 12-14, 2010. This was a great opportunity for the The Duet Enterprise team to reach out, engage with and establish an ongoing dialog with the developer community.

The Duet Enterprise team from Microsoft and SAP, decided to jointly host an invite only session on Duet Enterprise. Members of the product team from Microsoft and SAP were presenting. The event organizers picked a room to host roughly 12-14 attendees. Looking back, we had no clue on the interest level for this product… I say that with a big smile on my face :)

It was Day 2 of Tech.Ed (April 13th). SharePoint 2010 session was in full swing with a packed audience. I was in the crowd listening to the attendees react to the great feature sets from SharePoint. I could feel the excitement level rise when the BCS features, integration with LOB systems were being presented. Call me biased, that’s my story and I am sticking to it :).

This was a clear indication that there could be a sizable developer community in this audience that had background SAP or other LOBs and may be looking for help in integrating these LOBs with SharePoint. Then it stuck me, that Duet Enterprise session is going to be hosted in room that is smaller that may not host everyone comfortably ..By then it was too late to change the setting.

The session was to start at 11:30 AM. By 11:05 AM, the seats were taken. 20 minutes into the session the room was standing room only and a big line outside waiting to get in.

The final attendee count was 64. The attendees represented a good spread of .NET developers, ABAP developers, enterprise architects, MVPs and other decision makers. The survey of he session resulted a score of 4.15 / 5 . – The biggest feedback !! You guessed it. Get a bigger room !!!!! (Lesson learnt, I say)

Since the product is in development (approaching Beta), we had decided to show only the videos of the product and engage the audience on suggestions and recommendations they had on the proposed feature sets. I realize that we may be have disappointed some of the audience by not showing a live demo.

The best way to experience a product is to experiment with it. The next best is to see a live demo, further down the list are video recordings and screen shots. I am very aware of these. To take this further, we are planning a webinar to show a live demo of Duet Enterprise. Watch this space for an invite… Folks interested in our Beta program should reach out to duetrdpm@microsoft.com

It was very comforting to learn that the investments we had done for Duet Enterprise resonated well with developer community. Security, Supportability, Scalability – Enterprise Readiness as a whole is what one gets out of the box with Duet Enterprise, not to mention the building blocks such as Reporting and Workflow and Starter Services to get access to content.

Our decisions to align with existing tool sets in the platform (SharePoint and ABAP Workbench) was received well as I saw ABAP developers nodding their head when Gaurav (SAP Architect) was explaining the customization story. We had just one goal for the session – Get the community excited about Duet Enterprise. The response to the event has been great.

Thank you all for attending and make the event a success. I look forward to a more and more interactions with all of you in this journey.

Thanks,

Ranganathan Srikanth,
Lead Program Manager,
Duet Enterprise,
Microsoft Corp.

Join us for SAPPHIRE NOW and the ASUG Annual Conference (May 16-19, Orlando)

2010-04-20T16:26:41Z

Join us May 16-19 for the SAPPHIRE NOW and the ASUG Annual Conference events co-located in Orlando. These premier technology events give you the ultimate opportunity to network with SAP customers, partners, team members, and industry experts. Plus, you'll gain insights into how to maximize innovative technology and business strategies to drive business results at every level. Partnering with Microsoft at Sapphire Now will be Cap Gemini, and Hitachi, and Infosys.

Please plan on attending these great sessions:

SAP Interoperability with Microsoft SharePoint Using Duet Enterprise
Tuesday, May 18 3:00 - 3:20 pm
Familiarize yourself with SAP's approach for interoperability: simple, flexible, and accessible. SAP software works with any third-party tool or device, enabling more people to access business data and processes through the tool of their choice. See how Duet Enterprise, a joint product by SAP and Microsoft, allows business users to consume and extend SAP applications through Microsoft SharePoint and Office.

Capture the Value of Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP
Wednesday, May 19 12:00 - 12:20 pm
The soon-to-be-released Duet Enterprise is a new joint product from SAP and Microsoft that enables interoperability between SAP applications and SharePoint 2010. Duet Enterprise enables you to generate more value from your investments, achieve efficiency in enabling interoperability between SAP and SharePoint 2010 and addresses the growing need for team collaboration and business insight while increasing personal and team productivity.

Extend SAP Application to Microsoft SharePoint using Duet Enterprise
Wednesday, May 19 4:00 - 5:00 pm
Learn from the experts who will walk you through a simple step-by-step process of enabling an SAP business process object to Microsoft SharePoint BDC entity using Duet Enterprises for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP software. Duet Enterprise is a joint product from SAP and Microsoft that empowers all employees to consume and extend SAP software processes and information from Microsoft SharePoint and Office 2010. This session will enlighten attendees about the process, skillset required, and tools available to enable any SAP application run Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Please also visit Microsoft at booth 1118 in the SAPPHIRE 2010 exposition area.

Sapphire Now EMEA
Sapphire Now will also take place in Frankfurt, May 17 - 19. Click here to register and learn more details.

Please plan on attending the following session at Sapphire Now EMEA:
SAP Interoperability with Microsoft SharePoint Using Duet Enterprise
Tuesday, May 18 10:30 - 10:50 am
Familiarize yourself with SAP's approach for interoperability: simple, flexible, and accessible. SAP software works with any third-party tool or device, enabling more people to access business data and processes through the tool of their choice. See how Duet Enterprise, a joint product by SAP and Microsoft, allows business users to consume and extend SAP applications through Microsoft SharePoint and Office.

Welcome to the Duet Enterprise Developer Blog

2010-04-01T08:11:00Z

My name is Pascal Gibert and I am the Director of Product Management for Duet Enterprise at Microsoft.

At PDC 2009 Microsoft announced our intent to deliver Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP software in the second half of 2010.

Developed jointly by Microsoft and SAP, Duet Enterprise offers new tools and services for creating solutions that combine process and collaboration—and provides ready-to-use capabilities that are of immediate value to our customers.

I encourage you to watch this space in the coming weeks and months where we will be sharing ongoing product and industry news, provide a deep dive on the different components of Duet Enterprise, offer implementation and development tips and tricks, and give you a glimpse at some of the people behind the technology.

In January we held our first Developer Kitchens where implementers and developers were offered a first look at the new technology. The reaction from customers and partners, even at such an early stage, was overwhelmingly positive.

In March we conducted a well-attended partner webcast that is now available on demand. In this presentation, we shared an overview of Duet Enterprise, including the system requirements and architecture, and providing guidance on how to engage in our upcoming Rapid Deployment Program (RDP).

We are also in the process of deploying Duet Enterprise within the company and working on some exciting proof of concepts just in time for Sapphire 2010 Conferences in the US and Germany this May.

Check back often for the most recent news, information, and resources as we launch this exciting new product. You can also follow us via Facebook and Twitter.

-Pascal