Duet Roadmap Tweaked Again

Plans for a major version of Duet in 2008 have been dropped. Duet is a jointly developed Microsoft-SAP product that lets workers access the SAP suite of business applications using Outlook and other Office applications. Some features targeted for Duet 2.0 will appear in an interim Duet 1.5 release in 2008, with the remainder deferred to Duet 3.0, expected no earlier than 2009. Although the change delays several interesting features, it should help Microsoft and SAP ship Duet 3.0 on time. This is important for partners, because 3.0 will be the first release that supports custom Duet solutions.

Broader, Simpler SAP Access

Duet enables users of Outlook and other Office suite applications to work with SAP’s suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) applications. The product makes SAP data and processes, historically the domain of back-office specialists and managers, accessible to other workers in an organization, which helps reduce their reliance on specialists to complete day-to-day tasks. Duet’s first version focuses on employee self-service applications: for example, it includes a time management application that lets workers enter time worked directly into SAP applications from Outlook. In future releases, Microsoft and SAP will expand Duet’s support for business processes such as sales and SCM.