"Customers wanted the ease and familiarity of their Office environment and yet wanted the ability to access and use the robust, secure business processes from the SAP back-end systems," says Moore. "As Web services and SOA became integrated features of both companies' product lines, the feasibility of providing contextual business information from SAP within Office 2003 increased, and the idea of Duet was born."

Development began in 2003, with teams in five locations and a full complement of architects, software developers, quality assurance and test engineers, implementation consultants, technical writers and product managers. The developers started by brainstorming ways to integrate Office and SAP. Customers were then contacted to validate the concepts and find areas for improvement.

Microsoft and SAP then set out separately to develop their contributions to the whole, but a significant amount of coordination via written communication and virtual and in-person meetings was required throughout the process.

The product was initially released to 100 partners and key customers, with broad release scheduled for this summer.

The first version includes four key business scenarios. For example, employees can record their hours in their Outlook calendar. The Outlook calendar entry then triggers an approval action in the SAP time management tool so the employee doesn't have to separately input the data in both locations. Similarly, people can request time off using Outlook's meeting request feature, and the approval is processed based on the business rules set up in SAP. The Outlook mailbox is also linked to the SAP budget management process. Two releases due out later this year will provide business scenarios in ERP, CRM, supplier relationship management and business intelligence software from SAP.