SAP AG released the enterprise edition of its collaborative business process management software StreamWork on Monday with new partnerships that should help address IT department pain points: better integration with apps behind the firewall with Novell technology, mobile capability on the BlackBerry and iPhone, and integration with on-demand apps on Google Apps Marketplace.
“What we’re doing is we’re really creating something that builds a foundation that a company can use across the board even though they have these complex heterogeneous environments,” said Holly Simmons, senior director of product marketing for on-demand technologies with SAP.
Initially released in March of this year as a cloud edition for small to medium-sized businesses, the enterprise edition is targeted at making app integration easier across on-premise, on-demand and mobile platforms for enterprise IT departments. The enterprise capabilities also align with the Germany-based software company’s three-pronged strategy of building out its technologies on-premise, on-demand and on-device.
“That will also help us to move into the broader company wide IT focus of implementations,” said Simmons.
The Novell component of the edition is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Appliance Toolkit that is meant to provide IT departments with security and easier integration with enterprise data for StreamWork users.
Novell’s director of global alliances marketing, Josh Dorfman, said the pre-configured and pre-packaged approach to the appliance market is “really about the quick to value component of the purchase” for the IT department.
Dorfman added that the use of Novell further builds upon a five-year partnership with SAP and their joint customer install base of 3,000.
Also expanding in the on-premise area, StreamWorks is offering integration with SAP apps. The first three for now are SAP’s Product Lifecycle Management, Customer Relationship Management and BusinessObjects Strategy Management apps.
While the Novell integration is for existing on-premise apps, the Google partnership is for on-demand apps that business users might have brought into the enterprise. Simmons said SAP regards the Google Apps Marketplace and the 30 million users of Google Apps as very much a “great distribution channel.”
So providing integration with Google Apps, such as Google Docs, will let StreamWork users do collaborative editing of spreadsheets, e-mail and calendaring, she said.
“There are also all of these enterprise 2.0 Web-based applications as well and so how do we bring that into the picture?” said Simmons.
As for on-device, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone will support StreamWorks with initial capabilities specific to what users will want to do on a mobile device. Simmons said mobile users won’t necessarily want to edit an entire document on a smart phone, but might do things like initiate an activity or input feedback in a business process.
Follow Kathleen Lau on Twitter; @KathleenLau
