Harmony for IBM and SAP, Duet for Microsoft and SAP
Last week a lot of news appeared about IBM’s new products IBM Workspace for SAP Software and IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions. It has been said both are of an initiative dubbed “Project Harmony”. I’ve never heard Project Harmony. The question is what “Project Harmony” is.
I know that SAP and IBM have been working for a long time and IBM has an SAP competence center in its each location. It means that IBM even serves SAP consulting to SAP users. When I was working at I-BIMSA, joint-venture of Sabanci Holding and IBM Turkey, we were working with IBM employees closely. You can guess that IBM servers that include MS Windows, IBM AIX or even AS/400; and IBM DB2 database products make IBM works with SAP a lot. SAP –users- is a big customer for IBM. IBM is a big supporter for SAP. Put yourself instead of SAP, you would work with big brothers are Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, HP, etc. It is obvious that Microsoft and Oracle are kind of competitor of SAP. So you would be eager to work IBM or HP rather than others. Right?
It sounds me that this announcement is a kind of respond to Microsoft and SAP’s new product Duet for Microsoft and SAP. Indeed, InfoWorld said IBM harmonizes Notes-SAP links to feed off Duet.
With Duet you can see some integration between SAP HR Module and Microsoft Outlook so far. What is one of Outlook competitor products? IBM’s Lotus Notes. At first it seems Microsoft with Duet gained an advantage against IBM. But I guess IBM’s relationship with SAP is stronger and older than Microsoft’s. But Microsoft is the leader in Office programs.
I know many Sabanci Group, is one of the big business groups in Turkey, companies use Lotus Notes. I am not sure they would attempt to use those IBM’s products with their SAP. I am sure that SAP salespeople will try to sell them and at last maybe some will try.
It seems that here Microsoft and SAP work together, produces and sells together, but IBM works alone, maybe just gets support or approve from SAP. I could not see any news about IBM’s new product at SAP Press Room website. I think what Microsoft and SAP do is well than IBM does.
One of my other concerns is the products’ name. Duet what a great name! “Project Harmony” is a good name too! But what are IBM’s new product names? Answer is: IBM Workspace for SAP Software and IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions. What! Why didn’t you IBM find a better name? Rocky Oliver, is from IBM, calls IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions as NaSS. It is even like a hard name! Isn’t it? The name of the product must be easy to remember. It shows that Microsoft’s marketing policies are smarter than IBM’s marketing policies. It is irony that most people believe that IBM is a sale company more than a tech company. IBM is a big blue because of sales force. Who gives the name of the products inside IBM 
Project Managers, Programmers, Salespeople, Managers, Executives?
So what happens is this another competition thing, Microsoft attacked and then IBM defended! SAP is happier among others. On the other hand Oracle watches everything!
I would like to summarize and write an article about technical specifications of these products on next post. Coming soon 
May 23rd, 2006 at 9:47 pm
It should certainly be interesting to see how this war pans out. Microsoft has invited SAP into its domain, and IBM who is a smaller player in the desktop application space with Lotus has already reacted.
The vendor who should hurt the most by this is Oracle.
Read my piece on the battle for the connected desktop here -
http://www.extensio.com/white_papers/The%20Battle%20for%20the%20Connected%20Desktop.pdf
- Sangeeta
May 23rd, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Thanks for the mention, Tuncay. I do want to mention, as a personal aside, that I had nothing to do with the name - only the featureset
If you have any questions as you perform your evaluation, please let me know.
Regards,
Rock
June 4th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Sangeeta,
I read you “The Battle for The Connected Desktop” article. I truly like it. I agree with you about SAP and Microsoft did good job so far and Oracle seems too busy to think about SAP and Microsoft relationship. I think SAP and Microsoft have done a good start but it is not enough. Duet needs more functionality and also feedbacks from users are very important. I read different things about Duet’s technology but it is still a “integration”. As a SAP Developer I know integration is kind of work which would bring headache to customers, implementers, and consultants. The strategy is “wait and see”.
So far the result
SAP: 2 – Oracle: 0
Microsoft: 1 – IBM: 0
June 4th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Rock,
I watched SAPPHIRE ’06 which is SAP’s customer conference that was held in Orlando on May 16-18, and I see that a lot of news and sessions about Duet. Even all keynote speakers mentioned Duet. But I did not hear anything about NaSS. If those are new products, where was IBM?
I think IBM’s those products are not new products. I am not sure but what I know is IBM developed those products alone. I think BAPI and Batch Input techniques are used to export/import data from SAP R/3. So it makes them are normal integration programs. I remember when I was in IBIMSA, joint venture of IBM Turkey and Sabanci Holding, my friend Murat Yasin Kubilay and me did the same kind of integration. The key question is: Is there a server to manage all integration activities between SAP and IBM Lotus Notes?
Recent news about those products is just respond to SAP-Microsoft’s Duet. It is a kind of saying that hey everyone you see Duet right now but we have already did before with Lotus Notes. This is not a new concept. (Maybe not but if we look closely, we can see different things.)
Rock maybe you don’t know the answer but I am still wondering who gave names to these products 
Have people thought those are really products or just instant solutions?