LAS VEGAS -- SAP said it would begin shipping on December 23 an early version of a software product designed to allow users to access the SAP software system through Microsoft Office.
Described as a "preview" of what SAP and Microsoft have called Project Mendocino, the software will be released to 40 customers and 10 partner companies later this month, SAP said. The software will be released to an additional 50 customers in April and is scheduled for general availability in July. The names of the customers and partners were not released.
SAP and Microsoft announced Project Mendocino last spring at SAP's annual Sapphire user meeting in Copenhagen. At that time, SAP said the software would begin to be available in the fourth quarter of 2005.
Further details about Mendocino emerged this week at SAP's third annual Analyst Summit, held here. The objective of the project is to make it easier for users to access the MySAP ERP system by allowing access through the familiar Microsoft desktop interface that so many knowledge workers already use in their companies. This will both simplify and enhance the experience users have with the SAP system, a major objective the software giant has established for its software.
In addition, SAP hopes that this greater ease of use will translate into an expansion of its user population. "There are 15,000,000 SAP users in companies today," said SAP executive board member Shai Agassi. "But these companies have 60,000,000 users [overall]. How do we get to the other 75%?"
Kevin Fliess, SAP's vice president of solution marketing for Emerging Solutions, said in an interview that SAP is thinking about these new users in a specific way. "We see this as a new class of user for SAP -- the information worker," Fliess said. "It is someone who needs periodic access to SAP."
Fliess said the "preview release" of Mendocino would be delivered to companies in a variety of manufacturing-related segments, including high-technology, consumer products, aerospace and defense, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and engineering and construction. Customer names will be revealed in January, he added.
Mendocino is designed to be used for general management purposes, particularly such activities as employee self-service. When it is released, the software will have such capabilities as time management, leave management, organizational management, and budget monitoring. Travel management would be a logical extension in the future, Fliess noted.
The software is designed to work with MySAP ERP 2004 and 2005 and Microsoft Office 2003 Professional and successor releases. It also requires Microsoft's Exchange Server, said Chris Caren, general manager, Office Business Applications at Microsoft. Pricing and the product's final name have not yet been announced.
Analysts and SAP customers attending the summit meeting here were generally positive about the Mendocino concept. "Anything SAP can do to improve its usability is a good thing," said Scott Lundstrom, vice president of research at Life Sciences Insights, an International Data Corp. unit. "It's also about customer base retention and expanding the number of people within an SAP site who use the system."
Rod Massey, chief information officer for Clark County, NV, of which Las Vegas is a part, said that although he has not yet been formally briefed on Mendocino, he is enthusiastic about the idea.
"We're tremendously interested in it," Massey said. "The ability to leverage familiar tools in the SAP environment is what is attractive to us."