'Duet: A huge productivity enabler'

Kishore Kumar

HYDERABAD: It's not every now and then that one witnesses a confluence of SAP and Microsoft. Naturally, quite a few eyebrows were raised when the two software majors announced a joint collaboration last year to come up with Mendocino, a product that will allow the Microsoft front end users to operate SAP back end.

The software, initially named after an American city, has now been re-christened Duet, indicative of the joint effort. With the software likely to hit the marketplace next month, the buzz is out of the curiosity to identify its efficacies.

Intelligroup Inc., one of the preview partners for Duet, is excited about the yet-to-be-shipped software.

Vikram Gulati, the chief executive officer and president of Intelligroup, casts no doubts on the prospects of Duet's success. “It's extremely useful for large corporates. It's a huge productivity and collaborative enabler. And with two of the largest software companies coming together, we hope that it will have wide acceptance,'' expects Gulati.

The initial version of Duet will offer leave, time and organization management apart from budget monitoring. It will connect MS Outlook and calendar program and SAP's back office business application.

Testing for the software commenced in December last year.

Intelligroup happens to be one of the 10 preview partners of Duet.

“People will have to use their imagination to see how the software can be useful to their particular business,'' elaborates Gulati.

Intelligroup's partnership with SAP started in 1996. Intelligroup is providing SAP services to more than 300 companies and has to its credit the SAP Award of Excellence in America.

“Our partnership with SAP is at a multiple level. We work with them on an upgrade and support perspective. Today the biggest difference that differentiates us from our competitors is our partnership with SAP on Duet. We are doing a great job with our current and new customers because of our relationship with SAP,'' opines Gulati.

In March, Intelligroup had launched EDI Jumpstart which works on Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006.

Intelligroup is an advisory partner of Microsoft. "Intelligroup has a strategic relationship with Microsoft. We are looking forward to increase our collaboration with Microsoft."

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