SAP’s StreamWork platform – its on-demand collaboration software –will integrate easier with its BI tools later this year, the vendor said. Such integration capabilities are already available for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Strategy Management products.

Customers can also buy an enhanced version of the software that SAP hopes will quell security and application management concerns introduced by cloud applications. The Enterprise edition– which costs $16 per user per month – comes equipped with the “Enterprise Agent,” a tool that sits behind a client’s firewall and allows companies to provision and decommission users by using existing enterprise directories, and has tools for IT to monitor StreamWork’s use.

“Collaboration is critical to future growth,” said Jack Miller, Global VP, Collaboration and Cloud. “SAP will standardize on StreamWork as a collaboration environment, and take every solution and overtime integrate it with StreamWork.”

SAP’s StreamWork is supposed to make it easier for businesses to collaborate and make decisions by providing a common platform for sharing documents and engaging in discussions, for instance. Integration efforts by SAP allow for customers to initiate activities in the back-end systems, and use that data to make decisions.  The goal is that users log on to and love an environment so intuitive that they need no training, while finding it hip and helpful at the same time.

StreamWork also allows users to integrate content from 16 partners – including Google Docs, Evernote and Box.net – in their decision-making processes.

What separates StreamWork from SharePoint, Miller said, is that while SharePoint can do document management, it cannot, for instance, pull forward a BI platform, dashboards and reports, as is planned for the StreamWork release later this year. Users will be able to, for instance, initiate a StreamWork activity directly from a report in an SAP BusinessObjects tool.

“You have to be able to say, ‘how do you know?’” Miller said, adding that being able to go back into the SAP system of record and combine that together with intuitive tools on the front-end is a really powerful offering.

“StreamWork is a game changer in our customers’ eyes,” he said. “When I ask, what are the key things you want to use the conversation for, I have yet to hear anything less than business critical.”

StreamWork, unlike the majority of SAP’s other current and planned on-demand products, is not built on the Business ByDesign platform, but instead on a number of open source products. It is hosted by a partner vendor in its cloud facility (SAP did not wish to name the vendor), but will eventually be moved into the data center SAP has built to host Business ByDesign.

There are three versions of StreamWork currently for sale. The Enterprise Edition is $16 per user per month, features the Enterprise Agent, and allows for hundreds of open “activities” and 10 GB of space. The free version is very limited in terms of activities a user can open and store; it’s basically designed to give people a taste. In between is the Professional Edition, with more storage and leeway for activities than the free version but no Enterprise Agent. It is $9 per user per month.

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1 Comment for StreamWork, SAP’s Collaboration Software, to Integrate with BI, CRM

Rakhi Makad

Hi Courtney,

This is good news! Having used StreamWork to some extent, I can definitely say that it is a good collaboration platform and extremely simple to use. Being able to use it for BI will be just the thing that was needed since quite a while. How it would impact enterpise portals would be interesting to understand, any insights?

Thanks,
-Rakhi
http://www.infosysblogs.com/sap/sapphire/sapphire_now_2011/

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