Infosys | Microsoft

Microsof and SAP are launching something called as Enterprise DUET which will allow Organizations having Sharepoint and SAP Netweaver a tool which can help them take the User Experience/Usability of there Intranet a couple of notches up from where they are today.

Most Intranets today just provide a Single Sign-on to backend applications and the users have to figure/know the process and applications they need to access to do there work.  This is a good begining but does not provide a context and collaborative environment for the Information worker to accomplish what he needs day to day and this hampers his Productivity. With the new Solution from Microsoft and SAP called Enterprise DUET now Organizations can build some very usable Business Process Integration and enable the complete Process Portal and really make a positive impact to the productivity of the Information worker. Now people can collaborate and do there work in a process environment which traverses applicaiton boundaries enabling a improved user expereince for Information workers. 

Implementing the above solution however will require quite a few sessions with the users to really understand Business processes and Personas. This will also involve identification of different applications which need to be integrated into this process. Once you have the above you can use DUET and tie together a Business process into a process portal on your Sharepoint Platform. The out of box version of DUET provides 5-6 SAP business entities which can be accessed on the Sharepoint Platform. DUET provides the complete plumbing and security, single sign-on etc to make data and process across boundaries from SAP into Sharepoint. The implementation team will need to create the new components required for there process on SAP netweaver side and on Sharepoint BCS side. After this the UI team needs to build a user expereince in Sharepoint and tie that to the BCS components.

At Infosys we are investing in building ready made solutions using DUET. Currently, we are working on building a HR Self Service Portal area which allows Users to conduct all HR related transactions like applying leave, checking salary, other life events in a Sharepoint 2010 front end and SAP backend. We will be coming out with  serveral such solutions as DUET becomes more mature.

This is an exiting time for people looking to improve information worker productivity. DUET promises the same level of produtivity improvement as earlier solutions like Single Sign-on, password management, Content management and Personalization. However there will be multiple challenges to prove business case and actual $ improvement in revenues or cost savings to the Organizations which can hamper the adoption of this technology.